dhkonrad's 93 ford ranger

[McCrazy]

Hey man, I looked through your build earlier and your truck looks awesome! I saw you the other day on the freeway coming out of down town and it looks even better in person, so I had to say something!

 

[dhkonrad]

Hey man, I looked through your build earlier and your truck looks awesome! I saw you the other day on the freeway coming out of down town and it looks even better in person, so I had to say something!

Thanks man! I appreciate the compliment!

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[Bent Bolt]

Did you leave your coil buckets in the original position or did you space them out from the frame? From your pics it looks like you left them in place. The top of the coils look bowed in.

The whole project looks really good.

 

[dhkonrad]

Did you leave your coil buckets in the original position or did you space them out from the frame? From your pics it looks like you left them in place. The top of the coils look bowed in.

The whole project looks really good.

You are correct, that are not spaced out from the frame. They are slightly bowed in at the top, but that picture accentuates it. They bow much more front/back than in/out. I fixed most of that on the passenger side by moving the upper bucket forward, but the drivers side frame funkyness and lack of time prevented me from fixing that side. At some point I'll hopefully ditch the stock buckets in favor of custom ones and move the drivers side forward an inch or two, but they work for now.

Thanks man, it has been a huge learning experience and a lot of fun. I hope to continue improving the things that need improving and actually wheel it in the rocks for real soon!

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[UrbanRedneckKid]

It's almost impossible to fix the frontward bow on a radius arm setup. The side to side though, I'm have the adjustable buckets from Ballistic, and from where they put the center bolt hole, I moved it outwards 3/4", and it took care of it. Also making sure the axle is centered on the buckets, and not the fenders. I had a difference of 1/2" between my fenders and my chassis, unnoticeable without a tape measure. I moved my axle over 1/4" and everything was magically centered, and the coils were perfectly straight.

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[dhkonrad]

It's almost impossible to fix the frontward bow on a radius arm setup. The side to side though, I'm have the adjustable buckets from Ballistic, and from where they put the center bolt hole, I moved it outwards 3/4", and it took care of it. Also making sure the axle is centered on the buckets, and not the fenders. I had a difference of 1/2" between my fenders and my chassis, unnoticeable without a tape measure. I moved my axle over 1/4" and everything was magically centered, and the coils were perfectly straight.

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I would love to get the ballistic buckets because among other things I could fix the fact that my drivers side sits about 1 inch lower than the the passenger side.
That's good to know about the centering though. I need to remake my track bar, because now that the sounds have settled, it is too short even with the adjustment built into the Heimz. Although that may be moot if I get the ballistic buckets and bump up my height an inch...

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[UrbanRedneckKid]

That's exactly why I had to do. I had the buckets at +1", my springs settled 1.5". I set the buckets to +2" and did a trackbar adjustment.

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[Bent Bolt]

You are correct, that are not spaced out from the frame. They are slightly bowed in at the top, but that picture accentuates it. They bow much more front/back than in/out. I fixed most of that on the passenger side by moving the upper bucket forward, but the drivers side frame funkyness and lack of time prevented me from fixing that side. At some point I'll hopefully ditch the stock buckets in favor of custom ones and move the drivers side forward an inch or two, but they work for now.

Thanks man, it has been a huge learning experience and a lot of fun. I hope to continue improving the things that need improving and actually wheel it in the rocks for real soon!

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

Cool. I'm tearing out my TTB today and mocking up the FWD44 . I really did not want to space the buckets out as it doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling. In my mind it would put too much stress on the frame, twisting it. I'll go to coil overs in the future if I don't like the coils.

 

[dhkonrad]

Now that I am on break from school I got back to work on my truck
Got my frame rails boxed where the radius arms mount in, finished boxing in my trackbar mount to the frame, and built a rear bumper (kind of).

I also FINALLY got to take her out on some rocks.


I was very satisfied with how she performed. I skipped a few really rough sections because this was more or less my first real trail since the SAS. I hit the sliders a few times and landed it pretty hard on both the link mounts and the radius arms themselves more than a couple times. The radius arms held up great without any bending. The gears were almost perfect and got me through a lot of places I struggled before and figured I would have struggled more now even with the SAS. I hardly ever wanted for a lower gear, but a lower gear couldn't have hurt. Sometimes I could have done with some better shock control, but all in all it was pretty stable as well. The only real damage I did was I bent the lip of one rim when my front tire slipped off it. It still holds air though so I'm not horribly worried about it. My truck finally looks used.

beautiful scenery:


I only got a couple videos, and they were in kind of random spots, not necessarily the most difficult spots.




I also made the beginnings of a rock garden at my house and then promptly got to work doing damage:

 

[Grunizzle]

A doubler would be nice, you can always use lower gears haha. Is your front locked? I was watching the video and couldn't quite tell. Rig is looking good though!

 

[dhkonrad]

A doubler would be nice, you can always use lower gears haha. Is your front locked? I was watching the video and couldn't quite tell. Rig is looking good though!

Thanks!
A doubler would be great! I have the front half of two 1354m's sitting around, so I may see what I can do about a doubler here in the probably-not-so-near future.
My front is not locked as of yet. There are spots that it would definitely have been helpful, although probably not as much on this trip because my biggest issue was just that everything was covered in ice. Where there wasn't ice I didn't do too bad. My buddy that I was with was locked front and rear and he spun in the ice almost as much as me.
I'm not quite sure yet what I am going to do about locking the front since I am completely out of money and don't see getting that much expendable income very soon (I know, story of 99% of the people on here), but I definitely need to do something if I want to do anything bigger trail wise.

 

[UrbanRedneckKid]

... Is your front locked?

Doesn't look like it @ 1:19 in the video.

Looks and sounds like somebody needs a Saginaw upgrade. Truck looked like it performs pretty well.

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[dhkonrad]

Doesn't look like it @ 1:19 in the video.

Looks and sounds like somebody needs a Saginaw upgrade. Truck looked like it performs pretty well.

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Thanks. I was very satisfied with it. I can't wait to hit some more trails though. In fact, I am kicking around the idea of trying to hit up Rubicon with my dad while I'm back.
Yeah about that. After about 1-2 miles in it was yelling and screaming at me like a dying cat. I guess I'll have to put that on the list of stuff to do as well...

 

[dhkonrad]

Ive been doing some miscellaneous stuff on my truck and keeping my eye out for damages from last weekends wheeling. Pretty much everything under my truck is scraped/gouged up, but pretty much just that. Nothing is bent or broken, except for my passenger side front rim which I bent the lip of at Fordyce:



and obviously my driveshaft that I broke.
Here's another picture of my rear bumper that I whipped up the night before I went wheeling:

Its 2x6 .120 wall that I had lying over from my sliders. Nothing awesome, but it has a way better departure angle than the stock one. I want to make some minor changes, but Ill probably do them later on.

Since I broke my driveshaft, I figured now would be a perfect time to upgrade to a one piece


Also, I figured it couldn't hurt to have a spare/trail shaft, so I cup up my broken one and made another one.
I cut out all the parts that were bent/dented


then took a piece of pipe that was almost the perfect size, just a little too big and sanded it down until I could use a deadblow to beat the pipe into the ends of the driveshaft and welded up where the pipe goes in and as an extra precaution I plug welded it.




slapped a coat of paint on it and viola




seems pretty straight and should be way stronger than a stock shaft, so ill probably use it as a trail shaft and just swap it in when I get to a trail so I don't beat up my DD shaft.

 

[kris97ranger]

Personally i would have stood the rear bumper up on its edge and recessed it in like a roll pan. Less protection to the corners but it would look better to me.