UAV Urban Assault Vehicle - 17 Ex Wreck Rebuild

[HawkX66]

There's good news on the repair front. This past weekend I was able to get all the DTCs straightened out (check engine light off) and the airbag light is now out. She's road worthy, but I still need to swap the front differential. I've put about 50 miles on it. She runs excellent.
From start to finish I've had to replace:
Hood, Driver fender, Radiator, Condenser, Radiator support, Intercooler, all turbo intake tubes, Bumper, Grill, one Mirror (replaced pair), Front seatbelts, Airbags, RCM reset, EPAS (steering rack), Front differential and one wheel. I had to straighten the front frame also. Ended up being relatively easy.
All repairs came in at less than $6k including the custom bumper and 12k winch, tow mirrors etc.
I still need to fine tune the alignment of the bumper.

 

[HawkX66]

Current pics.

 

[Nate Carlson]

Looks great!!

 

[HawkX66]

Looks great!!

Thanks! She's getting there. Slow, but sure.

 

[Eagle 71]

Nice job Hawk. Your ride is looking very “TeufelHund”!

Question – was it a pain to swipe out/replace the steering wheel airbag? I had some issues with a non-Ford airbag, finally got it right.

 

[The6ofus]

The Jeeper in me is really diggin’ the bumper and winch! [emoji1303][emoji631]

 

[HawkX66]

Nice job Hawk. Your ride is looking very “TeufelHund”!

Question – was it a pain to swipe out/replace the steering wheel airbag? I had some issues with a non-Ford airbag, finally got it right.

Thanks. The driver airbag couldn't have been an easier swap. I bought a new OEM one. I was surprised how relatively inexpensive they were. Had I known the passenger ones were similar in price, I would have bought a factory one there also instead of buying an eBay "new" one that was new, but didn't include the trim cover. I saved quite a bit, but now I need to do something about the split cover.

 

[HawkX66]

Ahhh... Much better bumper alignment. That was bugging me. Now I can trim the inner fender. I need to figure out what I'm going to do for 5" driving lights. Any reasonably priced suggestions? Hopefully I can wire them into my factory light switch through the factory plug in the harness where the original ones were plugged in.
Eventually I'm going to install a factory grill when I can find one without getting a second mortgage. I like the 15-17 factory ones better.

 

[HawkX66]

A/C is all charged up with 7 oz PAG oil and 40 oz of R134. Cost a whopping $20 instead of $150 at the shop. Even if I didn't have the tools, you can get them as a free loaner at the Zone. It's not a hard job to pull a vacuum, inject the PAG oil/leak detection dye and then charge it with the R134. The Depot is the cheapest place to get 12 oz cans of R134. It was a little over $4 per can.
I also added some new bumper lights. I'm toying around with the idea of customizing the bumper a little so I can run the factory fog lights in place of the 5" round lights in the bumper. For now, I like the looks of these off road lights. I can mount them on the pre-runner bar if I do decide to cut out the round holes. I added a couple examples of what I'm thinking at the bottom.

 

[HawkX66]

A couple of these pics are from Stage 3. I think something like this, but using my factory fog lights would look pretty cool, but I sure wouldn't be paying the butt rape prices they get for them though.
I'm thinking more of the third and fourth pic, but adapting the buckets for the factory fog lights.