- First Name
- David
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2021
- Threads
- 35
- Messages
- 720
- Reaction score
- 874
- Location
- Portland, OR
- Vehicle(s)
- 2004 BMW e46
- Your Bronco Model
- Badlands
- Thread starter
- #1
So after nearly 5 months, I finally got to take my Bronco BL somewhere other than paved roads (although there were are lot of miles covered on paved roads on this trip). Drove from Portland, OR to Ennis, MT to see family and do some fly fishing.
Doubled the miles on my Bronco from 2k to 4k. Zero issues on the trip. Overall very pleased with how it did, and now on the search for some upgrades/enhancements.
1. Gas mileage - Averaged just under 20mpg for the entire trip and most highway miles were in the 70-80mph range. I was able to get 23mpg but only if driving at 60mph and I just can't do that for long periods of time.
19.7 mpg over 2k miles
I could get 23 mpg but not worth it for how you have to drive
2. Performance up high-altitude grades - So in Portland, it is pretty rare that I need to downshift from 6th gear (manual transmission) to maintain speed. But going over the Continental Divide and on the pass between Norris and Ennis, I had to downshift to 4th gear to maintain speed going uphill. Not a "big deal" but I was in cruise control and the Bronco just didn't have enough oomph to maintain speed (I only use 87 octane)
3. Windshield is a bug magnet - holy cow, I was doing evening driving and killed a million bugs and ran out of windshield washer fluid on the way there. And that leads to my next topic
4. Adams ceramic coating on the windshield did not impress me at all - I put the Adams product on all the painted surfaces and the front windshield. I thought it was supposed to be some miracle coating based on all the posts about "ceramic coatinng". Windshield was still a mess and it took elbow grease at the gas station to clean the windshield completely. The painted surfaces were much better (and also not 90* to the bugs). The car definitely got dirty on the drive out and up in the mountains, but on the way home we ran into a huge thunderstorm with torrential rain. The next morning when looking at the car it was almost clean except for the front part of the hood and the rear of the Bronco. The sides were amazingly clean. So I guess the ceramic/graphene coating works as long as the bugs aren't doing direct kamikaze runs into the coated surface
5. Exterior lighting - So other than running boards, my BL is basically stock with the High package. The trail lights do a great job IMO of lighting up the surrounding area to make sure that you aren't leaving anything behind when leaving a fishing hole in the dark. Because of the wind noise issue, and the fact that I won't be doing any hardcore rock crawling, I have chosen not to put big lights on my Bronco to avoid adding more wind noise (I also took off the factory roof rack). If there are "aerodynamic" lights that I can add that won't add wind noise, I will consider them, but for what we did on this trip, it isn't something that is lacking with the High package.
6. MGV seats - I loved the look and feel of these since the first time I saw them at a Ford Bronco day in 2021. They were great on this trip. Comfortable and supportive and super easy to clean after hopping back into the driver's seat after wet wading. Also love the wash out flooring and rubber mats. Super easy to clean out the big clods of mud we tracked into the Bronco
7. No good place to mount iPhone - My wife got me an iPhone mount that attaches to the 1/4-20 mount point in the top center of the dashboard. It is a great location but my phone overheats in any sunlight and shuts down. My options were to use a baseball hat behind it with the brim over the top of the iphone to keep the sun from beating down on it or to use a vent mount where the AC air would keep the phone from overheating. Not sure if others have a similar problem finding a good place to mount the phone that doesn't result in overheating.
8. Storage - So fly fishing was a big part of this trip and with the roof rack gone (because I wanted to be able to go topless) there was no great place to store the rods when set up. With the roof rack we could have just bungeed the rods to the rack or stored them in my 5' long ballistic nylon rod/reel case where you separate joints 2 and 3 and double the rod over but keeping the line threaded and fly still on, so setup takes 10 seconds at a new spot. We still used the 5' cases but hung them over the back seats. Need to find a better solution. Either a rear roof rack (that does not require drilling into my MIC top) where we can store the rods externally, or some way to suspend the rods from the roof on the inside. I am on the hunt for this now. If I find something for inside storage, I would also use this to store my rifle during hunting season as well.
9. Miles to empty - So I decided to test the computer's calculation of remaining range and I think I got pretty close to the edge. I was 100+ miles outside of Butte and there was a 10 mile differential between remaining range and distance to destination. The gap "narrowed" over those 100 miles and when I arrived in Butte, the Bronco said I had 5 miles of range to empty. I filled the tank with 21.46 gallons (for a spec'ed 20.8 gal tank). I know there is always more capacity than stated, but hard to know how much was left in the tank when I filled up. This is just the first of many times I will "test" this. I did this many times in my BMW and never ran out of gas, even when I got to zero. So for right now I will continue to trust this gauge.
10. Offroading - I didn't do anything even CLOSE to what I did at the off-rodeo, so it was no surprise that the Bronco did great at everything we did on this trip. Lots of bumpy, narrow trails all over the mountain ranges around Ennis (Gravellys, Madison Range etc). Most of the time I just went into 4H with the stabar disconnected and just moved along nicely. I did forget to put the Bronco back into 4A mode once I got back to a paved road, and didn't realize it until I had to make a right hand turn at a stop sign, DOH!
So I typed this on a PC, and now am going to go back and add photos from my iPhone, along with some Bronco porn from some of the places where we fished at.
They don’t call Montana “Big Sky Country” for no reason
Overall, just super-happy with this vehicle. Yeah the tach sucks, the plastic-y surfaces suck, Ford overloaded the left turn signal stalk with too much stuff, and I still hate where the window buttons are located on the manual, but those are pale in comparison to the joy this rig brings on trips like this.
Oh and the bottle opener on the roll bar was nice to find as well.
Doubled the miles on my Bronco from 2k to 4k. Zero issues on the trip. Overall very pleased with how it did, and now on the search for some upgrades/enhancements.
1. Gas mileage - Averaged just under 20mpg for the entire trip and most highway miles were in the 70-80mph range. I was able to get 23mpg but only if driving at 60mph and I just can't do that for long periods of time.
19.7 mpg over 2k miles
I could get 23 mpg but not worth it for how you have to drive
2. Performance up high-altitude grades - So in Portland, it is pretty rare that I need to downshift from 6th gear (manual transmission) to maintain speed. But going over the Continental Divide and on the pass between Norris and Ennis, I had to downshift to 4th gear to maintain speed going uphill. Not a "big deal" but I was in cruise control and the Bronco just didn't have enough oomph to maintain speed (I only use 87 octane)
3. Windshield is a bug magnet - holy cow, I was doing evening driving and killed a million bugs and ran out of windshield washer fluid on the way there. And that leads to my next topic
4. Adams ceramic coating on the windshield did not impress me at all - I put the Adams product on all the painted surfaces and the front windshield. I thought it was supposed to be some miracle coating based on all the posts about "ceramic coatinng". Windshield was still a mess and it took elbow grease at the gas station to clean the windshield completely. The painted surfaces were much better (and also not 90* to the bugs). The car definitely got dirty on the drive out and up in the mountains, but on the way home we ran into a huge thunderstorm with torrential rain. The next morning when looking at the car it was almost clean except for the front part of the hood and the rear of the Bronco. The sides were amazingly clean. So I guess the ceramic/graphene coating works as long as the bugs aren't doing direct kamikaze runs into the coated surface
5. Exterior lighting - So other than running boards, my BL is basically stock with the High package. The trail lights do a great job IMO of lighting up the surrounding area to make sure that you aren't leaving anything behind when leaving a fishing hole in the dark. Because of the wind noise issue, and the fact that I won't be doing any hardcore rock crawling, I have chosen not to put big lights on my Bronco to avoid adding more wind noise (I also took off the factory roof rack). If there are "aerodynamic" lights that I can add that won't add wind noise, I will consider them, but for what we did on this trip, it isn't something that is lacking with the High package.
6. MGV seats - I loved the look and feel of these since the first time I saw them at a Ford Bronco day in 2021. They were great on this trip. Comfortable and supportive and super easy to clean after hopping back into the driver's seat after wet wading. Also love the wash out flooring and rubber mats. Super easy to clean out the big clods of mud we tracked into the Bronco
7. No good place to mount iPhone - My wife got me an iPhone mount that attaches to the 1/4-20 mount point in the top center of the dashboard. It is a great location but my phone overheats in any sunlight and shuts down. My options were to use a baseball hat behind it with the brim over the top of the iphone to keep the sun from beating down on it or to use a vent mount where the AC air would keep the phone from overheating. Not sure if others have a similar problem finding a good place to mount the phone that doesn't result in overheating.
8. Storage - So fly fishing was a big part of this trip and with the roof rack gone (because I wanted to be able to go topless) there was no great place to store the rods when set up. With the roof rack we could have just bungeed the rods to the rack or stored them in my 5' long ballistic nylon rod/reel case where you separate joints 2 and 3 and double the rod over but keeping the line threaded and fly still on, so setup takes 10 seconds at a new spot. We still used the 5' cases but hung them over the back seats. Need to find a better solution. Either a rear roof rack (that does not require drilling into my MIC top) where we can store the rods externally, or some way to suspend the rods from the roof on the inside. I am on the hunt for this now. If I find something for inside storage, I would also use this to store my rifle during hunting season as well.
9. Miles to empty - So I decided to test the computer's calculation of remaining range and I think I got pretty close to the edge. I was 100+ miles outside of Butte and there was a 10 mile differential between remaining range and distance to destination. The gap "narrowed" over those 100 miles and when I arrived in Butte, the Bronco said I had 5 miles of range to empty. I filled the tank with 21.46 gallons (for a spec'ed 20.8 gal tank). I know there is always more capacity than stated, but hard to know how much was left in the tank when I filled up. This is just the first of many times I will "test" this. I did this many times in my BMW and never ran out of gas, even when I got to zero. So for right now I will continue to trust this gauge.
10. Offroading - I didn't do anything even CLOSE to what I did at the off-rodeo, so it was no surprise that the Bronco did great at everything we did on this trip. Lots of bumpy, narrow trails all over the mountain ranges around Ennis (Gravellys, Madison Range etc). Most of the time I just went into 4H with the stabar disconnected and just moved along nicely. I did forget to put the Bronco back into 4A mode once I got back to a paved road, and didn't realize it until I had to make a right hand turn at a stop sign, DOH!
So I typed this on a PC, and now am going to go back and add photos from my iPhone, along with some Bronco porn from some of the places where we fished at.
They don’t call Montana “Big Sky Country” for no reason
Overall, just super-happy with this vehicle. Yeah the tach sucks, the plastic-y surfaces suck, Ford overloaded the left turn signal stalk with too much stuff, and I still hate where the window buttons are located on the manual, but those are pale in comparison to the joy this rig brings on trips like this.
Oh and the bottle opener on the roll bar was nice to find as well.
Sponsored
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Here you go. We only keep the brookies because they are non-native where we fish up in the mountains. In the rivers and lakes we do catch and release 100%.
