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82eye
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Hello all. First a note of thanks as I've ghosted this site and a couple others as I looked about for a Ranger, after finding one the advice and tech forum here have proven invaluable, and saved me lots of bucks already. This is my second Ranger, the first was an 85 4cyl 5spd that I parted awhile back. This one is a 97 3.0L 6cyl 5spd, and I hope it sticks around for some time.
Here's a look
It's got paint chips and dents and it needed some love to put it on the road, but it also seems to have a good heart, running strong with a good motor.
The Saga: So I bought the thing by accident. I needed to replace a DD beater I had, and we wanted to get rid of my Dad's straight 6 3 on the tree F150 beast, so a small truck seemed to be the ticket. I had a Ranger before and liked them, so I started casually looking for one. I wasn't too thrilled spending the money on another DD as I have an ancient BMW lying around as a project car, and wanted to direct some cash at that instead. Well, life intervened when Mom spied an ad in a local weekend paper, and took it upon herself to call the owner.
The truck turned out to have been up for sale for awhile, but since the ad was written so poor, no one had come to look at it. It was on a farm north of the city, but was unclear how far it was. So my Dad and I figgered out it was less than twenty minutes away, and went to have a look.
The poor thing had run out of plates then been parked on the farm and used as a yard truck. It was so dirty the first day I saw it I actually decided I really wasn't interested. On top of that it had been raining and the back tires were so poor that neither I nor the PO thought it was good idea to take it out on the slick dirt roads for a test drive. I kind of felt sorry for it sittin' unloved and poorly used.
Still the thing had a lot going for it. My criteria included 5spd, 2wd, composite box, 6cyl, and this one had it all. The truck had low km for the year, a decent oem stereo and even working ac, the interior had no rips in the seats and the "hose the blood off" plastic flooring I prefer in a truck. There was no rust in the cab corners, nor anywhere else on the body. The paint had taken a beating on gravel roads over the years, but was mostly good above the rockers, still pretty decent overall.
It also had a squirrel that had been using it as an address, chewing the shit out of the intake filter and caching seeds all through the engine bay body channels, it still has a bunch trapped between the hood latch and rad that I can't ever seem to vacuum all out.
Underneath was shocking. Dirt, gravel, sand everywhere coating everything. Enough to open a landscaping business. And I'm a neat freak for the most part, yikes.
The PO's only mod was a large grotty chain and massive padlock rusted shut on a tie down in the back of the box. At least the key was rusted into place in the lock and came included in the purchase price. Choice.
Eventually we decided it might be worth a second look after the skies dried up anyway.
We took it for an extensive look and drive the second time, aside from the tires it needed a windshield, and we diagnosed a rear brake problem, figgering both the shoes and parking brake system were shot. At this point I decided I was walking away as I didn't want to sort someone's poor maintenance record or problems. Dad thought I should toss a number at the PO mostly as a courtesy, so he could turn us down as lowballers, then we could walk away having given it a shot. Well the guy took the lowball, and I wound up buying the truck by accident.
Check out the 7 dollar floor mats I tossed in the thing in that last pic, classy.
What's been done:
As soon as it came home we got a windshield put in and tires on. Then my Dad and I turned our attention to the rear brakes, we decided on a complete rebuild, new cylinders and all.
The driver's went all right, but when we put the passenger brakes together nothing seemed to locate correct. Then we gave the axle a spin while we were musing, uh oh, the shaft was bent. We buttoned it up enough to park it and sourced a donor axle, tore the shaft out, opened up the diff and swapped it out. When we put it together again, crap, the backing plate was bent too. Thank Gawd we hadn't filled the diff with new oil yet.
So we pulled it all apart, taking the time to put the best diff parts together, and swapped out the backing plate, and put the brakes together. Oh Damn, the drum turns out to be bent too. We didn't get drums with the donor axle, so it's off to the wreckers to source one. Finally we get the parts all happy and put it all together again.
You might notice in the next pic I painted the diff cover red. I like to clean stuff up when I fix them so I took the time to paint it. Dad asked me, "why the hell you painting it red?" Truth is he had red lying about, and if your rear end had been opened as much as we opened the Ranger's you'd be red too.
Once the rear brakes were together and axle happy we took it for a drive and good grief, the rears start locking. Guess we had forgotten about the parking brake issue. So the rear brakes come apart for the third time and new cables go in fixing them once and for all. Then for good measure we check the front calipers and upgrade the front pads just 'cause.
After that was a three day degrease and clean up of the engine bay, including fixing as many clips as possible, and making sure all the wiring was routed right. Unfortunately there had been some clumsy fingers under the hood over the years.
Once that was sorted it got a much needed basic tune including new NGK wires, Bosch plugs, a lube, and a switch to some nicer synth/dino blend oil. Oh, and we swapped out the squirrel's cache for a proper air filter.
Once the basics were taken care of I turned my attention to cleaning the poor bugger up. I spent an afternoon with the back up on stands, power washing the underside, while dirty muddy gravel rained on my head. My dad had to wash the driveway out after, then the street in front, including the neighbours.
When that was accomplished I started cleaning up the paint, starting with the rockers, and touching up a bunch of rock chips. The hood is gonna need a respray, as it had a hood deflector that scraped the hell out of the paint as the PO never washed the dirt from under it. It was packed with dirt under the deflector when I removed it. We also sprayed the padlock down, and worked it enough times that we got it and Davey Jones' anchor chain removed from the box.
As this is a working truck, I've been using Tremclad as touch up lol. Haters gonna love that one. Better paint plans may be in the future if it holds up, I'm betting it will.
I call these pics the 'clean pics' as the hood deflector and mud flaps are removed. I really like how clean the truck looks without them.
I took the deflector off to clean the hood up. I removed the mud flaps since the hangers were rusted, then cleaned and painted the hangers. I didn't put them back on yet as I was thinking of trying to find some new flaps, I want them back by the fall for protection anyway.
The Future: Not much planned for this truck just yet. Keep continuing to bring it up to snuff mechanically and we'll see. I think it is telling me it needs an 02 sensor soon as well, I already have it ready to go in. I really want some winter rims and tires for it desperate tho. I think I'm gonna mostly keep this one running well and kept decent, I have the other car for silly plans.
I wasn't a big fan of the color, but having worked with it a bit I've decided to embrace the black. Dad already got on the theme by snagging a blackout antenna from an Exploder to replace the silver one that was on the truck when we got it. It was already on by the time I took the pics. I want to black out the bumpers and likely the grill too at some time, but there is no rush now.
That's the saga for now. Special thanks to TRS for all the help, tho you prolly didn't know you were providing it at the time.
Hope you enjoyed the pics.
Cheers
Dale
Here's a look
It's got paint chips and dents and it needed some love to put it on the road, but it also seems to have a good heart, running strong with a good motor.
The Saga: So I bought the thing by accident. I needed to replace a DD beater I had, and we wanted to get rid of my Dad's straight 6 3 on the tree F150 beast, so a small truck seemed to be the ticket. I had a Ranger before and liked them, so I started casually looking for one. I wasn't too thrilled spending the money on another DD as I have an ancient BMW lying around as a project car, and wanted to direct some cash at that instead. Well, life intervened when Mom spied an ad in a local weekend paper, and took it upon herself to call the owner.
The truck turned out to have been up for sale for awhile, but since the ad was written so poor, no one had come to look at it. It was on a farm north of the city, but was unclear how far it was. So my Dad and I figgered out it was less than twenty minutes away, and went to have a look.
The poor thing had run out of plates then been parked on the farm and used as a yard truck. It was so dirty the first day I saw it I actually decided I really wasn't interested. On top of that it had been raining and the back tires were so poor that neither I nor the PO thought it was good idea to take it out on the slick dirt roads for a test drive. I kind of felt sorry for it sittin' unloved and poorly used.
Still the thing had a lot going for it. My criteria included 5spd, 2wd, composite box, 6cyl, and this one had it all. The truck had low km for the year, a decent oem stereo and even working ac, the interior had no rips in the seats and the "hose the blood off" plastic flooring I prefer in a truck. There was no rust in the cab corners, nor anywhere else on the body. The paint had taken a beating on gravel roads over the years, but was mostly good above the rockers, still pretty decent overall.
It also had a squirrel that had been using it as an address, chewing the shit out of the intake filter and caching seeds all through the engine bay body channels, it still has a bunch trapped between the hood latch and rad that I can't ever seem to vacuum all out.
Underneath was shocking. Dirt, gravel, sand everywhere coating everything. Enough to open a landscaping business. And I'm a neat freak for the most part, yikes.
The PO's only mod was a large grotty chain and massive padlock rusted shut on a tie down in the back of the box. At least the key was rusted into place in the lock and came included in the purchase price. Choice.
Eventually we decided it might be worth a second look after the skies dried up anyway.
We took it for an extensive look and drive the second time, aside from the tires it needed a windshield, and we diagnosed a rear brake problem, figgering both the shoes and parking brake system were shot. At this point I decided I was walking away as I didn't want to sort someone's poor maintenance record or problems. Dad thought I should toss a number at the PO mostly as a courtesy, so he could turn us down as lowballers, then we could walk away having given it a shot. Well the guy took the lowball, and I wound up buying the truck by accident.
Check out the 7 dollar floor mats I tossed in the thing in that last pic, classy.
What's been done:
As soon as it came home we got a windshield put in and tires on. Then my Dad and I turned our attention to the rear brakes, we decided on a complete rebuild, new cylinders and all.
The driver's went all right, but when we put the passenger brakes together nothing seemed to locate correct. Then we gave the axle a spin while we were musing, uh oh, the shaft was bent. We buttoned it up enough to park it and sourced a donor axle, tore the shaft out, opened up the diff and swapped it out. When we put it together again, crap, the backing plate was bent too. Thank Gawd we hadn't filled the diff with new oil yet.
So we pulled it all apart, taking the time to put the best diff parts together, and swapped out the backing plate, and put the brakes together. Oh Damn, the drum turns out to be bent too. We didn't get drums with the donor axle, so it's off to the wreckers to source one. Finally we get the parts all happy and put it all together again.
You might notice in the next pic I painted the diff cover red. I like to clean stuff up when I fix them so I took the time to paint it. Dad asked me, "why the hell you painting it red?" Truth is he had red lying about, and if your rear end had been opened as much as we opened the Ranger's you'd be red too.
Once the rear brakes were together and axle happy we took it for a drive and good grief, the rears start locking. Guess we had forgotten about the parking brake issue. So the rear brakes come apart for the third time and new cables go in fixing them once and for all. Then for good measure we check the front calipers and upgrade the front pads just 'cause.
After that was a three day degrease and clean up of the engine bay, including fixing as many clips as possible, and making sure all the wiring was routed right. Unfortunately there had been some clumsy fingers under the hood over the years.
Once that was sorted it got a much needed basic tune including new NGK wires, Bosch plugs, a lube, and a switch to some nicer synth/dino blend oil. Oh, and we swapped out the squirrel's cache for a proper air filter.
Once the basics were taken care of I turned my attention to cleaning the poor bugger up. I spent an afternoon with the back up on stands, power washing the underside, while dirty muddy gravel rained on my head. My dad had to wash the driveway out after, then the street in front, including the neighbours.
When that was accomplished I started cleaning up the paint, starting with the rockers, and touching up a bunch of rock chips. The hood is gonna need a respray, as it had a hood deflector that scraped the hell out of the paint as the PO never washed the dirt from under it. It was packed with dirt under the deflector when I removed it. We also sprayed the padlock down, and worked it enough times that we got it and Davey Jones' anchor chain removed from the box.
As this is a working truck, I've been using Tremclad as touch up lol. Haters gonna love that one. Better paint plans may be in the future if it holds up, I'm betting it will.
I call these pics the 'clean pics' as the hood deflector and mud flaps are removed. I really like how clean the truck looks without them.
I took the deflector off to clean the hood up. I removed the mud flaps since the hangers were rusted, then cleaned and painted the hangers. I didn't put them back on yet as I was thinking of trying to find some new flaps, I want them back by the fall for protection anyway.
The Future: Not much planned for this truck just yet. Keep continuing to bring it up to snuff mechanically and we'll see. I think it is telling me it needs an 02 sensor soon as well, I already have it ready to go in. I really want some winter rims and tires for it desperate tho. I think I'm gonna mostly keep this one running well and kept decent, I have the other car for silly plans.
I wasn't a big fan of the color, but having worked with it a bit I've decided to embrace the black. Dad already got on the theme by snagging a blackout antenna from an Exploder to replace the silver one that was on the truck when we got it. It was already on by the time I took the pics. I want to black out the bumpers and likely the grill too at some time, but there is no rush now.
That's the saga for now. Special thanks to TRS for all the help, tho you prolly didn't know you were providing it at the time.
Hope you enjoyed the pics.
Cheers
Dale
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