Picked up the truck with 200K on the odometer, but story was that my buddy bought truck as is with the head laying in the bed and the engine all rusted up from sitting for years after a head geasket replacement job was abandoned halfway through. He threw in a fresh-ish 2.3 with right at 100K miles on it from a rolled truck he bought on copart. He had plans to daily the truck for a bit and then build a budget drag truck out of it down the road.....but he is 6'6" or better and gave up on that during the 10 min drive to the BMV. lol He owned it long enough for his wife to name it "Perry" though..and that is its name to this day.
I was in need of a new DD because the CRX I had been driving was using more oil than a 2 stroke dirtbike, so we made a deal.
I drug it home and started going through it little by little as I drove it.
Obligatory Dingo photobomb
First I put fresh plugs, wires, and a timing belt on it.
Fresh rear brakes and cables (I need to do them again soon)
I snagged a cap from a local used car lot that was flipping a truck previously used as an underground utilitly survey truck
I also added factory cruise (Kind of a PITA for an XL 2wd it truns out due to no factory wiring provisions existing in the harness for it)…also swapped in a minty junkyard special leather steering wheel from an Explorer.
Also added bluetooth to a factory non casette/CD radio and converted all the backlighting to green. I put a tach cluster in around this time (subtle change is the orange FX4 needles on the black cluster)
Shortly after determined it needed a filler neck when it dumped fuel out whenever it was over 1/2 tank.
When winter rolled around it was time for snow tires. I still had a pair of WinterForce tires from the CRX that I stretched onto some freebie 14x7s
I ditched the explorer buckets my buddy threw in (power seats with out power hooked up) for an XL bench that Lee recovered on the cheap for me.
Ft: Dings as a pupper (Man.....Digging through old photos brings back some memories)
This seat actually cam out of my black SAS truck years before I ended up with the truck....
Dingo probably spent over 75K miles riding shotgun in this truck
My brother later reupholstered a different low back bench for this truck and the the gray seat went back to the black truck lol
Swapped to clear corner lights and beacon light
I snagged to 93-94 Splash mirrors and soaked them in satin black
At some point over the years I painted the cap gray (same paint was used to repaint the bumpers too)
Also went to 99-00 tails. I cut out the turn signal socket to run the extra bulb rather the rewire with a trailer plug like i did on my offroad truck
Not sure where in the real world timeline this is....but Dings is clearly getting thicker lol
Good friend of mine snagged this rare Breezer window for his SuperCab show truck (never seen another). He found out the hard way that 83-97 reg cab windows are different…so I ended up putting it in Perry
I also rocked a Super Duty third brake light delete for bit (made sense with the cap on 90% of the time)
About the same time I aquired a Mazda (later known as "The Mazda") that was abandoned on a buddy's jobsite for a few years and had no title. It became a beater trail rig and eventually donated many parts to my future trucks and many others across the nation. Most importantly were the 15x7 Eagle Alloys that I polished up and swapped onto Perry.
Truck got lowered on some DJM beams and splash coil springs (I think this is around the time I lost all of my photos when my phone was stolen....this is also when I was in the middle of putting the supercharger on my offroad truck)
I picked up some fabricated drop I beams at a junk yard from and explorer…only to later find out that they are Explorer/Bronco 2 specific ( they may fit a 4x4 TTB Ranger). I found out they were too long and the camber was all off after stripping and painting them.
The rear got a ranger 8.8 from a show truck that had 44s on it previosly.....I welded flip perches on and geared with 3.55s (gears out of the previously mentioned "OBS Lightning" axle that was under a 4x4 6cyl truck) and bolted in with some 4 door Explorer leaves
I added a factory fog light valance and fogs….wired up to a factory switch in a somewhat hard to find bezel (no 4x4, defrost, or rear wiper…just fogs and 12v plug).
**I'll add photos if i ever run across them**
Also somewhere it got a cat back stainless exhuast (JBA maybe?)
The next winter I rocked some 17" Crown Vic steelies, Ranger dog dishes, and Blizzaks (Photo at Watkins Glen Raceway during a winter trip to the Finger lakes)
The following year I threw some fresh WinterForces on some Bart steelies
Then the next year I cleaned up some Explorer wheels (AKA mini Lightning wheels)
The final round of winter wheels this truck ever saw (actually back on the truck now) where some heavily pitted FX4 Alcoas stripped and painted white
For summer time I always ran the Eagles with some fresh Yokohama 205/70 tires
Don’t remember when but at somepoint I bumped into the hitch on a Navigator at a red light...ended up going to a smooth chrome bumper and painted to match Splash grille. Photo taken a the Longaberger HQ
Lil 2.3 powered Perry did a lot of work for a lot years for me
Over 2000lbs of laminate flooring....
Spring clean up
Moving
Multch time
I picked up 3 of 4 Weld Scorpios...to this day I am still looking foe a 4th (never seen another set)
Also ran some 15x8 Alcoa Jeep wheels with 295s in rear for a summer or two
Then I snagged these discontinued 17x8 Amercian Racing wheels...I hate black wheels.
After many hours of stripping and polishing...they look half decent
