Drove it. We've had so much rain over the last two days, that I wasn't sure the roads would be passable in my car. Might not be in the truck either, but I've got a better chance of recovering with it. Roads were passible, but it's still raining.
We got a couple hour break from the rain about the time I got off work. That was nice. On Saturday a new pick-n-pull yard open up the road from work. Since rain was stopped I took the opportunity to browse and atempt to find a needed part for my upcoming swap project. The website showed a few Rangers and Explorers of the right vintage. They did not disappoint. Including their were 6-8 of the 99-03 vintage. A few of the 93-97 Rangers and B series. Even a 89-92 Ranger with another sitting in the prep yard that really looked too nice to be there, hopefully that means good parts for an even nicer one to stay on the road.
The main thing I was after was the C184 connector in the engine bay to modify a start/charge harness. Explorer has a same style connector for that location, unfortunately the genders are reversed and the harness is shorter. Female connector on Explorer start/charge harness, and Female connector on Ranger body harness, and about 8" between where they are located in the engine bay. (Ok maybe 6, but we all exaggerate a little right?) Same sex relationships may be accepted and common now, but that doesn't mean that the same flies in electrical. Either the Explorer harness needs to transition and add a few wires, or I need to make a
therapist adapter harness to help the two work together. I'm going for the latter, but more on that will come in a potential build thread or seek out lil_Blue_Ford's build thread and youtube videos. @lil
Fortunately all potential donor candidates for the connector had unmolested harness in the engine bay. Unfortunately the way that they had them sitting I needed a stool to reach the connector and there weren't any available. After striking out on a connector I could reach I finally found one thatr had been in a front end colission, the fender was peeled back and the connector I was after had dropped down into the wheel wheel. Got the compressor and pressure switch ends too just in case.
After that I started browsing the yard and seeing what I might want to come back for. I'd really only brought pliers and dikes to get the connectors, and a screw driver hoping to find an edge grill honeycomb, so couldn't do much. I found a V8 Explorer or Mountaineer that I did not see in the vehicle listing. I wasn't looking for a V8 but good to know the parts are there if I need something during the swap. I'm going to clean up my spare GT-40 intake to install with the swap. A very important piece got misplaced somewhere over the years. This one happened to have that piece, I happened to have the right tool, and the hardware was kind enough to turn loose without fuss.
I'll be heading back in the near future to get some more pieces I think. One of the Explorers/Mountys had a nice set of cloth bucket seats with power adjust and lumbar that were the right color for my truck's interior. One of the Rangers had a nice set of black "leather" jump seats. Since my eventual goal is to color change my interior to black I'm going to grab them before they get ruined. Unfortunately the front seats in that one weren't so nice. Looked like it had been pieced together from a few trucks and got a cheap respray.
Hopefully tomorrow the rain will be gone, I can get my air compressor wired, and start back prepping parts for the swap.
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, maybe the vent cap from a rear diff vent? My question mark hose was bad or missing so I took a few feet of clear nylon hose and ran it down to the pivot bracket and ran it by the headlight...
