2000 Ranger 4.0 to 2.3 EcoBoost Swap

[Boost Bucket]

Temperatures have cooled down a ton and I've been able to get back to work on the project. The first order of business was correcting the rusted off radiator support. I am fortunate that you can purchase a complete drop in unit. I will probably cut it up to suit my needs but it is a much better foundation than the rusty junk that came off of it.

I couldn't resist peeking at intercooler placement while I was in there to try to get an idea of upcoming fitment issues. It is looking like it will work perfectly with the factory radiator and piping may be in a decent place too. I'll probably run it upside down of what I have in the picture but we'll see.

The four in-cab mounts until now have been loosely held on by finger tight nuts. Since I didn't have either of the two radiator support cab body mount positions to reference, I found out that the cab is off center by a decent amount. It turns out that the AC box is making contact with the coolant hose on the top of the engine and I need to scoot the engine towards the driver side another 3/4" or so. This creates a fitment problem for the factory transmission cooler since it was already rubbing in its current position. This will need to be relocated before I can secure the cab correctly and mock up coolant and air hoses. This will also put the driver side of the engine dangerously close to the factory steering shaft but I don't think it will be an issue. After seeing the intercooler in place I am hungry to get this fired up before the snow flies. We'll see what happens.

 

[Boost Bucket]

Waiting on some parts to arrive to remote mount my transmission cooler, I made some progress fitting up the other Mustang parts so they'll play nice with the wire harness.

Ranger/Mustang alternator is slightly different so I bored out one of the holes for the locating pin and the one on the top I opened up since it doesn't quite line up.

I have less confidence in my work widening out the intercooler sensor. I don't know why they are very slightly different but they are.

I got the AC/blower box out of the way which in my current configuration was only possible by lifting the cab up, moving the box as far as I could, and splitting it open through the fender well. A sawzall was necessary both for the bolts to get it lose and for the AC lines coming out. Once I move the engine over and set the cab down this likely will be impossible to install or remove without lifting the cab up a bit so I'm glad I'm doing it now. I pushed that side of the cab up about 5 inches and it was still barely possible. I also bent one of the coolant hardlines so I'll need to fix that too.

Once in a lifetime clear shot of firewall clearance and routing. We could've been another half inch or so back, but honestly it's perfect where it is otherwise the tunnel would've been rubbing the top of the transmission. The Harbor Freight laser and careful measuring paid off like crazy.

This part is probably unnecessary but I pulled the dash out too after much effort. I'm struggling a bit with comprehending the wire routing of body controls and I need to get my own eyes on it to make sense of it all. I also figured that if I'm this deep in it anyway I might as well go all the way since that was about the last factory thing I had yet to touch.

Since I had the front off anyway I figured I'd get a good shot of the belt routing so I can make a sticker for it on my new rad support. This also does a good job showing how it fits in there after it's all said and done. I'll be moving it about 3/4" to the drivers side but this is really close to final position.

Now that I have all the related Mustang sensors installed, the standalone wire harness hooks up 100%. In theory it just needs the fuel lines finished and a battery hooked up to run. You wouldn't know it by looking at it, but we're nearing the end on this build and I'm excited to see a dyno and get started on the next one.

 

[BiggSherm1988]

Working around the weather, I was able to squeeze in another work day. I found that the new frame section was too heavy for me to move around on my own with the rear bumper and hitch attached so those had to go. I wish I had a scale to tell exactly, but the rear frame section is lighter than I thought and I might guesstimate it between 80-100lb with the hitch and bumper off. For anyone curious like I was, with the bumper at hitch attached the best I could do was drag it where I wanted it but with them off it's not a huge deal to deadlift the whole assembly.
View attachment 87819
View attachment 87820
View attachment 87821
I also made a deal this week on the marketplace for some "jeep" wheels and tires. I've been looking high and low for chrome bullet holes but all the ones I found were generally 6 lug, 15", AND as pricey as buying new. I would've preferred to wait until the very end to think about wheels and tires but the clearance issues requiring the lift kit means I had to find some 16" wheels to fit the lift according to the documentation. I must admit I did not know how absurdly large 35s are. These are 5x5 pattern so I'm going to run 1.5" Rough Country adapters to get back to 5x4.5 and hope the spacing works.
View attachment 87824
View attachment 87823

Did those wheels go on with any issues, besides the lug holes? RC says you need 17s for this kit to fit but you are now the second person that I have heard run 16s and not talked about an issue with the fitment.

 

[Boost Bucket]

I've been working on some other projects for a while but I'm back on this one for a bit. Tolerances are very close but I was able to modify one of the coolant hoses to get the air box to fit and still had enough room to make an exhaust.

For the exhaust I fooled around for a long time to figure out a way to fit a cat into the system and I finally decided to try a cheap one a little smaller than stock to fit between the frame and transmission. I had to fit together a bunch of bends and adapters but finally have a downpipe that works. It's ugly for sure. I did have to make my own turbo flange because I couldn't find anywhere to get one.

This shot shows how close everything is. I've moved the body over a bit so that it should now be in its final resting place. Since I haven't welded the front support on yet I don't have the front body mounts on. I'm going to have to have a heat shield between the exhaust and air box but that's a problem for another day.

I also went ahead and installed the gas pedal in the cab with the dash off and then put the dash back on after repairing the air box studs I had to cut off before.

I've done a ton of reading on how the coolant system works for the 2020 platform and think I have the routing figured out for how to make it work in this application. I am going to attempt to delete the degas bottle system and see how it goes. There is basically no information on this out there currently so I'm just figuring it out as I go. The routing in theory should avoid putting excessive pressure into the overflow tank which should allow me to keep the stock tank. The 2020 Ranger is plumbed with two water pumps and I am going to delete the electric cabin water pump circuit.

A lot of what's left is boring stuff but I'm glad to be back on this and I think the hardest parts are behind me now.

 

[Boost Bucket]

Going back to air and coolant routing I realized I was short the factory diverter valve and rather than try to rig something together I figured I would just order one. I'm not sure why but in my searching it looks like it uses some sort of unique 3 bolt flange pattern with no adapters in sight. The factory bracket appears to be all one piece and since it isn't the shape I needed I decided to end up just chopping it up very carefully to end up with a generic round end on it.

I decided with most of this figured out now that it was time to put in the radiator support for real so I can start planning intercooler piping. This required a bunch of measuring and planning but it turns out that the factory Ecoboost intercooler fits perfectly between the bottom of the hood latch (after trimming) and rests perfectly on the bottom of the support. Unfortunately the factory mounting plastic has to be cut away for it to fit tightly against the support.

Satisfied with how this placement turned out and with some confidence that the header panel might still somehow fit, I went ahead and welded it in. The header panel brackets had to be removed for this mockup because the intercooler interferes significantly. On the bright side some custom brackets should be pretty straightforward to create and everything should fit right eventually.

Miraculously the header panel seems to have enough room to fit the intercooler except for the very sides where the wings go through the support. I can't determine placement exactly on this until a new hood hinge arrives because the 2000 driver hood hinge has mounting holes on the opposite side of the bracket to the 05+ hood style. Once the hood and fenders are on I can really lock down the front fitment.

With the major pieces in their place, I was able to actually get some fitment going with the air tubes. I didn't realize ahead of time how much of a pain (and expensive) this is when each leg of the system has different sizes. I can't weld aluminum nor do I have any spare parts for these on the shelf so I'm doing my best with careful bandsaw cuts and hose clamps. On the bright side I will likely be able to preserve the factory air box and filter for a cleaner look and colder air. I'll probably enlist someone to make me some one or two piece aluminum pipes later on since I'm not a fan of so many silicon bends and don't want it to fail under boost and get tied up in the belts and fan. We're running out of room overall but I think I'll have just enough once I have final placement down. I'll post my diagrams and sizes once I am happy that everything fits together.

I've been doing a lot of this busy work to avoid wiring and fuel lines but I'm running out of things to procrastinate with.

 

[bobbywalter]

DO NOT delete degas bottle.

get a smaller bottle if necessary..

 

[Digger1970]

Dying to know how you are getting on with ECM. The mustang engine is much simpler with a mechanical waste gate on the turbo. Did you remove the electronic waste gate to use the mustang loom and control pack?

 

[Boost Bucket]

Dying to know how you are getting on with ECM. The mustang engine is much simpler with a mechanical waste gate on the turbo. Did you remove the electronic waste gate to use the mustang loom and control pack?

I'm glad you brought it up because I hadn't actually noticed that yet. Had I noticed that in the beginning it would have been enough to push me over into a standalone computer. I have the Mustang wire harness marked where everything runs to but I hadn't considered that the computer isn't going to do anything there.

I'll need to do some reading on how it works but I've got a couple of ideas kicking around now. I see aftermarket standalone wastegate stuff is very expensive and it looks like it would take some creative engineering to integrate it or bypass what's on there now anyway. Probably best to just work with that I have and make it happen. I still have the Ranger computer so I might cheat temporarily and tap into parts of that to patch it together.

I haven't tried a test fire yet but I'm getting close. I've got several other projects going that don't take near as much thinking so I switch back and forth as I have time. I've read just about every scrap of information that comes up in the Ecoboost Swaps FB group because they are overcoming problems like this daily but I haven't seen anything about wastegate control for this. Several people have confirmed that the Mustang harness will work for the Ranger though in at least some capacity.

 

[Digger1970]

Ok… I’m going to try and run it tomorrow. I’ve had the PATS removed from the ECM. Between the two of us we should get it sorted! I have the pcm pin outs.

 

[Boost Bucket]

Ok… I’m going to try and run it tomorrow. I’ve had the PATS removed from the ECM. Between the two of us we should get it sorted! I have the pcm pin outs.

I would think low rpm should be relatively safe without the wastegate control hooked up. I wouldn't rev it high but I wouldn't be scared to move it around the yard if it will idle. I haven't tried to move the lever by hand but it's probably just a servo and you could move it open by hand so it doesn't build boost at all temporarily. I'm not sure if it's fragile or not.

 

[Boost Bucket]

I need to get the associated clamps still but I finally pieced together an air and water routing that will fit in such a cramped space. I'll post diagrams with the routing once I have them revised since it took me ages to put together with trial, error, and money. BEWARE that if you're using factory parts here that almost every section of this needs a size change. Not even the factory intercooler has the same size inlet and outlet. I bored a hole in a plate and welded some exhaust pipe to it to adapt the factory airbox location for its new purpose. Some day I hope to have some custom aluminum pipes made for this so I don't have to use so much silicone but that's beyond my skill so it'll have to wait. I'm glad I used the old radiator for fitment here because no matter how careful I thought I was being, I still managed to bump into the fins a few times and mess them up.

I'm sure this information is out there but I failed to realize that the driver side hood bracket is different from 2000 to the new generation and since I'd spend far more time and money modifying the one I have I just bought a new one. It's a mirror image of the 2000 and it works perfectly.

Using the new hood as a reference I was able to start locating the header panel for real.
I used the factory mounting brackets with the intercooler removed as a template for the spacing and chopped the tops off to get fitment close with the intercooler in place.

I originally had the top header support bar as one piece before I realized the hard way that the hood latch runs into it. The hood latch is also different year to year so I still need to get a new one. Luckily the support bar doesn't have to hold much weight and it seems sturdy enough as-is. The fact that it will crumple fairly easily is probably a good thing.

The pool noodle here was my cheap way to visualize pipe shapes for air and water. It's starting to look like a real truck again.

For bonus points I went ahead and finally secured the body to the frame with the new bushings I've had in the box for about a year. Out of everything I feel like this was the step that turned it back into a truck from a pile of parts.

I also have a Prius steering column in-hand to get back my power steering but it looks like it might end up being one of the biggest pains in this whole process so I'm putting it on the backburner.

 

[Digger1970]

I did the mustang 2.3 last year and used a Volvo electric power steering pump and it worked perfectly.