- Joined
- Jul 11, 2026
- Messages
- 1
- Points
- 1
- City
- Los Angeles
- State - Country
- LA - USA
- Vehicle
- Ford Bronco II
- Drive
- 2WD
- Engine
- 2.9 V6
- Transmission
- Automatic
That's weird. I'd have figured Ford used the same open bearings as in a regular transfer case. You can see where the fill would've been, but the doesn't look removable.
You’re asking a lot you knowIf Ford was logical they would have just grabbed a 2wd trans from the Ranger that was already in the same building as these abominations.
We has a Ranger engineer from Ford as a speaker at a parts and service manager meeting right after the pulse vacuum hubs were released. I asked why they came up with that set up instead of just using the IFS suspension and front drive that Explorers had since 1995. He didn't know about Explorers. Apparently the Ranger engineers didn't talk to the Explorer guys. Common sense (a foreign concept to an engineer) told me the Bronco II and Explorer were both station wagon versions of Rangers. By May of 2017 when I retired we'd had exactly one 2wd Bronco II in our shop, we never stocked a new 2wd.If Ford was logical they would have just grabbed a 2wd trans from the Ranger that was already in the same building as these abominations.
Sounds about right based on my 99 Explorer to Ranger engine swap. So much of what was in each vehicle was 99% identical, to the extent that it seemed like someone wrote down clear instructions to two independent development teams doing the same tasks, then left them to their own devices. As an example, my 3.0 Ranger and 5.0 Explorer used exactly the same air filter, and the housing design used the same concepts - attaching too the passenger fender well with the same number of fasteners in approximately the same locations, etc. But never in exactly the same way… The 3.0 box wouldn’t attach to the 5.0 intake. The 5.0 box wouldn’t bolt down in the same spot as the 3.0 box because the fasteners were moved just a fraction. It was maddeningly close but not the same.We has a Ranger engineer from Ford as a speaker at a parts and service manager meeting right after the pulse vacuum hubs were released. I asked why they came up with that set up instead of just using the IFS suspension and front drive that Explorers had since 1995. He didn't know about Explorers. Apparently the Ranger engineers didn't talk to the Explorer guys. Common sense (a foreign concept to an engineer) told me the Bronco II and Explorer were both station wagon versions of Rangers. By May of 2017 when I retired we'd had exactly one 2wd Bronco II in our shop, we never stocked a new 2wd.