building a ranger for the 24 hrs of lemons

[alaskaal]

Evening!
New guy from the east coast (Delaware) here.
Been racing the 24 hours of lemons for several years now and our team decided to try our luck with a pickup. Now being a true blue ford die hard the choice was pretty simple..... a ranger.
Our first race car was a 1980 field find Ford Fiesta. It made an awesome vid when we melted the block while racing! Next was a 88 mustang that made approx. 65 laps before the tired 302 gave out. Next year was the same car with a built 306/T5 combo. Ran great till our rookie t boned a BMW at 80 mph!!
So we picked up a non running 89 4 banger extra cab 2 wheel drive to build next. Should be interesting since we also bought a fully built 87 turbo coupe motor with a rather large holeset turbo from a friend. Should easily put 300 hp down with a manual valve body C4 auto.
Now I'm an old school ford guy (I'm 54) and know nothing about these computer cars and have been doing a lot of reading here on the forums.
We would prefer to keep it efi and not a blow thru carb setup but have zero ideas on what computer to use. And the stand alone systems baffle me even more! lol
Ill keep reading thru the post here and try to answer my own questions but please feel free to give a new guy some guidance.
Thanks everyone!

 

[Curious Hound]

Well, I can't help with your ecu question. But I do wish you the best of luck and hope maybe you could do a build thread here on TRS so we can follow your adventure. All I know about this particular race is what I've seen in episodes of Roadkill. It looks like a lot of fun.

Eric B

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Hi,
Welcome to TRS. Good luck on your racing ventures.

I can't help you on the computer/turbo part of the build, but I hope you post your solutions as you find them. One day I'd like to go to a turbo 4-banger in my race truck. See link, unfortunately most of my pics were on photobucket so are gone for now.

For handling; your Ranger has a TIB front suspension, which isn't the greatest for handling corners. Great for taking jumps and whoops tho, look at some desert racing and pre-runners to see what they can do.

For corner carving I would suggest the following.
Lower and stiffen the springs as much as possible. I went to a fullsize ford big block truck spring and cut a coil and a half out. You might be able to do a fullsize small block truck spring and remove a coil or two because your not taking jumps. Add the biggest anti-roll bar you can find, 1 1/8", which came on the B-2's and mid 80's STX Hi-Rider trucks. You will then have a truck that will plow straight thru any corner you want....until you add a 1" anti-roll bar from the rear of a full-size ford truck. You can tweak the curves with a 20-ton press to make it fit a ranger frame [without heat]. The reason I did these things to my truck is in the picture of my avatar. [look left]. The TIB and TTB fronts suspension can load up when going thru tight s-corners and then easy flip. The front anti-roll bars prevent the loading up, the rear helps get the ass end around. If you find you are still plowing thru corners, go with slightly smaller front bar. Bigger bar = less traction / smaller bar = more traction
As much as possible within the rules, remove weight from the front.

 

[alaskaal]

Thanks for both the welcome and the info! Very much appreciated

 

[malachipclover]

Welcome to the forum.

Now I'm an old school ford guy (I'm 54) and know nothing about these computer cars and have been doing a lot of reading here on the forums.

Don't sweat it too much, I'm CompTIA A+ certified (IT certification) and I still know next to nothing about the computers in a car.

 

[BlackBII]

One option for that setup is an LA3 computer and a 'big' vane air meter.