BDUSA Heritage Bronco Build (Father's Day Bump!)

[Candy_J]

I’m sure he loves it!! Looks great.

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[Rednek]

Can i forward this to my kids?

 

[Rickperry]

Thanks. I now feel like a shitty son.

Maybe Broncos will be more readily available by Father’s Day .

 

[Offroadalliance]

This build is amazing!! I really love those gold wheels, super unique style.

 

[Mason1646]

This is such an incredible build. Factory (if not better) level of detail and what a great gift for your dad.

 

[Rickperry]

This is such an incredible build. Factory (if not better) level of detail and what a great gift for your dad.

Thank yall, I appreciate the love!

 

[Cat]

I am excited to finally share this very special build by BDUSA (BroncoDepotUSA).

This build is for the most selfless man I know, my dad.
My dad gave everything to raise his family.
He escaped Vietnam and came to the United States in 1975. Seeking a better life, he went to school, got his degree, and started medical school. He was living the American dream. During his first year, he and my mom had my oldest brother. Financially strained, my dad made the ultimate choice of leaving school behind to support his new family. In my eyes, he gave up his dream for his kids.

A very long story short, my parents raised 7 kids on a shoe-string budget. Mom raised the kids at home while dad worked his ass off every day to support his family. He put 6 boys through college/grad school and the last on her way to begin college in two years (Big age gap between oldest and youngest). He has always put his family first, never asking for anything in return or ever treating himself to something nice.
He made sure every kid had a car to use for college and refused getting anyone a used car.

To this day, he still drives his original 2006 Acura TL with 250k miles but still believes that he needs to buy me (6th kid) a new car. He asked me what I wanted a couple of years ago and I told him I was happy to use the hand-me-down car and was waiting for the new Bronco to be announced. When the Bronco finally debuted, I showed him what it looked like, and mentioned that it was based off the 1st generation design. He is not much of a car guy, but I could see that he really liked it. As it turns out, the 1st gen Broncos were still in production when he came to the US and he casually mentioned that it was one of the first American cars that he wanted. And that’s when I knew this would be his next car. My brothers and I all came together to buy him a base Bronco. He loves the car and didn’t want anything more than base, but I wanted to do more for him. I wanted to return a piece of his youth by putting together something truly unique and properly retro-styled. This old school cool build is the result! More pictures and details to come in future posts.

Be sure to turn up the quality .




It’s small gesture of thanks compared to what he has sacrificed for us, but it feels good to finally give back to the man who has given us everything.
(Don’t worry we got mom something really nice too.)

Wow! Stunning! Keep a watchful eye on all that gold!

 

[Rickperry]

Happy Father’s Day!

I wanted to upload some more stills and give more details about the build. And heck, why not a Father’s Day thread bump!

It’s been longer than I would’ve liked since my last post, but I am excited to launch our new website www.BDUSA.co! This build was originally to be a special one-off build for my dad, but after numerous requests, I have decided to make it available as a package! This will not be a build for everyone, given the admittedly high cost and high cost of production. I tried to price it as reasonably as I could.

My dad’s Bronco originally started out as a 4Dr Base Bronco with no options. To beef up the anemic base model, here is a short list of items I added.
-HD Modular Bumper + Bull bar
-Badlands suspension + 1-inch leveling kit
-Sasquatch fender flares
-Bf Goodrich KO2 White Lettered Tires – 285/75/16
- and of course our BDUSA Heritage Wheel Package

For months, before Bronco’s were even being delivered, I had this build idea brewing in my head. No detail could be overlooked and lots of trial and error had to be done to pull it off. It needed to be done with tasteful form and function, as it would be my dad’s daily driver.
There were a few challenges to overcome with this build. If it were a perfect world, I would have it in a 17-inch wheel size, however, the manufacturer was not able to produce my requested spec without some crazy bulk ordering amount. What they could produce was a 16x8 wheel 108CB (base model originally is 16x7 93.1 CB), but a large concern of mine was whether the wheels would clear the brake calipers. And you guessed it, they didn’t clear. The wheels require a 5mm spacer to prevent the brake calipers from scraping the inside of the wheel’s barrel. However, this presented another issue as a slip-on spacer pushes the rim out from the hub no longer making it hub-centric. As a daily driver, this was not something I could or want to compromise on. I had to get a custom 5mm forged aluminum spacer/hub adapter combo made specifically for this rim and Bronco. It was expensive. I knew this build would cost more than good set of alloys, but I was committed to making something truly unique for my dad.

After all that was buttoned up, I went onto the finishing touches. I wanted gold in all the right places. Some of you may remember in the very beginning, I launched Bronco Depot Fender Badges in a 24k Gold plated option. I made that batch specifically for this build. As you can see from the pictures, I had all the badges and accent pieces gold plated to show that extra attention to detail. I went as far as having the key fobs gold plated. The only things that I could not gold plate were the door handles and Ford plaque on the center console. They have some type of nonconductive coating on the surface and it would be very difficult to strip without ruining them. As for the 5th wheel, I wanted there to be a moon cap mounted on the spare. After all, the moons are what make or break the heritage look! I had to find a way to preserve the camera and the obvious choice was to cut a hole in it. Easier said than done. The moons are made out of a very thin stainless steel and cutting it by traditional means (hole saw) would leave terrible edges, if you could even have the hole centered. Plasma cutting would leave a rough edge as it would blow out the material. The solution was to have it cut out with an industrial precision water jet, which added a considerable amount to the overall cost.

At the end of the day, my dad loved it and it was worth every penny. Over 10,000 miles on the clock and he is still telling me about how people are stopping into his work just to ask who's car is parked outside.
I’m just a little salty because his Bronco gets way more attention than my decently modded Badlands Sasquatch.

Happy father's day to all of the good dads out there. Your silent and selfless acts go a long way and I hope you are appreciated for them!

 

[lakesinai]

I am excited to finally share this very special build by BDUSA (BroncoDepotUSA).

This build is for the most selfless man I know, my dad.
My dad gave everything to raise his family.
He escaped Vietnam and came to the United States in 1975. Seeking a better life, he went to school, got his degree, and started medical school. He was living the American dream. During his first year, he and my mom had my oldest brother. Financially strained, my dad made the ultimate choice of leaving school behind to support his new family. In my eyes, he gave up his dream for his kids.

A very long story short, my parents raised 7 kids on a shoe-string budget. Mom raised the kids at home while dad worked his ass off every day to support his family. He put 6 boys through college/grad school and the last on her way to begin college in two years (Big age gap between oldest and youngest). He has always put his family first, never asking for anything in return or ever treating himself to something nice.
He made sure every kid had a car to use for college and refused getting anyone a used car.

To this day, he still drives his original 2006 Acura TL with 250k miles but still believes that he needs to buy me (6th kid) a new car. He asked me what I wanted a couple of years ago and I told him I was happy to use the hand-me-down car and was waiting for the new Bronco to be announced. When the Bronco finally debuted, I showed him what it looked like, and mentioned that it was based off the 1st generation design. He is not much of a car guy, but I could see that he really liked it. As it turns out, the 1st gen Broncos were still in production when he came to the US and he casually mentioned that it was one of the first American cars that he wanted. And that’s when I knew this would be his next car. My brothers and I all came together to buy him a base Bronco. He loves the car and didn’t want anything more than base, but I wanted to do more for him. I wanted to return a piece of his youth by putting together something truly unique and properly retro-styled. This old school cool build is the result! More pictures and details to come in future posts.

Be sure to turn up the quality .




It’s small gesture of thanks compared to what he has sacrificed for us, but it feels good to finally give back to the man who has given us everything.
(Don’t worry we got mom something really nice too.)

UPDATE: 06/19/2022
Happy Father’s Day!

I wanted to upload some more stills and give more details about the build. And heck, why not a Father’s Day thread bump!

It’s been longer than I would’ve liked since my last post, but I am excited to launch our new website www.BDUSA.co! This build was originally to be a special one-off build for my dad, but after numerous requests, I have decided to make it available as a package! This will not be a build for everyone, given the admittedly high cost and high cost of production. I tried to price it as reasonably as I could.

My dad’s Bronco originally started out as a 4Dr Base Bronco with no options. To beef up the anemic base model, here is a short list of items I added.
-HD Modular Bumper + Bull bar
-Badlands suspension + 1-inch leveling kit
-Sasquatch fender flares
-Bf Goodrich KO2 White Lettered Tires – 285/75/16
- and of course our BDUSA Heritage Wheel Package

For months, before Bronco’s were even being delivered, I had this build idea brewing in my head. No detail could be overlooked and lots of trial and error had to be done to pull it off. It needed to be done with tasteful form and function, as it would be my dad’s daily driver.
There were a few challenges to overcome with this build. If it were a perfect world, I would have it in a 17-inch wheel size, however, the manufacturer was not able to produce my requested spec without some crazy bulk ordering amount. What they could produce was a 16x8 wheel 108CB (base model originally is 16x7 93.1 CB), but a large concern of mine was whether the wheels would clear the brake calipers. And you guessed it, they didn’t clear. The wheels require a 5mm spacer to prevent the brake calipers from scraping the inside of the wheel’s barrel. However, this presented another issue as a slip-on spacer pushes the rim out from the hub no longer making it hub-centric. As a daily driver, this was not something I could or want to compromise on. I had to get a custom 5mm forged aluminum spacer/hub adapter combo made specifically for this rim and Bronco. It was expensive. I knew this build would cost more than good set of alloys, but I was committed to making something truly unique for my dad.

After all that was buttoned up, I went onto the finishing touches. I wanted gold in all the right places. Some of you may remember in the very beginning, I launched Bronco Depot Fender Badges in a 24k Gold plated option. I made that batch specifically for this build. As you can see from the pictures, I had all the badges and accent pieces gold plated to show that extra attention to detail. I went as far as having the key fobs gold plated. The only things that I could not gold plate were the door handles and Ford plaque on the center console. They have some type of nonconductive coating on the surface and it would be very difficult to strip without ruining them. As for the 5th wheel, I wanted there to be a moon cap mounted on the spare. After all, the moons are what make or break the heritage look! I had to find a way to preserve the camera and the obvious choice was to cut a hole in it. Easier said than done. The moons are made out of a very thin stainless steel and cutting it by traditional means (hole saw) would leave terrible edges, if you could even have the hole centered. Plasma cutting would leave a rough edge as it would blow out the material. The solution was to have it cut out with an industrial precision water jet, which added a considerable amount to the overall cost.

At the end of the day, my dad loved it and it was worth every penny. Over 10,000 miles on the clock and he is still telling me about how people are stopping into his work just to ask who's car is parked outside.
I’m just a little salty because his Bronco gets way more attention than my decently modded Badlands Sasquatch.

Happy father's day to all of the good dads out there. Your silent and selfless acts go a long way and I hope you are appreciated for them!

Wonderful story, wonderful son, it illustrates also how cars are often more that just cars, but memories and symbols of relationships.

Good looking wheels, too! I've heard that spacers are sometimes not a good idea, but a fifth (0.197) of an inch doesn't seem like much to worry about. And you've made them well! Its interesting to me that a 16" wheel ends up a 33" tire? Is there a design reason for the 16" over a 17" or 18" wheel? Or is that what is common in steel?

I'm glad I got my BRONCO Script while I did!

 

[BudgetBronco]

Welcome back! I remember the gold badge . Black and gold is a great combo! Good luck with the re-launch.

 

[Rickperry]

Wonderful story, wonderful son, it illustrates also how cars are often more that just cars, but memories and symbols of relationships.

Good looking wheels, too! I've heard that spacers are sometimes not a good idea, but a fifth (0.197) of an inch doesn't seem like much to worry about. And you've made them well! Its interesting to me that a 16" wheel ends up a 33" tire? Is there a design reason for the 16" over a 17" or 18" wheel? Or is that what is common in steel?

I'm glad I got my BRONCO Script while I did!

Spacers are completely safe and effective when made and utilized correctly. It would be ideal to have the perfect offset for any wheel, but in most cases wheels are rarely in the exact offset that you need. As long as the spacer is designed properly and made with the appropriate materials for the application, you will achieve the same outcome as a wheel with the correct offset. Our wheel spacers are stronger than the wheel itself. Inspect them when you rotate your tires and you're good to go.

As for 16s/33s, this choice was influenced by logistics and supply shortages with tires at the time. I pushed hard for my manufacturer to make a 17x8 wheel with the Bronco bolt pattern, but the cost and order quantity made it unfeasible. I had to work with what they had available. I wanted 35's but also wanted to stick with the White lettered BFG KO2's for the design. There was a tire shortage at the time and 35's were backordered with no expected production. So I compromised with 33s.

As it turns out, the compromised came with benefits. 33s/16, while smaller, are proportioned nearly the same as 35s/17. This helps keep that meaty tire look, while preserving the classic styling as it is not "too big". That's more subjective for the end user, but I am happy with the choice. Plus, better MPG haha.
When it's time for new tires, I will try the 35's.

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