That’s right, the Bronco is alive and well…again. For the past few months we have been battling the Bronco, and the Bronco has been winning. It has repeatedly not started and has not been reliable enough to drive anywhere…unless it was a weekend and we had all day in case it broke down. Along with it’s bad habit of not starting, we feared it may not want to stop too. The brakes have been squeaking, grinding and working intermittently. Now, when I say the brakes were working intermittently, I mean when you would press the brake pedal they would work, but it felt like they were only working half of the time making the truck jerk to a stop in well timed intervals. That kinda gets scary, especially with all the big hills and erratic driving here in Puerto Rico. We also had an oil leak and transmission fluid leak that forced us to constantly check the fluids.

Last month I took it to a local guys (a friends brother in law) and he replaced the brakes out for us. He also dropped the transmission and replaced the seals. This took him about a week. He told me that it should start fine now too because he fixed something in the transmission that was apparently causing the problem. After picking up the truck and driving it down the hill (without all the jerking), I was stoked; We have two vehicles again!. The next morning I took the Bronco surfing and it barely started. I drove it home, parked it in the driveway and it wouldn’t start the next morning. It sat there in the driveway for the past 3 weeks through all the holidays waiting for the the mechanic to get down here and check it out. After numerous conversations with the mechanic discussing him coming over and checking it out and him never showing up, I decided to take the matter into my own hands yesterday.

I drove out to Pep Boys and bought a new starter ($89) and replaced out the old one no problem. I am not a mechanic but I have tools and replacing out the starter only took unscrewing two bolts to the truck and one bolt that held the wire in place. It took me less than 20 minutes. I was stoked! I put the key in the ignition, turned it and NOTHING! Assuming the battery was dead, I pulled the Tundra up and jump started it. It purred like a kitten until I disconnected the jumper cables. Once I did that, it fluttered and then stalled out. Hmmm….could it be the battery? Trouble shooting the battery was as easy as pie, I pulled the battery out of the Tundra, put it in the Bronco and it started no problem, but when I would disconnect the negative battery terminal it would stall out. Ah ha! That indicates that the alternator is shot too!

I drove all the way back out to Pep Boys and bought a new alternator (you can have them rebuilt, but it was worth another $80 to me to have new one). The alternator was a little bit trickier because I had to take off the fan belt which took some strength and more tools. After about an hour I got the alternator switched out, put in the batter from the Tundra and it ran perfect with and without the negative battery terminal hooked up. I put the old battery back in to let charge for about an hour, turned it off and tried turning it back on. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…..wrong answer. The old battery was so drained it wouldn’t take a charge. Since it was Sunday, I decided to wait until Monday morning to replace out the battery…but I am confident that the Bronco not only survived, but it will become the ultimate beater surf truck again just in time for the winter season.

Tags: Vehicles