94' mods

[jspyke]

I'm new to the site but what a great community! I've owned my ranger for about 5 years, but other than taking it up some four wheeler trails, it hasn't seen a lot of action till recently. A little info about it:

94' XL 4x4, 3.0, 5 speed manual 140kmi. I did a valve job on it about 25k ago, and some tranny work last year. I also replaces the stock auto hubs with manual last winter, though it still has the push button 4wd on the dash. when i bought it it had some 31x10.5 r15's on aluminum rims, and stock on pretty much everything else. That being said I'm looking at keeping it and doing a lot of work on it. It needs a few cosmetic details but I want to start with performance adjustments first.

I'm not planning on doing any serious rock climbing, we have a few high desert amateur trail races up here, the kinda thing most sane people only take sport four wheelers or 2 wheelers on, ha ha. And it'll be my hunting rig as well. I've been looking at adding a suspension lift kit in the neighborhood of 3-4" and was wondering if anyone had any particular brands they would avoid. I've looked at a few online and at the local 4x4 shops and a lot seam personal preference. Also, since I plan on doing the work, can anyone point me at some info for adjusting steering and linkage for bigger wheels/tires, and where i can find info on how big of tire I should go with once i get my end clearance? I sifted through some stikies here and found a lot of resource, but not quite what I was looking for, any help would be appreciated. I attached a pic of the ol gal for posterity. Thanks.

 

[zukirider21]

hey man, welcome to the forum!

your ride looks nice and clean, and as with any ranger there's lots of potential.

as far as lift kits go, skyjackers are pretty foolproof as far as quality goes, and they tend to have really flexy springs. superlift has good prices and i'd say quality is fine as long as you arent too hard on it.

of course you're better off doing a real lift like that, but if you wanna be cheap you could do a body lift and you can lift the front end about 2" by getting coil spacers. youll need upper ball joint alignment bushings and maybe offset radius arm bushings if you go that route to correct caster and camber.

for steering, just get it aligned after you lift it. if you do a big lift and end up with bad bumpsteer, get a drop pitman arm if you dont already have one. you could also use superlift "superrunner" steering which is more like a traditional setup with an idler arm and center link. that's supposed to totally eliminate bump steer.

good luck and make sure to post lots of pics and updates of your progress!