ForOffRoadDriving's 94 Ranger Build

[-Nathan-]

can you e-mail me your old diff cover?!?!



Robert

how the hell do you e-mail a diff cover?

how you liking the gear swap bro?

 

[Bennybooster]

^^^^^^^ Its a figure of speech

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

the new gears are awesome! ive been taking it easy on the gears since their still in their break in period, but 5th gear is usable again and taking off from a dead stop on a hill no longer requires reving up the 3.0l and slipping the hell out of the clutch to get going. i had a little extra time on my hands this morning so i started on the next tool box mod:

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

i went to the ford dealer on my lunch break and picked up the new speedo gear, then changed it in the parking lot and used my speedo app on my droid and confirmed that its dead on again! that was almost too easy of a job considering how involved the rest of it has been. on another note, i think i now know what the cause of my driveline noise was that ive had since i put it on the road. back when i was rebuilding the truck i took my axle to a local garage to have them reassemble it after i removed and replaced all the bearings because i wasnt confident that i could do it right if it needed any shimming. my thought is that when they torqued the pinion nut down they used the torque spec for used bearings and not new bearings which resulted in a whine when no load was placed on the driveline (inbetween acceleration and deceleration). my new gear set is quiet as a mouse (aside form the occasional click or bang from the lockrite) and all in all i couldnt be happier right now! hopefully after work i can get my tool box light wired up and then think about what the next mod will be.

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

The wires are run and light works! Job well done..... for now, all i have to do now is test it in the real world and see how it performs.

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

terra and i went to babies r us yesterday and since we were close to the biggest fabric store around, i decided we should stop in an see what they had in the way of blue plaid fabric for my headliner. i was kind of dissapointed by the selection but their shelves looked like they needed restocking so maybe next time there will be more choices?

heres the 3 that i found that were close to my interior colors

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

500 miles went by faster than i thought so using the last few hours of daylight on monday i popped off the diff cover and changed out the fluid. the added drain plug made things less messy and all looked well inside so id say this was a successful regear!

a few metal shavings on the fill plug

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

been pretty bored lately with all the rain weve been getting so i decided to do some painting. Since i ditched the yellow smiley diff cover and took off all the accel stickers on the outside of the truck, i though i should add some more grabber green to make the green monster diff cover look more at home. my stock coil was getting a little rusty around the edges so i gave it a wipe down followed by a tape job, followed by 3 coats of grabber green. its not my favorite color but its ok i guess?

yeah, its pretty dirty but its also my DD!

 

[TheTopher]

Back when my Ranger was my DD...

No cool green like yours tho.

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

How often does that thing see a dirt road? i dont even see a hint of dust on it!

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

gravity finally caught up with my fishing pole holder in the truck, i came out to the truck to go to work and noticed it had pulled the foam right off from the tape, so i cut another wedge and then reattached the old one. hopefully this will be enough support to keep gravity from taking over, the goal is just to keep my pflueger reel off the floor and my disc golf bag off the rod.

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

WOW! i just looked at my last post and its been over a month since i last made an update, i guess ive just been busy living life? ive got a few things to post up now, since an entire month has already passed! first off i finally got a side job big enough to pay for my lockrite and my actron scan tool, while i dont agree with what i did to this car, money is money!

i put a 4" lift kit on my friends 1989 chevy caprice brougham, hes always wanted big wheels on a car so once he saved up enough money we made it happen (i know the wheels arent on the car in the pics, he bought the only set style of that wheel they had left and it was the wrong bolt pattern so he had to buy adapters from the wheel shop and they put them on once i finished putting the kit on).

the second up date is much more life changing, on June 23 Terra gave birth to our son Karson James W. (her last name is on the birth certificate but we both have W's for our last initials), he was 6lbs 1oz and 19" long.

grandma (my mom) holding him

grandpa holding karson at the diaper party my friends threw for us

and finally the aftermath of THE DIAPER PARTY!

hours before:

4:30 am: it was drunk as **** out, my little brother was driving me home because of the prior statement, but i suggested we detour past my favorite wheeling spot and told him to get in the passenger seat it was all over. i cant really tell what kind of line i was trying to pick, the best i can conclude is that i was trying to straddle the deep ruts using the exposed dirt between the ruts, but obvioulsy the front end found the deep ruts and thats when our forward movement ceased. once i got out to asess the stuckage, i either misjudged how far away the closest dirt strip was from the truck or i just plain fell out of the truck, but either way i ended up covered head to toe in stinky, mucky, mud. in an effort to get myself un stuck i set up my Hi-lift winch system, but being very drunk i forgot an important part of the system, the choker chain that connects to the base of the jack so that when you put the jack in reverse the truck doesnt move back into its original stuck position. after struggling in the mud and finding out that neither of the pins in the hi-lift were moving anymore due to being packed full of mud, i decided to pull the keys, lock the truck, and start the drunken/ exhausted/ dehydrated walk home (about 2 miles through the woods and down a dead end street). i had to work the following day so after waking up for work and finding all of the mud in my bed i soon remembered what had happened the night before and started making plans to get it unstuck after work. with the help of my waders, a shovel, a jeep cherokee, and good friends we were able to make it an uneventful recovery, execpt for the part where i lost my keys! after running home and grabbing a spare set we had it out and i was on my way to rays house to endure 4 hours of power washing followed by a sudsy bucket wash, after which i look for any visible damage to the underside before proceeding the interior clean up.

after being pulled forward through the hole we had to turn around and go back through it again. this was pretty uneventful also except for the michigan pinstripe job i recieved from a bush on the passenger side.

 

[nuclassic]

Congratulations man

 

[TheTopher]

You should tell Terra not too complain too much, it was just as hard pushing that truck out of the mud.


On second thought, don't tell her that. We kinda like having you alive.

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

Ive recently encountered a problem with my son being able to keep his head up while being strapped in his car seat in the sport trac, so as always ive engineered a solution. much like the neck braces used in MX and other motorsports, i shaped some foam and cut it like a wedge so that it can be slipped around his neck and under his chin to support his head when he gets sleepy from the hum of the Cooper SSTs.

here you can see the green surround that is made for infants, but hes too small for it to be effective.

heres my solution