2011 Ranger fx4 FUN project

[North Idaho 5.oh]

Picked this up about a year ago and been slowly finding time to work on it. You know how the story goes… always working on someone else’s project and my stuff hits the back burner!

Found time and here it starts … yes I know I have a lot of projects but I like to think of it as organized chaos lol
I bought this truck with the engine in the bed. The rear timing cassette broke in 2 pieces. Took a little searching, but I found a 4.0 for it with somewhat low miles (120k)
Time to get her up and running!
She needs a bit of love but only has 60k miles and a rebuilt rear axle (disc brake)
The ball joints, tie rods, CV axles, hub/bearing assemblies, etc….
It does have full skid plates and plate steel bumpers with a swinging spare tire carrier.
Probably the newest / nicest rangers I’ve ever owned for sure. My son has the 05 with the chrome shifters and I have this one to “match” with him.
After I get it running and driving, I am probably going to look into reducing the body lift to 2 inches, and putting a super lift on it. For now I just want to hear it run for the first time since I’ve owned it.

 

[SenorNoob]

Looks like a nice setup. Is the other fender flare there somewhere?

 

[North Idaho 5.oh]

Looks like a nice setup. Is the other fender flare there somewhere?

No…. Unfortunately the flare is gone… not happy when I saw it fly off the truck at 70 mph and the car behind me made sure to finish the job lol

 

[North Idaho 5.oh]

No…. Unfortunately the flare is gone… not happy when I saw it fly off the truck at 70 mph and the car behind me made sure to finish the job lol

On a positive note, I got the motor in and assembled everything and for the first time the odometer is working (80k) and the key is finally talking to the computer… only issue is this aftermarket alarm is preventing me from starting it…. Never got the remote with it so I’ll probably end up pulling it out. I tell ya, the body lift really makes life easier in some ways, but not so easy in other ways….. also had to put in a secondary transmission cooler and do away with the lines ran into the radiator since the lines were hitting the fan and generally in the way. Not too bad if you ask me.

 

[North Idaho 5.oh]

Here is something that’s throwing me through a loop….. fired it up today and it smells like raw fuel and the (rusted) muffler is wet with fuel… before firing it up, we tore out the aftermarket security/alarm and cranked it but did not want to start. We did end up removing the system. Maybe it was dumping fuel because of the old security system? We got it to run finally, but it’s running a little rough (really rough)
Could the cylinders just be full of gas? I pulled the plugs and I am letting it “dry out” over night and gonna give her a try tomorrow

 

[SenorNoob]

If a cylinder was full of gas it either wouldn't turn over or would break something...

 

[North Idaho 5.oh]

If a cylinder was full of gas it either wouldn't turn over or would break something...

Kind of what I was thinking…. I just know that the muffler was covered in gasoline. Not entirely sure what is going on…. I’ll be picking up where I left off after the holiday weekend