How difficult was your swap?
How "Difficult" is always a personal thing.
For me, I found the swap pretty darn easy, only hitting one real snag that I'd missed in my research and preparation.
Even with the snag, in 4 days, I went from a 3.0 V6 Ranger to a V8 with the 8.8 LSD diff and only waiting on a driveshaft.
The snag I hit was either based on me using the OEM Explorer front/rear cats or on using the Ford Racing Parts rear sump oil pan.
With the FRP pan, the left down pipe had significant clearance issues and to a lesser extent, so did the rack and pinion unit. I had to brutalize the pan to get the exhaust in and lift the engine/trans quite a bit to get the pan (mostly) off the rack and pinion.
I've since replace the FPR pan with a slightly modified Explorer 5.0 steel pan that eliminated the exhaust issues and greatly eased the rack and pinion issues.
If I'd been willing to leave the tail of the transmission at an awkward angle to the diff, I'd not have had an issue with the rack and pinion unit. Shimming the spring perches to correct the pinion angle would be another option.
Probably the trickiest bit of the whole swap was sorting out the a/c wiring. The Ranger and Explorer use opposite logic for the clutch control so getting the wide open throttle, high pressure and low pressure controls all to work correctly took a bit of sussing out. Ignoring the WOT control from the PCM would have greatly eased the a/c issues.
Other than dropping the front suspension for the engine mount changes, my "lessons learned" post details most of my effort.
My build was all in all quite low cost and is very "civilized". A high end performance oriented build would add cost and additional "fun" but for a daily driver, I'm exceedingly pleased.
Probably the only downside is the 15 mpg I get as a daily driver. I'd hoped to match the 17 mpg I got with the 3.0. But... highway economy is actually significantly improved over the V6.
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