I am not actually new here, I had joined The Ranger Station along time ago but through moves lost the login info so like some others that are wondering and looking for a yes or no to this quetion, Will The 3.0 DURATEC bolt upto the Ranger 3.0 VULCAN transmission???
The short answer is that it depends on who you ask. The collective opinion here is NO. It's not possible. HOWEVER, Ford did it in the Taurus. In the Taurus, during the years that the Duratec was offered, there were two different transaxles. The AX4N is the transaxle that is usually bolted up to the Vulcan. The AX4S is usually bolted to the Duratec. HOWEVER, the AX4S can also be had with a Vulcan engine.
I asked this question on a Taurus forum that knows their stuff, and even there there seems to be conflicting information. One poster said "no, the bolt pattern is different on the two engines", and that was that. Another poster suggests that the bell housing on the AX4S and AX4N seems to be the same, so it bolts up. So, the collective opinion over there is "Ford did it, but we can't seem to agree on how".
There was a thread here a while back, somebody talking about making adapter plates so that a VW engine could be dropped into a Ranger. Here it is:
https://www.therangerstation.com/forums/index.php?threads/tdi-conversion-kit-for-ranger-want-one.156289/. Another thread here says that one of the Ranger transmissions has a removable bell housing, so to mount it to an engine other than the one that it was meant for, you use the bell housing intended for that engine/transmission combo.
My answer: Yes, it can be done. But, it will require some custom work. Actually, probably A LOT of custom work. Frankly, as I said above, if Ford used the same transaxle with two entirely different engines in the Taurus, I don't see why it couldn't work.
For the record, here are the answers I got on that other forum:
https://www.taurusclub.com/threads/question-from-another-forum.351852/#post-3469975