Project #11 - new daily driver '94 Ranger

[Shran]

Since I can't leave things alone...

3.27 gears in this truck were a real bummer. I had a good pair of axles with 3.73's from a '94 B4000 that I crushed recently so yesterday I swapped both in. Finished at about midnight. Would have been done a lot earlier but my spare wheel cylinders were wrong, had to rebuild those, and the driver's side front beam was just totally crusted in grease so way more cleaning than expected was required.

Drove it to work today and can tell it is MUCH happier. I was not really able to use overdrive on the highway before, it was always shifting down into 3rd at highway speeds. Now it's pretty happy at 70mph in OD.

My driver's side wheel bearing is very unhappy though. I will need to tear into that tonight. Not sure what's going on there, my exhaustion may have affected my assembly process?

 

[Shran]

Not sure what the wheel bearing noise I thought I heard was. Maybe just tires/road noise and extra paranoia on my part. I tore both sides down, cleaned everything, repacked the bearings. The passenger side bearings show evidence of getting a bit warm but I’m gonna run em.

More annoying is the drivers side rear drum is getting hot. I noticed a smell when I got out of it at work this morning. The wheel was warm, other side was not. It got warm on the way home too so I took it apart and nothing seemed out of whack. I did not use the original star wheel adjuster so I swapped that out with the one I had in before, drove it about 10 miles and it got hot again. Ugh.

IR temp gun said that drum was 170 degrees and the passenger side one was about 80.

I cleaned up my original wheel cylinder and put that in instead of the spare I had rebuilt. The spare was pretty crusty but I thought I had honed it out well enough, maybe not and it was sticking. Grasping at straws here. I’ll drive it tomorrow and see. Collapsed soft line or something not very obvious is all I can think of, hopefully it was just a dud wheel cylinder rebuild.

 

[Shran]

Think it's fixed and I'm back on the road. I posted another thread about the brake issue and it ultimately had to be one of three things - small groove in the backing plate wear pad, a drum that was out of round (had it turned, can't confirm) or lack of grease where the shoes rub against the backing plate.

I also found a leaking wheel seal so I replaced both of those and the wheel bearings. I think one was starting to fail anyway, there were little gouges on the shaft from the bearing rollers, kinda weird. All is good now and I suppose it didn't hurt to have the cover off & inspect everything plus change the oil, I highly doubt that was ever done in the past and the donor truck had 188k on it.

 

[Shran]

Been busy with other projects but I bought a couple of things for this truck:

#1, a whole bunch of Raptor Liner that I'm going spray in the bed
#2, this headache rack that I scored for $50. I am going to fill in the window opening with expanded steel. Also going to paint it black. Ever since smashing out the middle window in my work truck, I am super paranoid about doing it again, and this should keep it safe.

 

[Shran]

Two other projects done on this truck: first was a spray in Raptor Liner bedliner. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I got that done about 2 weeks ago and have been driving it a bit but wanted to get the headache rack in and the tool box goes on top of the rack so I didn't want to put that in either. I feel nude without my tool box full of crap. I'm not going to do the tailgate quite yet, I like the plastic deal that's on it and my tailgate is usually my workbench so I decided to leave it alone for now and maybe bedliner it later, or never.

Second project was the headache rack. I wanted work lights so I had to move two of the vertical tubes and then I welded in expanded steel and gave the whole thing a coat of black paint. I had that done middle of last week and this last weekend I got everything put back and bolted down. Wired the lights in yesterday, put all my crap back in the tool box. FINALLY I feel complete again.

My plastic bedliner went in my wife's 95 in the background and I took her rubber bed mat. I like those, they keep things from sliding around and help keep the bottom from getting beat up from things that get dropped on it.

 

[Uncle Gump]

That rack is pretty sweet... and for $50.

 

[Shran]

I like the rack a lot, the price was definitely a very nice bonus. Kind of a weird item, it has those really nice bends in the square tubing near the back and some other professional looking stuff but there were some obvious booger welds and things that were not quite straight. I'd like to know the history on it, makes me think it was built out of something else or a pro fabricator did half of it and handed it off to his 15 year old kid to finish.

I am going to love the tie down points on it, tie downs on these trucks are few & far between.