My 86 Ranger, from white beater to Blue Pride.

[86_cookiemonster]

Here is my 1986 ford ranger.
Me and My dad rebuilt it.

it started out as a white 1986 ranger with a 2.3 liter streight 4

After 20 some odd years of neglect by my dad and it was in need of some tender love and care.

I found a replacment bed for it and spend a large amount of time sanding it down and removing those little white strips from the side of it.

As you can imagen my family was very angry with me, my little project took up the garage for an entire summer.

I did a lot of work on the cab corners, welding in replacements, and then hiding the welds with bondo and a lot more sanding.

Then thankfully the primer helped hid it some more.

After several long months of working in the garage this is how it turned out

I know its a little bit dirty, but thats what happens when you drive them. (LoL). What do you guys think?

If you would like to see more on the resto of this truck you can always check out my car domain site. http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2850478.

 

[zainyD]]

Nice job! Now it's time for a 5.0!

 

[RyanD2]

Nice job! Now it's time for a 5.0!

And some wheels and tires too.

Looks great.

 

[Dishtowel]

Tidy, very tidy, looks good. You sure did put alot of work into her', now it needs some rims and tires pretty badly.

 

[ak96]

looks great! you did a awsome job..and it payed off very well!

wheels and tires an she'll be stylin!

 

[86_cookiemonster]

I just got some new tire, they are on the last pics. They where el cheapos.

I was going to get rims, and sweet tires, but....
I ran out of money.

I decided to make the stock rims look presentable while I save up my money. The ford rangers rims are the same color as my dads silver 2001 taurus. He bought several things of paint to fix some hail damage, and I don't think he ever noticed that one of his cans of paint went missing, and the rims on my truck suddenly looked just like new.


I actualy wish i could find a set of rims that look like mine, but are wider, to fool some foolish kid into thinking i don't have traction. lol.

 

[86_cookiemonster]

I have an update on my truck. After have my purty new hood fly up on the free way, i had to do a lot of bondo and paint work to get the truck back to "right".
I would like to keep things positive so i would like to point out that the hood coming up can be seen as a good thing, as it gave me an excuse to buy a new tool :-D, a 4 ton port-a-power, which i used to bend the windsheild wiper valance (funny peice of metal behind the hood), back into place.

To prevent the hood coming up again, I installed hood pins.


The hood pins that I eventualy decided on are around 3/4 inches in diameter, so unlike the smaller hood pins, they would not fit in the hole all ready in the radiator support. So I had to drill two new holes in the radiator support.

Once i had the actual had the pins in, I had to cut the holes in the hood itself. It was very hard, after all that work getting the paint just right, to actualy cut into it. But it had to be done. Here you can see my lovely Hole Saw work.

Now after spending all the time to get the hood back on, I am very paranoid about the hood coming back up. So I left the hood lacht on, so that there are 4 things holding the hood down. The two hood pins, the safty latch, and the normal hood latch. It is not flying up agian. This picture just shows that the latch in fact still there, (and unfortunatly so is the anemic 4 cylinder, hopefully that will change soon though).

And Now the moment that you have all been waiting for, the new head on shot of my truck, with its new shiny stainless steal hood pins in.

I know that they are hard to see in this picture, and i have to aplogize for that. A photographer I am not. Normaly my friend takes the pictures of my truck for me, unfortunatly he is in college now, so you will have to settle for my "beautiful" picture work.


And as a random side note, I have also added a new tonneau cover, it helps give the truck a "finished" look, and keeps the little punk kids that live in my neighbor hood from using the bed as their personal dumpster.

 

[BlackBII]

That Rust was nasty!

Glas to see it all restored!

 

[86_cookiemonster]

thanks, it was worse than it looked, the floor in the truck has several holes that ford did not put in there from factory if you know what i mean.
thanks for the complement.

 

[DarkBlue03XLT]

looks awesome man, i hope my '84 comes out that nice

 

[86_cookiemonster]

looks awesome man, i hope my '84 comes out that nice

The look is in the details of prep work. Most of the work you do, know one will ever see. If you see an inperfection in the primer, or bondo, fix it then. The paint will not cover it up.

If you are working on it still you can pm me and I can give you some pointers.