- Joined
- Aug 4, 2025
- Messages
- 2
- Points
- 1
- City
- Denver
- State - Country
- CO - USA
- Other
- '12 Fiat 500 Abarth
- Vehicle Year
- 1996
- Vehicle
- Ford Ranger
- Drive
- 4WD
- Engine
- 3.0 V6
- Transmission
- Automatic
Hi all, I've been lurking on these forums for ages, and I'm finally starting to do some stuff with my own Ranger that I'd like to post, so here's my build thread!
I bought my '96 4x4 Ranger at auction, and for a year just enjoyed it in what I've fondly called its 'shitty truck era'. I had a V8 swap in mind when I was shopping for a Ranger, but first enjoyed it as a nice reliable truck before I got into it. Eventually I managed to talk myself into a Coyote swap because I wanted something truly bonkers and the challenge sounded like fun. These swaps are getting less rare, in that there are now a few on Youtube and Insta, vs maybe two when I first started looking at them a few years back, but I've found they still aren't super well documented. My hope is to try and capture the whole journey in this thread and I'll probably also be linking to a blog when I have more detail than fits in a forum post. Besides begin an amateur mechanic, I'm professionally a robotics engineer that works on large autonomous construction equipment, so I'll be trying to bring some of my systems engineering experience to this - mostly that'll be in rooting out and documenting interface problems I run into.
So here's the truck when I bought it:
And here it is next to the donor, a 2016 F-150 XL:
More to come as I get my notes together - for now this project is still in research stages and looking for where I can get parts.
Stay tuned!
I bought my '96 4x4 Ranger at auction, and for a year just enjoyed it in what I've fondly called its 'shitty truck era'. I had a V8 swap in mind when I was shopping for a Ranger, but first enjoyed it as a nice reliable truck before I got into it. Eventually I managed to talk myself into a Coyote swap because I wanted something truly bonkers and the challenge sounded like fun. These swaps are getting less rare, in that there are now a few on Youtube and Insta, vs maybe two when I first started looking at them a few years back, but I've found they still aren't super well documented. My hope is to try and capture the whole journey in this thread and I'll probably also be linking to a blog when I have more detail than fits in a forum post. Besides begin an amateur mechanic, I'm professionally a robotics engineer that works on large autonomous construction equipment, so I'll be trying to bring some of my systems engineering experience to this - mostly that'll be in rooting out and documenting interface problems I run into.
So here's the truck when I bought it:
And here it is next to the donor, a 2016 F-150 XL:
More to come as I get my notes together - for now this project is still in research stages and looking for where I can get parts.
Stay tuned!
