playing with a couple rust buckets

[andrewr]

My first car was a 1990 Ranger (not the one pictured above), pretty decent little truck. Dad was a mechanic and he and I spent countless hours working on it over the first few years of me driving. Then I got a different newer vehicle, went off to college, bought a house, the old pickup has sat at my folk's place all these years. Still somewhat runs but its body nearly rusted away.

Then this 1992 dropped into my lap for free. Very similar to my old 90, they are both extended cab STX with the 4.0 and 4x4. The main difference is this 92 has the 5 speed and electric-controlled transfer case, my old 90 was manual t-case and automatic trans.

This 92 is a little beat up but the engine seems pretty sound. Got it for free because the clutch seems to be out of it. It is very rusty underneath, it was living life as a plow truck, probably why the clutch is gone. One rear brake line is bad too.

I figured, cheap as clutch disks are, I'd do that job and fix the brakes and maybe have a decent little beater truck. I should have known better!

You maybe noticed it squats a little in the rear, I noticed too. Poked my head under there to look and found this on both sides:

Yuck. I've drilled out those rivets and replaced the leaf spring brackets before, about 10 years ago on my 90. It wasn't a fun job, and at that time the box was even off making access pretty easy but of course it still sucked. Not looking forward to that, but I can't just leave the leaf springs jabbing at the bottom of the box...

I suspect a nasty can of rusty worms is being opened here with this project, we'll see how it goes.

To start with I need to hike over to my folks and look at my old 90, see how badly rusted the spring brackets are on that one. A decade ago when I did that truck I ponied up for a new set of heavy duty leaf springs so if they and the brackets and hangers aren't rusted away maybe I will cannibalize the older truck to fix this one. I kinda have to do that no matter what, the wheels and tires shown in the photo are "borrowed" from my dad's 94 (he has his snow tires/rims on right now).

I'm not in contact with the previous owner. I wish I knew more about the history of this one, it looks like somebody maybe tried to do a clutch job at some point. I see fresh-ish RTV around the transfer case to transmission joint and I can't be sure yet but it seems like one of the top bolts of the bellhousing isn't even present and some rtv around the floor where it looks like someone maybe chopped into it to get at some bolts

She might be doomed but I figure I've got nothing to lose, I'll give it a go. Wish me luck!

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Good luck.
I did the passenger rear spring rear bracket on my 94 about 6 months ago. Same as yours. Not fun but doable even with the box on.

 

[rangerenthiusiast]

I bet the wife is thrilled! lol

Good luck, brotha.

 

[andrewr]

Not fun but doable even with the box on.

Thats good to hear, because I don't want to take the box off, especially don't want to take the boxes off of TWO trucks since I am hoping to steal good ones off the older one instead of buying new. I won't know for sure what way I am going with that until I see the condition of the parts truck, it would be easier to just buy new brackets I'm sure but might be nice to have those heavy-duty springs with the extra leafs that are on the parts truck.

I bet the wife is thrilled!

Ohhh yes... she is so happy. She is only tolerating the project now because she is under the impression we are fixing it to sell it... Personally, I don't know if I will want to sell it. Its not going to be worth much and could be pretty useful to have another 4x4 beater, right now I have a Jeep and she has a little Honda civic. Being in northern Minnesota, could be a big plus to be able to let her take the 2017 Jeep to work and me drive my beater ranger to work when it snows, and just leave the civic in the garage rather than trying to ram it through all the snow and avoid it getting stuck somewhere. Hopefully she will see the logic in that when the time comes