so whats the over-under at this point in the creation of this rig.?.?.?
do you wish you had a xj or some sort of wrangler?... or are you ok with the overall performance of this platform?
back when lil bob was car seat bound i put it on a crate strapped down with a 10 k strap and the back of his seat fit thru the slider with it open.
but he loved to kick the hell out of me all the time to get my attention as his feet were right between the seats.
i left room on my headach rack to go back 6-8 inches on my cab. i think i will put a small bench with the cab wall kicked back at some point...the jump seats work h\fine for short trips though....but there is not much left back there these days...getting rotten.
I've done the XJ thing several times now and while they are a good platform, they are unibody and getting kind of old at this point. A framed vehicle is much easier to build and quieter. Plus, all of the XJ's are melting around here and I hate dealing with rust
Size wise, they're perfect for the areas I wheel and the overland trips I've taken.
For us, the wranglers are a ball around town and off road, BUT! Multiple hours on the highway tends to bring the suck. I don't really have a desire to drive a soft top Jeep across the country ever again, at least not on the interstate.
At this point I'm extremely happy with how well the rig works and wouldn't hesitate to drive it across the country tomorrow. Going back through the build there are a few things I would have done differently to arrive at the point I am at now:
- Skipped the D44/D60 combo and jumped right up to the D60/14Bolt combo I have now. I grossly underestimated how much this pig was going to weigh when completed and the 3/4 ton axles just weren't up to the task. If I had run a lighter wheel/tire combo I might have been able to milk them a bit longer, but the Dana 44 ball joints hated life with the heavy wheels
- I would like to have about 10" less wheel base (I'm about 115" right now). I often belly out on climbs, and the technical trails are a bit of a chore sometimes. Plus the extra wheel base means that my rear drive shaft often takes alot of abuse. A traction bar / drive shaft skid would help out in this department.
- I would probably skip on the recentred H1's and the .mil surp tires. I'm usually running 10-12 psi off road since if I drop lower than that I'm dragging diff's everywhere. At that pressure, you really don't need double bead locks. The tires themselves work very well around these parts off road, but leave a little to be desired on road (balance), but that's probably more of a function of the wheels.
- The running leafs up front with the shackles up front work very well. well enough that I have to run limit straps to keep my shocks alive. But the draw back is that I have to run a track bar/panhard on road to help out with the steering (Its vague without the bar on there). The other draw back is that this thing eats bushings on the front leafs. But that happens with short flexy leafs. A .mil wrapped spring would be nice, but my aftermarket springs are holding up well without it. The thing rides real nice off and on road. That said I will likely go RA or 3 link on the next build just to do something different.
- I would like a small hydro assist setup. The stock ranger box has more than enough oomph to move things around, but I would like to take some of the stress off of it. Plus I think a small ram will help keep the thing pointed the right way off road.
So as far as platforms go, the RBV is pretty dang good one. There is alot of life left in this truck after nearly 4 years of hard abuse off road. The doors still close fine, it seals up well, heck, the AC even still works! If it was and XJ, I would be ready to scrap it by now just because the shell would have been completely tweaked.
But the Ranger itself is just too small for these new car seats that seem to be 'required' these days. I've gone as far as borrow a friends forward facing seat (a fairly small one at that) to see if I could make it work in the rear of the truck, and no dice. So as a family wheeler, it's just not going to work. Had I known back then that a Kid was going to show up, I would have started with an Ex.
Explorer. You can re use 90% of this stuff. Doubler axles etc
That's the plan. A 2 door Ex is roughly the same size as an XJ which means it will fit very well on the trails around here. For reference, this ranger is roughly the size of a 4 door ex, just with alot less glass to blow out :lol:
While I have my eye open for one, I'm not in a huge rush so the Ranger will be hanging out for a while. I might even try selling the whole shebang again to see if there is any interest, but at this point I'm planning on pulling the axles/doubler/etc out and sell/scrap the rest. In an ideal world, I'd love to pull that stuff out and sell the shell to someone who wants an exo'd bob'd ranger as it really is ready to rock. We'll see what happens...
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