jpd80

You can get nasty cracking on galvanised parts subject to constant flexing. What a lot of people don’t know is that if the acid gets left in behind fillet welds it can start cracking from inside out. we had a major issue with that when a lot of our larger road signage went away from blast and paint to hot dip gal, lots of potential unexpected failures. The only way to avoid is seal everything up ( not possible or desirable with hot dip gal) or make every weld full penetration with nowhere for the acid to hang, both are very costly options but not impossible.

Life is always a compromise, you may never get the perfect vehicle unless you’re prepared to build it yourself, which is what some end up doing

There may indeed be a special model that does that, I don't think it's healthy to dwell on it as though it's a deal breaker to anyone but the most extreme enthusiasts. You guys have made it very clear that your support of Bronco is conditional on certain non-negotiable items, That's fine but, don't pretend that your prerequisites align with the broader buying public and their preferences. You guys crack me up reading your all or nothing posts, raw emotion heart on a sleeve stuff but you're gonna be burned out well before the official reveal. You come here to try needling us but the point is that you guys have nowhere else to go once your disdain for IFS is revealed, no matter how much you try to dismiss it, IFS is what the new Bronco has, get over it or just walk away.

As I qualified above, that was a rumor, lots of things get scoped as potential models and customers but without actually knowing to what degree, it would be completely wrong to add to people's fantasies.

New Bronco has IFS, no one here has ever shied away from that, a quick look at the underside will show that It would be a massive tear up and redo to fit an IFS and a full re-engineer of frontal crash protection zone. People know ahead of time that Bronco will have similar front suspension as the Ranger so they can easily work out if the IFS is enough for them or whether they need Jeep's IFS. I get the disappointment of folks wanting a Bronco with factory SFA but if Ford was really going to do that, it would have showcased any SFA on the Bronco R. Rumour was, There was a rock crawler oriented model in the works, I'm not sure if Ford will be proceeding with it or not so in the absence of any internal confirmation, its best to just say no for now and not build up expectations.

The plant was a big issue because they had no space to do pilot builds, they jumped straight to production volume before the plant was fully sorted, Trans cooler problem should have been identified in validation or pre production builds. Lots of Bronco development was done in Australian outback as well as North America away from prying eyes. The platform is a heavy evolution of the existing platform with lots of upgrades, so very much a known quantity, the CD6 Explorer was complete my new platform vehicle, so needs a lot more care that everything is going right.

It looks like the whole validation and production start up process was rushed, every problem you see and read about was avoidable.

They were being deliberately kept out of site after Ranger leak years in front of release. Tooling prove-out was done last March with first prototypes last April. A lot of the testing was being done with attribute prototypes, chopped up Rangers Final certification work would now be underway up until job 1 in December.

The hard core owners that do more extreme off-roading will probably stay with Wrangler but the rest will probably prefer Bronco's broader skill set, people can and do like different things.

Troller T4 is not related to T6, its just a parts bin share from T6 Ranger (theengine, gearbox, door mechanisms and HVAC componentry.) the chassis and caxles are all troller design Your assumptions regarding Bronco on T6 are pants on backwards, there's only a only a small demographic that wants a showroom Bronco to be an extreme off road vehicle. To the extent, that SFA and decoupling anti-roll bars are are just not on this product envelope. It will have a much better balance of on road performance and that a crappy old SFA will never ever match. Jeeps ruggedness is its own short coming, some would say, a liability when compared to Bronco, the Gladiator Mojave is an example of just how shit scared Jeep is of Bronco, they're manoeuvring now as best they can but it won't be enough...I'm predicting lots of Wrangler defectors will go to Bronco along with other new buyers, its just a different mix of skills that better suits the bulk of new buyers who want an all road capable vehicle.

Of course it is, Ford's crippling Bronco on purpose, they should just copy Wrangler.... (Sarcasm)

And yet there's a Ranger Raptor that's has a super capable chassis so similar to Bronco.....

Don't they dip the chassis in something called "e-coating" at the factory?

What if there’s a NG Ranger Raptor?

As far as I can tell, a Bronco pick up was not intended part of the original product development scope or final lock in products. So if there is a Bronco Pick up, then it will be at least a further two years behind the December job 1 kick off.