Heyooo from the Midwest!

[cb12991]

Hi everybody!

My name is Cody and I'm SO close to finishing my collegiate career. I have only until the end of 2014 and then I'll be a Bachelor of Science. With that, I will finally be able to get my "big boy" job and start accruing more funds for my little 1998 Danger Ranger XLT. As of right now, she needs a new heart which is what I will be doing this summer. She originally had a 3.0 and I plan to put the good ole' 302 in it, but not until I graduate. I'm just gonna pull the bad 3.0 out (had bad detonation in a cylinder which ended up scoring the cylinder wall leaving me with no compression), and then swap another 3.0 in her. I'm doing this because of two reasons: (1) I'm very tight on money right now and (2) this will be the quickest route to getting the Danger Ranger up and running again (it's my DD); I plan to do the swap myself with the help of a friend.

Anyways, that's what my agenda looks like for the next couple of months. Any advice and/or tips would be extremely apprieciated! I'm still learning a lot and I'll take all the help I can get!

 

[TexasRebel]

Welcome to the station! If your going to swap it out with just another 3.0, there shouldn't be too many complications you might have to run into. Should be a pretty straight forward swap. Just remember to hook everything back up afterwards. haha.

 

[cb12991]

UPDATE:

I have finished the swap. I ended up finding a 01 Taurus 3.0 motor and used the block and heads on it. Then I swapped over the manifolds, torque converter, flexplate, timing cover/water pump, oil pan/pump, oil pressure sensor, and all the accessories from my old ranger engine to the new one. Got her dropped in and running finally, but there are a few issues that I can't figure out. It isn't charging the battery efficiently enough. I've got a rebuilt alternator, new voltage regulator, new brushes, and a new battery which I know works. The truck will run fine only until the battery runs out, then I have to charge it. Anyone have any clues as to what the deal is? The voltage regulator is only putting out like 11 voltz according to the diagnostic tool from oreilly's. Any help would be astounding!

Also, another potential clue to this charging mystery is that at one point after I installed the new brushes on the alternator, I forgot to pull the pin out that holds the brushes back. I then went back to oreilly's to see if the newly installed brushes (that I didn't know still had the pin in them) solved the problem - the results where the same. This means even when there was no contact from the alternator to the brushes, it still charged at the same voltage. Don't know if this helps but I thought it would be good to know.