ForOffRoadDriving's 94 Ranger Build

[grey ghost]

damn that's one sweet build . nice work everyone did . your one lucky man to have your girl help out.

i can't wait to see the rest of this build /restoration.

 

[motohead771]

Very very nice build. Great attention to detail. That truck will be like new when your done.

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

thanks guys, im glad you all like it. I plan on D.D.ing this truck until the wheels fall off when its done, so I think it should hold together pretty well with all the painting I did. I got more pictures to upload so keep checking back.

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

I put the driveshaft together last night, but when I went to put it on the truck it wouldnt slide onto the trans. Further inspection reavealed that Im a dumbass and didnt think to swap the automatic yoke to the manual yoke. I got it all set now, I blasted my MT yoke and now i just have to paint it and press the joint back into it. I also fixed the CD player that was in the truck. The RCA cable plugs didnt work, so my amp got no signal from the head unit. I took it apart and found that the solder joints had broken so i just heated them back up and gave them a drip of solder and its all better now.

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

My friends dad finally came back over last night and helped me set my front fenders and fit the header panel up. I was going to put the inner fender wells in but i didnt have any clips to screw the screws into so Im going to do that tonight.

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

I was going to try not to paint it, but the roof is too bad to ignore and I dont think I can fix the bed with out messin up the paint too bad so its going to get a full paint job sometime this summer. My best friend and his dad have been building a 78' camaro and they will be converting their pole barn to a paint booth for a week or two to paint the camaro so Im hoping to squeeze in there and shoot mine up. I will most likely go with the same dark blue, although gun metal grey would look good if I didnt have a blue interior.

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

got some updated pics for you guys. My little brother and I put the driveshaft in the truck this weekend but I didnt switch the yokes from AT to MT (the driveshaft is the original one for the truck wich used to be AT). I switched out the yokes, snapped some pictures before installing, and the SON OF A BITCH IS 3" TOO SHORT! It has been said that the A4LD and the M5OD are the same length, but after measuring them i came up with 32" on the manual and 35" on the auto. So now im waiting on a longer driveshaft to fall into place.

Automatic yoke

Manual Yoke

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

When I hit the "speed bump" with the driveshaft I decided to move on to the tires. With the tax season up on us I plan on using my returns to get a set of 5 BFG mall terrains and another soft 8 to use as a spare. I wasnt sure if I could fit 30x9.50s on this truck, so while my brother was asleep I stole the wheels off his STX and put them on mine. I forgot to take a picture of his truck for you guys, and im sorry about the pic quality, its kind of cramped in the garage right now but here they are.

This last picture is of my dual batteries in their trays. I really need to reinforce the one on the passenger side or get one out of a genII with a factory mounted passenger side battery.

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

i got another update for you guys since its been a while since the last one. its been a crappy couple of weeks but ive managed to get a lot of work done on the truck and around the house since me and the girlfriend split up (she dumped me on valentines day AFTER i took her out for the night and she gobbled up all my cheddar!). I got all of my Autometer gauges hooked up electrically and i just have to run wires for my voltmeter and my temp gauge and ill be ready to move on to the stereo system! I encountered a melted headlight switch pigtail when i was moving wires around and decided to fix it while i was in there so i got some pics of that too. I also took a stroll out to my parts truck and snatched a 4 terminal connector to wire into the tach so i can remove it if i need to. heres the pics:

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

got a little bored and decided to snap some pics of the RESCUE RANGER while i had the camera out.

my window latch upgrade courtesy of the tech library

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

sorry guys, but I havent made any progress in a few weeks. I went up north snowboarding for a week and its just been cold around here so I havent gotten out in the garage to be productive. I did buy a starter for the engine so now im just waiting on a $100 to fall in my lap so i can go buy my 130 amp alternator. Ive got this weekend off work so hopefully I can get a few more things done and post up some more pictures for you guys.

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

Im finally getting around to posting some more updates on the truck. I got my starter and alternator for the truck and bolted them up, bought an inline filter for my power steering pump and installed that and then filled the resevoir and cycled the pump by hand to fill it to capacity and was all excited that i would finally be able to start it up! Then i remembered i still needed to get oxygen sensors, DOH! I saved up for a couple weeks and then bought 2 NTK o2 sensors and the rest of my exhaust including a 50 series flowmaster. I had some fabricating to do on my catalytic converters because my flanges were so rotten i would have broke them off trying to crush the graphite gasket that goes between the pipes. I decided to take my spare catalytic converter and gut it, incase i have problems in the future like a catalyst melt down or something unexpected like that (plus its nice to have a sure way to know youre not plugged up). once I was done welding i took the exhaust parts to work and sprayed them with hi temp paint and then put them in the oven to cure. The next night i had my friend and his dad over and we tied up some loose ends and finally got her fired up.

 

[motohead771]

did you repack the cats or gut them?

 

[graff104]

Wow I wish I had another truck so i could give my '94 the TLC she deserves like you are doing. Pretty much everything i want to do its right here and your doing it. Wow

 

[Destroyer000]

this is one HELL of a sweet build.. awesome job! but you went through an cleaned/fixed everything why did you gut the cat?