(Re-)Introducing my '85 Ranger

[kishy]

Hi. This truck may seem vaguely familiar as I'd provided some history on it at another Ranger site in the past, and I've occasionally popped in with tech questions here. I figured I'd make a thread for it here and provide updates as I wrench on it. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with this truck at this point: hate when I'm underneath it, but irrationally love when I'm driving it, and that love makes me willing to spend more time getting rust in my hair again so the cycle continues.

Some history:
In 2015, I was becoming concerned with the effects of road salt on my daily driver car (too little, too late as it happens) and set out to buy something RWD and cheap to be a dedicated winter beater. I was quite well-versed in EEC-IV era Ford junk, so my search was basically confined to 80s-90s Ford products. This Ranger was listed with an asking price of maybe $1000, and I believe I got it for $650. I had evaluated at the time that something rough and already "one foot in the ground" was the right option for a winter beater; no sense ruining something clean and nice. You are going to look at the 2015 photos and want to say that I'm crazy, but you didn't look underneath it and I did, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

• Sold new by Ken Knapp Ford in Essex, Ontario.
• Truck was a daily driver for years, but it did not see many kilometres in the second half of its life before I got it. When I bought it, the windshield sticker for its next oil change was due in 2008, but the odometer still had a few thousand km to go.
• In 2014, the original owner (quite senior and no longer driving) sold the truck to the second owner. The second owner wanted to use it to learn to drive with a manual transmission. During their test drive, the heater core failed and the original owner had it repaired at a shop. The receipt for the heater core job shows the odometer reading as 123,757km.
• The second owner's plans changed, no longer needed or wanted to learn how to drive stick, so onto Kijiji it went. In May of 2015 I bought the truck with 123,768km.

This was built as a very low-trim, base model truck. 2.0, TK5, RWD. 3.45 open 7.5. Manual steering, no A/C, no radio, no interval wipers, no gauge package, no vent windows, no cigarette lighter socket, one-piece vinyl bench seat, fixed rear window glass (later retrofitted with aftermarket), tiny useless mirrors, rubber floor...totally base model. It does have the rear step bumper.

May of 2015, freshly arrived in my driveway:




In the time since those photos were taken, a lot has changed. Some that you can see, and plenty that you cannot. Summarized in not exactly the right order,

• New fuel tank on second day of ownership
• Door buzzer swapped for a passenger car chime
• Floor repairs via reproduction panels and self-tappers (this vehicle was never anticipated to last long enough for me to ever regret doing this, but here we are)
• Various investments of effort and time into the 2.0L engine such as timing belt, carb rebuild, ignition parts, the usual
• New radiator, drum brake rebuilds, front rotor and calipers, diff oil, shocks (twice; once yellow Monroes, then I learned my lesson and put KYBs on it)
• New brake lines all-around in 2015; majority green coated steel lines (again, figured this didn't have long left, so why pay for NiCopp)
• Various obnoxious stickers applied, some since removed, some since added
• Upgraded to the big mirrors
• Tie rods. Added Air Lift bags. Recently, a rear sway bar. Soon, a front bar too.
• Tires. Some respectable 15" decent winter tires (passenger car) for when appropriate, and also some hilarious tiny 14" pizza cutters for when this does some rare summer mileage.
• Vent window retrofit
• Swapped in a factory opening rear window in place of the aftermarket one (rattly and drafty)
• Clutch including flywheel and hydraulics
• 3 or 4 different toppers/caps now, finally settled on one that speaks to me the right way.
• Bought a whole additional half-Ranger, turned into a trailer.
• Radius arm bushings and I-beam bushings. Replaced entire radius arm brackets.
• Class 3 hitch and trailer light relay module. LED rear lighting.
• Swapped out that boat anchor 2.0 for a 95+ 2.3 industrial engine. Running it with 93 EEC-IV engine controls. Honestly, it feels pretty ballsy.
• Rebuilt the TK5 with new bearings, left the synchros alone. Main thing I was after was changing out the extension housing bushing but the input shaft bearing was on the verge of being trashed as well.
• TK4 metal shift tower retrofit (150,000% recommended if you have a TK5. No more gear soup!)
• Replaced brake booster and master. Master is a newer year part which allowed me to delete the combination valve. Replaced a bunch of lines with NiCopp at this time.
• External slave cylinder retrofit (83-84 parts)
• Rust-free full stock catback exhaust off a newer 4.0 truck
• Have had to tear into the drum brakes so often it could be considered a routine maintenance item at this point. Failed wheel cylinders, grooved backing plates, seized parking brake, all sorts of stupidity. The 9" drums on these suck big time. In the course of some of this recently, replaced even more lines with NiCopp. I think all the steel is gone now.
• Probably did the rear axle bearings at time point. Hasn't chewed up a shaft yet so I figure I must have.
• PMGR (permanent magnet, gear reduction) starter upgrade. I like to mention this explicitly because the FRF guys made fun of me for it. Whatever; I like to be able to still start my vehicle when my battery's at 11V from pure neglect.
• Remote starter, tied into the mysteriously unused neutral safety switch that the trans conveniently had installed on it, but which the truck has no provision to plug in.

As you might gather from this, I have no issues getting a little dirty and wasting incredible amounts of effort on projects that aren't remotely worth it. Something about sitting on that freezing cold vinyl bench and banging through the gears terrorizing the neighbourhood in the snow...it is truly spectacular.

I attended the Dearborn MI meet on 2018-10-21 with this truck; there is a pic or two here:

Dearborn Michigan Meet 10/21/2018 - The Ranger Station

On Sunday 10/21/2018, Forum Moderator Caleb Johnson (fastpakr) and myself found ourselves flying to Detroit Michigan for a Ford event being held the following Monday. Since we were flying in the day before, we arrived early enough that we could … Continued

www.therangerstation.com

I have that sticker somewhere, it never made it onto the truck, but now that I'm happy with the cap it has, I'll put it on.

Miscellaneous truck stuff:













Outstanding projects include:

• Retrofit front sway bar. I have the bar and all hardware, but ideally should get new bushings. They're unobtainium as others have previously determined. This will be the weird inboard rear-mount front sway bar, not the one that hangs in front of the axle beams.
• Rebuild the entire newer year rear end (3.73 traclok; but might keep the 3.43 gears for it) that's hanging out in the snow waiting for some love and swap that in.
• Swap on junkyard driver fender that I recently harvested.
• Replace the parking brake cables, again, but wait until I see what parts I need to use the bigger better drums on the new axle as above.

This is in full-blown daily driver mode at the moment, as long as there's salt on the roads.

 

[kishy]

Got this on a hoist the other day, giving it a quick once-over before putting some highway mileage on it.

(don't judge my ugly brake line routing)

Fixed an exhaust leak. Band clamps work great when your pipes are true to their nominal dimensions, but don't work so great when they aren't.

If it looks stupid but it works...

Anyway, I split the driving with my friend and we drove the truck 715 miles / 1151 kilometres to Marsailles, IL and back again trading some parts for my friend's PHEV (Chevy Volt). Averaged 21MPG and 70MPH, not what I'd consider great but not bad enough to even consider spending any time trying to improve.

I have other vehicles I prefer for a highway drive like that, but this worked, and it wasn't half as uncomfortable as I was expecting.

 

[kishy]

A couple recent updates:

The Ranger's brakes have been increasingly less good over the last few months. It developed a pull to the right when braking heavily, and felt more or less like the front left was not contributing at all. I've been intentionally rough on the brakes trying to free up what I figured might be a sticky caliper slide without success. It remained safe to drive as long as the driver is prepared to firmly hold the wheel while braking, otherwise you're going to end up off in the right side ditch.

I didn't really want to actually troubleshoot this, but it got to the point where I had to do something. The problem seems to have been seized slides (absolutely idiotic design on these) and also a possibly seized caliper piston on the left side. The left side rotor looked like it hadn't had pad contact in a year.

I bought a pair of reman calipers with new slides and took my rotors to my friend's machine shop where he resurfaced them on the lathe. These rotors were new in 2015 and look thin due to casting defects (never buy new rotors if you still have OEM and they're within specs - machining them is 100% worth it) but actually measured to exactly the correct spec for still being new rotors.



Blew the old grease out of the bearings and repacked them, reused all 4 bearings (took care to keep them with their wear-matched races) and the seals since they all seemed reasonable. I "resurfaced" the pads by rubbing them on my concrete driveway until they had a fresh looking surface, then slapped it all together. Bleeding was super painless as I had tied up the flex hoses before leaving to the machine shop (calipers absent from truck due to already being turned in at the store as cores) and the fluid mostly stayed in the system.





I would not say that the brakes feel good, but the fronts are definitely both working evenly and there is no pull. It doesn't stop as well as my station wagon, but it also has a lot less brake surface and smaller diameter everything.

Moving on from brakes, several of my vehicles have given me issues relating to windshield wiper performance that new blades of various designs haven't cured. Noise, leaving water behind, appearing to skip sections of the windshield, flapping in the wind. My friend suggested this was probably due to poor spring tension on the wiper arm.

For my cars, the (multi-piece pantograph!) wiper arms are reproduced by Dorman and available everywhere-ish, but early Rangers are not as easy. You can't just walk into a parts store and buy wiper arms for early Rangers, and the later Rangers for which you can buy wiper arms use a different size splined stud on the wiper pivots. I did eventually realize that LMC Truck carries a wiper arm for the early Ranger, and it isn't even expensive at 18 USD each. I ordered a pair of them (PN 50-8010 each) as well as a couple of dome light lenses for my cars (PN 47-4291 each).



The new arms are a direct fit as they should be, with a subtle difference in the angle of the wiper blade vs the angle of the arm, but very functional. They do apply more tension as measured using a cheap kitchen scale with the wipers parked:

Driver old 670g / new 740g
Passenger old 597g / new 805g



Just need to wait for some rain to properly test them out.

I'm also toning down the decal mess (the truck has sort of earned it by surviving this long), and have removed the front auxiliary lighting in favour of putting something better and cleaner on instead.

 

[RobbieD]

Nice to see an old Ranger still earning its keep. You've done a lot on it. Long may you run!

 

[tomw]

Wow, and I thought keeping my 85 on the road involved a buncha stuff. The brakes seem to develop 'caliperitis' if you don't drive every day or at least a few days each week. I have drippage under the rubber mats & jute padding. Comes from the plenum at the base of the windshield. Have had 'stuff' accumulate in the plenum, perhaps contributing to the leak develop, but it has leaked since new in December 1984, even after the dealer 'fixed' it.
Still have the 2.3 EFI system, but added a roller cam and followers from an 89? model. Makes the cam easier to rotate by hand so must use less power. I added aftermarket air 20 years ago, an aftermarket bumper and sliding rear window. Power steering from a mid-90's and a Sony CD player AM/FM.
It runs well, but a 500 mile trip ~806 km, is kind of uncomfortable by the time you get there. I get 25mpg around town without trying hard, and higher on the highway.
Likely will keep it until they need it to haul me off in a box.

Good luck and keep the shiny side up.
tom

 

[kishy]

I moved in September. Only 5 minutes away from my old place, but when you've got a garage like mine and no overlap between the purchase of the new place and sale of the old one, it's not an easy task.

My new driveway is pretty sweet, if I do say so myself.

The Ranger put in a fair bit of work prior to the move date getting things like spare axles and tailgates and totes of car parts into storage. The vent windows were a huge upgrade for using this thing in warm weather. Being a tin can with windows and a vinyl bench seat, it gets really hot, and the vent windows are really effective at replacing all of the air inside the cab pretty quickly once you're moving.

Also, the clutch feel and driveability is substantially improved since I swapped it to the 83-84 external slave arrangement. No matter how much I bled it, I was never able to get the internal/concentric slave to behave the way I felt it really should, specifically, it always seemed like the clutch grabbed too high on the pedal and the pedal also felt entirely too light. The truck has been genuinely much better to drive since I did that swap.

I recently replaced the parking brake cables (again), to better enjoy the benefits of the remote starter this winter. This time I used Dorman cables which are poly-coated and look pretty good, honestly, despite Dorman usually making pretty unimpressive parts. While under the truck though, I was reminded of how far gone (to rust) the cab is, and I don't think the truck has very long left. I'd like to get it to its 10 year anniversary with me, which would be 2025, but I guess we'll see how it fares through 2024 first.

There's also an irritating misfire which comes on at specific low speed driving conditions, and my current theory is that the 1993 PCM is operating the EGR valve at inappropriate times (or in inappropriate amounts) because I never hooked up a VSS after the engine swap. Apparently other late EEC-IV vehicles have been seen doing similar when there's no VSS input to the PCM, so it's a reasonable guess. I'm unlikely to do anything to address it though. I'd only bother putting a VSS in it if I also put cruise on it, which was in the plans but seems like a long shot that I'll get it done.

Some piles of parts that I'd like to turn into completed projects while I still have this thing are:

• The pieces to assemble a good condition passenger side mirror so I can ditch the awful Dorman one
• The hardware to install a front sway bar (the hangup is some bushings, but I might just go ahead with the crushed junkyard ones to get it done)
• A complete tilt- and cruise-equipped steering column (but not the cruise servo or all required wiring)
• A more-or-less rust-free fender and the filler panel below the grille (but at this point, that seems more wasteful than anything else)
• A limited slip 7.5 which requires a rebuild

But obviously if the clock is ticking on how long this vehicle has left, I doubt I'm getting around to all of it, or that most of it is worth the effort.

My short list of options to replace this as my winter vehicle, when the inevitable comes and it isn't reasonable to keep it on the road anymore, are as follows (listed in order of preference, least to most):

• A friend has offered to sell me a 4x4 turbodiesel RHD Nissan van, which is pretty sweet, but I'm not sure I want to deal with that sort of parts availability nightmare.
• Another friend has offered to sell me a 4.0/A4LD extended Aerostar, which is also pretty sweet, but I believe it's rustier than he's telling me and it's currently American so there would be some mild hurdles involved with bringing it over.
• I could bring up a southern Ranger - say, maybe a 2.9 truck with a trashed engine from inland NC, maybe TN, seems like they're cheap and plentiful - and then my Ranger parts hoard wouldn't go to waste necessarily. If I were replacing the Ranger with another Ranger, I'd probably want to go extended cab, which is conflicting because the regular cab long box looks better, and I'd prefer the long box for utility, but the lack of interior space and passenger capacity sucks.
• I could try to find a clean southern Ranger to swap bodywork onto mine, perhaps an ideal case for a truck with a title issue. Obviously need to tiptoe around the VIN issue carefully because the real cure for my truck is a completely new cab, and the rest is actually structurally alright.
• I'm considering putting my 84 Town Car (the brown one pictured above) back on winter duty, which was what I originally purchased it for, to replace the Ranger in 2017. But I like the Ranger - I like driving something I have this much effort invested in.