Ranger Rebuild

[carpenle]

Looks great with the 31's!

[The StRanger]

Very Nice..

[Fordguy77]

So right now she has around 110 miles on the rebuild, and everything seems to be coming together. The 1354M swap worked out pretty well, just need to figure out what to do with the space from the old electronic shifter. I am thinking it would be a great spot to put my AFR gauge. Another issue i need to address is where the O2 sensor is mounted. The new headers moved it about 1" up into the passenger side header, rather than being in the collector. Its causing an excessive Rich condition and throws an occasional CEL because of it. Its so rich it burned 15 gallons to go 110 miles!

[Fordguy77]

So its been a long while since I have updated this thread. So I thought I would give it some love.

I finished my manual Tcase Swap, it looks great, big thanks to Mike for finding the elusive boot/bezel for the 5Spd Manual Tcase. Most importantly I can actually use 4wd for the first time since I bought the Ranger in 09.

While I was converting things over from automatic to manual I did go ahead and snag some manual hubs as well. I ended up going with the ones for a Jeep Dana 35, as they are of more solid construction than the ones marketed specifically for rangers/explorers and nearly the same price. They install right on with no issues, Ill never understand why warn doesn't market these ones for the ranger as well. I did modify them to stay retained to the disc, when taking the wheel off. By design they are just slip ons, and it is rather annoying. I got the idea from my E30 actually, as the disc is retained to the spindle the same way.

Due to the large change internally, with compression, cam, head flow, intake porting etc, my computer hasn't been able to properly cope with it all, so I will be needing to custom tune it. I figured since I need a wideband afr anyway for tuning, and I had no use for the electronic 4x4 switch I might as well kill 2 birds with one stone. Made pretty quick work of the bracket at work, just used a hole punch, and sheered the piece to size. I did have to do a little trimming on the actual dash, but you'd never know unless you took my panel off.

I was having a bit of a cooling issue when the truck was sitting around at idle. I believe this to be a combination from running far to rich/lean as the current exhaust set up has the only 02 Sensor in the wrong spot, so it is only reading exhaust from one side instead of 2, so its constantly bouncing from too rich to too lean all the time at the moment, with that and being open at the header. As well as I never finished putting the fan shroud back on.

So today I went ahead and removed some more of my dysfunctional AC system to make room for a Pusher fan, as well as modified the fan shroud into a 3/4 shroud for easy install/removal(lets be honest, i was to lazy to remove the clutch fan to install the shroud, then put it back on with no room haha). I wired the new aux fan to run thermostatically, with a manual overdrive. The only thing I did that is slightly out of the norm, is I wired it to a 12V constant. The upside to this is if my rig is over heating, I can turn off the truck but the fan will keep running to help it cool off. The downside is there is a very small potential I could kill the battery, but only if my thermostatic switch went out, and defaulted in the "on" position. So I am willing to take that risk for the pros.

Aside from that shes running well, and should be my Daily Driver again, after being down for nearly 6 years. And some of you thought I could never finish anything hahaha.

[The StRanger]

Glad to see it back.

[Fordguy77]

Slowly knocking some more items off of the punch list.
Took the time today to clean both the headlights, as well as the turn-signals. Also, swapped the chrome grill out for a black one, and installed an HID conversion as well. Hopefully helps with driving at night.