1997 Ranger Prerunner

[Logan B]

This is my daily driver truck I've been building since January of 2013.

Specs
1997 2x4 4.0 XLT 5 speed manual
Giant motorsports front suspension extended 8" per side. Ford 9" with wilwood superlite calipers, 4.56 gears and spool with 5/8ths studs. Front beams were modified to accept f150 spindles so that I had matching lug patterns and bigger brakes/wheel bearings. Full roll cage made of 1.75" DOM from firewall to rear bumper. Bolt on bedcage. Custom interior done by me.

I'll post In order of what it looked like when I bought it, to what it looks like today.

January 2013
Unfortunately the truck was painted in bedliner! Talk about a nightmare to strip off!

After I installed the new front suspension it looked like this minus the paint job (lost the photos of it prior to this paint)

Took it out to see how much of a beating it could take.

Shortly after these photos the bedcage and bed itself failed and started cracking falling apart. So naturally I had to upgrade to a new bed, new bedcage, and while I was at it I added Glassworks unlimited bedsides installed. These are 7" flair to accommodate a much wider rear end (more to come later)
I like the idea of being able to load and store stuff in the truck, but it needed the weight and being a desert truck, spare tires are a necessity. Thus came this design.

Here it is out in its element in March of 2014. At this point I had stripped the bedliner off the cab and painted the truck ford charcoal. Luckily I only had to strip the cab since the front fenders, bedsides, and hood are all new fiberglass so I didn't need to worry about bedliner... THANK GOD!

 

[Logan B]

Fast forward about a year to some newer wheels, tires, and cowl hood!

Nothing had changed for close to a year as I was happy and broke! The truck did get to a point where it was too fast in the desert without the safety of a roll cage. So, time for some tubes!

Down tubes exiting the cab, tying the rear of the truck into the cab making a much more solid structure.

Then there were the glamour street shots! I really loved the way the truck was coming together. I had upgraded to 35" bfg projects and I like the look of them, but the handling for street was quite crappy.

This is when the truck had the stock 8.8 axle and wheel spacers to fill out the rear bedsides. It's using a rear spring pack designed by Deaver springs. I am using a custom drop hanger made by kartek off-road, and a stock style shackle. The rear hanger has been re mounted further rearward on the frame and nets me about 15-16" of travel.

 

[Logan B]

This brings me to the most recent stages of this truck and definitely not the last!
King coilovers upfront with a king hydraulic bumpstop for those really rough landings. I had just modified the balljoint taper in these beams to accept the f150 spindles and upgraded to the ever lovely ford Alcoa wheel and a 35" Goodyear mtr tire.

This truck will eventually be getting a set of Giant motorsports 4link rear suspension kit. In preparation for that, the stock gas tank had to go. I picked myself up a jaz 32 gallon fuel cell and modified the stock ranger pump to work and have a working fuel guage.

I had decided that i wanted a more dirt worthy wheel. Being an off-road truck, airing down the tires is a must once a vehicle hits the dirt. Problem with that is worrying about possibly blowing a tire off a bead. So I picked myself up a set of KMC Enduro beadlocks wheels. They sure were in rough shape!

So I cleaned them up, painted the ring to add some flair to the truck and mounted some new 35s.

Along with these, came some brand new shocks. King 16" triple bypass shocks allow the truck to scoot through the dirt and being bypass shocks opposed to smooth bodies, I can adjust the rebound and compression that the shock has depending on the weight or other variables of the truck. It will soon be seeing a set of these up front as well.

This is how the truck looks as of today. The final trackwidth up front is 91"

Added some hella 4000 lights to the front bumper. I converted them from halogen to 55w hid as well.

Ford 9" installed came out to a rear trackwidth of 83.25" and fills the new bedsides out quite nicely.

Thanks for looking! I'll be sure to keep this updated as I continue adding to it.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Nice truck. I like the bed storage idea.

Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

 

[prerunner]

Impressive ride. Now I really need to rethink my moniker.