What did you do to your Ranger today? (Part Deux!)

[scotts90ranger]

replacing both lower control arms on the 2005 2wd. they are the originals with over 360,000 miles.
ball joints have been replaced many times.
the hardest part was the end link. you can see the threaded rod used in place of a shock to de-tension the spring.


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Holy rust, didn't realize 2005 was 300 years ago!

I know that's mild, I'm just not used to it, that's rustier than anything I own by a LONG shot, my '90 has spent about 3 months in a garage since '99 and I could go outside right now and pull almost any fastener I wanted to...

On another note, I just got a set of those old Lincoln 5 ton jack stands a few weeks ago for $30 at an estate sale, not bad...

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Trust me... there was certainly a time in life I wouldn't have accepted no for an answer. This just wasn't the time... my hammer swinging hand works at about 50% of what it did pre radiation treatment failure... resulting in cooking my hand.

I had a plan B going in and chose to go B route for now. Still have a few things to do before the trip... but im past the biggest task... and it rides and drives really good.

Those big bars will go in when it's time for ball joints.

Yeah, injuries like that can really crimp your style, really sucks they cooked your hand.

I certainly understand picking your battles too. I don’t know if I’ll have everything done in time for the trail ride, but since I can drive the Choptop even though no 4x4 yet, my plan is to do what I have to to get the green Ranger up. If there’s any time left after that, we’ll see about the odds and ends I’d like to get done on both trucks. The Choptop will do mild trails in 2wd. Maybe even some moderate.

 

[BroncLander]

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[ben_2_go]

Did a dumb today. I was in a hurry to get started cutting grass. I was almost and hour late getting starting. My mower needed a jump start. In my haste, and my mower being insanely loud, I forgot to shut down the Strangler. It sat there and idled happily for 4.5 hours while I cut grass around it. Never even knew it was running until I was finished cutting grass and pulled my ear plugs out as I was walking by the truck. Idled out 1/8th tank of fuel. I'm kind of pizzed off about that. My own damned fault though.

Oh, I still haven't figured out why she kept dying on me last week on my way home from dinner. I've drover her several times and the bad idle, or no idle, when in drive comes and goes. I got the P0442 error but everything I check seems to be good. I also did a whole lotta work on her last month. I replaced the entire EGR system with line, new DPFE sensor, DPFE tubes, DPFE electrical connector, and cleaned out the port in the exhaust manifold to the EGR line. Nothing but fine soot in there. IAC seems to be working. Everyhting checks out with it. Has only been a few months since I replaced it while doing a timing belt and fixing the cam sensor connector. May replace the IAC again. It was a cheapo from Amazon.

 

[Rick W]

Did a dumb today. I was in a hurry to get started cutting grass. I was almost and hour late getting starting. My mower needed a jump start. In my haste, and my mower being insanely loud, I forgot to shut down the Strangler. It sat there and idled happily for 4.5 hours while I cut grass around it. Never even knew it was running until I was finished cutting grass and pulled my ear plugs out as I was walking by the truck. Idled out 1/8th tank of fuel. I'm kind of pizzed off about that. My own damned fault though.

Oh, I still haven't figured out why she kept dying on me last week on my way home from dinner. I've drover her several times and the bad idle, or no idle, when in drive comes and goes. I got the P0442 error but everything I check seems to be good. I also did a whole lotta work on her last month. I replaced the entire EGR system with line, new DPFE sensor, DPFE tubes, DPFE electrical connector, and cleaned out the port in the exhaust manifold to the EGR line. Nothing but fine soot in there. IAC seems to be working. Everyhting checks out with it. Has only been a few months since I replaced it while doing a timing belt and fixing the cam sensor connector. May replace the IAC again. It was a cheapo from Amazon.

Maybe the Strangler now identifies as a lawn mower, purrs on the lawn, protests when it’s on the road.

 

[Bgunner]

So I went to start the caliper change and got the left caliper off and noticed the inner pad was almost gone. Because of this I had to put it all back together and go get pads for it. I came back and did the passenger side, the one that was hanging up, and went to the driver side. After getting that caliper off I saw that the piston had 2 chunks out of it. It's a good thing I decided to do both at the same time. The drivers side still had half life left on the inner pad.

I sent the truck into the garage because the brake pedal felt spongey. Now with the new calipers on it is nice and firm so the damn garage missed it. $800 they charged me for nothing but diagnostics that they didn't do properly. They also told me that the drums will need to be replaced soon. The drums are out of round with around 6,000 miles on them. This is why I like doing my own repairs on my vehicles.

 

[pjtoledo]

Holy rust, didn't realize 2005 was 300 years ago!

I know that's mild, I'm just not used to it, that's rustier than anything I own by a LONG shot, my '90 has spent about 3 months in a garage since '99 and I could go outside right now and pull almost any fastener I wanted to...

On another note, I just got a set of those old Lincoln 5 ton jack stands a few weeks ago for $30 at an estate sale, not bad...

by rust belt standards, that is "not rust"

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Yesterday the beds got pulled off the Rangers. Paul and Michaela stopped to help. Today I’ll get to start on getting the frames cut and swapped, should be quite the adventure. There’s a lot of stuff that has to come apart and at least on the donor truck, all the factory rivets are still there. Most of them are bolts on mine at this point. My bed also has significant rust, so I’ll be patching that a bit, but unfortunately this bed is caked with that “rubberized undercoating“ crap so it will just continue to deteriorate as there’s no good way for me to remove that stuff. Rust gets under it and just spreads like wildfire. Anyway…

 

[ben_2_go]

Do any of you guys know if a standard cab (98+) will bolt straight onto and extended cab chassis? I have an idea for a project. Having a longer rear frame section without cutting would be super helpful.

 

[sgtsandman]

Do any of you guys know if a standard cab (98+) will bolt straight onto and extended cab chassis? I have an idea for a project. Having a longer rear frame section without cutting would be super helpful.

Not directly. The rear cab mounts are further back on the Supercabs. I suppose you could make your own frame mounts or move the existing ones. The unknown for me is the contour of the frame. I don’t know if that will cause and issue for whatever your plans are or not.

 

[Roert42]

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what’s the issues with the red doner truck? Doesn’t look too bad.

 

[ben_2_go]

Not directly. The rear cab mounts are further back on the Supercabs. I suppose you could make your own frame mounts or move the existing ones. The unknown for me is the contour of the frame. I don’t know if that will cause and issue for whatever your plans are or not.

I kind of thought that but also wondered if the ext. cab had mounts where the single cab does and then a rear set. Frame contour shouldn't matter. What I want to do is an RV conversion. There was a coach builder that took Chevy 3500 trucks with single wheel rear axle, long bed, std. cab, 4x4 and turned them into class B RVs. They only did 2001-04 trucks and only around 50 were made from my understanding. I'm thinking of doing something similar for overlanding.

 

[tw205]

what’s the issues with the red doner truck? Doesn’t look too bad.

It all relative my friend. Here in the rust belt that’s nice. Down south and west it’s beyond repair.

 

[BroncLander]

I don't know what I did, but it's developed a problem staying running at idle. It stalls out when the RPM drops.
I'm going to start with a fuel filter and maybe some carb cleaner.
But one thing I suspect because I've ran my battery wayyyy low a few times now is that the alternator might be needing to work harder and stalling out the engine at low RPM as it tries to get some juice back in it

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Do any of you guys know if a standard cab (98+) will bolt straight onto and extended cab chassis? I have an idea for a project. Having a longer rear frame section without cutting would be super helpful.

No. Frame contour is different and rear cab mounts are different. It can be done, but it’s not bolt on at all.

I kind of thought that but also wondered if the ext. cab had mounts where the single cab does and then a rear set. Frame contour shouldn't matter. What I want to do is an RV conversion. There was a coach builder that took Chevy 3500 trucks with single wheel rear axle, long bed, std. cab, 4x4 and turned them into class B RVs. They only did 2001-04 trucks and only around 50 were made from my understanding. I'm thinking of doing something similar for overlanding.

Negative. The two for the core support and the front two for the cab should match, but the rear ones are going to be 12-16” too far back on the frame. There’s nothing in between.