We all knew that guy growing up that told stories about a truck he had, a truck his brother had, or some other form of the tale about a vehicle that pulled wheelies with impunity because of how it was geared. In my case it was a story about a lifted late 1970s Ford with a virtually stock engine and 40″ off road tires on it. Not only was that truck never doing a wheelie, it was never doing a burnout. Perhaps that’s why when I saw this late 1970s Bronco doing actual power wheelies in what looks to be the driveway of the shop of the house where it was built, I felt the need to share it.
This truck may be largely useless for most off roading purposes because it seems to have a center of gravity about six feet lower than the top of the Eiffel Tower but I think it looks pretty tough and the fact that the driver can actually pull these wheelies means that it has some gear in it and that the motor has some snot for sure. The massive amount of suspension travel and weight transfer may be helping but you know, that’s just a guess.
No, this won’t be dominating a trail but it sure will be getting lots of looks from kids and other fans of stuff that is ridiculously massive as it goes down the road. We’d skip the high speed cornering exercises in this one as well. Those would probably end pretty quickly with a thud and screams.
I think it make me leave pucker marks in the seat every time I turned the corner.
I do not understand why this Bronco gets so much hate. It has a ton of power obviously, and those axles must be stout. It wouldn’t be doing a bunch of off camber rock crawling, but it would destroy lots of mud pits. Certainly not as useless as a 80s/90s pro street car. Hell this Bronc is probably faster than most of them.
Didn’t Bill Stroppe prepared Broncos run in the Baja 1000 – you wouldn’t call them useless off road….
My 73 Bronco would do wheelies on the road too. I would take off one set of the dual front shocks and air down the 39″ Firestone’s and use low range in the transfer case. 351W with cam, C9OX intake,10 1/2 to 1, headers and 3 speed manual, 4.88 gears. It would probably go right up and over backwards if i’d let it, 93″ wheelbase and quite high center of gravity.