Shran's '86 Build

[85_Ranger4x4]

When I was looking a few years ago nothing was cheap other than direct replacement.

I finally got mine to seal so I don’t want to rock the boat.

 

[Shran]

Knock on wood... I think I got it! Maybe it was the full 36 hour cure time on the RTV that was key but I ran it for 20 minutes last night and it hasn't leaked a drop.

I may look at replacing the housing anyway if there's one threaded for a temp sensor. A quick look last night revealed a bunch. I have that stupid T fitting in the lower intake where the heater hose connects to and the temp sensor screws into that. The T fitting itself is 3/4 diameter so I have to use a piece of 3/4 hose and a reducer to get down to 5/8... it would be nice to have just a 5/8 barb fitting there to shorten up the whole assembly.

Clutch seems to be working better, a drive around town will confirm that.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Do you have the 90* housing or the other one?

Mine is the 90*, I can never remember if the application for the one with the port is for a SN95 Mustang or Explorer but the thermostats are different between them too.

 

[Shran]

Nope... mine's the 45* housing. I think it came with the engine (89 Crown Vic) but it's been a while and I may have robbed it off something else.

 

[Shran]

Haven't really wheeled this truck in a couple years so I figured I'd take it to our club event again this year. I trail gunned on Iceman (6/10 trail, moderate difficulty) on Friday, led it on Saturday and then my wife took it out on Sunday for the girl's run. Performed well enough but I destroyed a front RCV axle shaft on Friday:

And destroyed the lockout hub, and the spindle bearing...........

It was on this obstacle (not my truck obviously) which is not particularly difficult, I just had the wrong line on it, my cab corner got hung up on the big rock, tried to drive up the wall further because I couldn't hear my spotter, then almost tipped over when he told me to keep driving forward Had to winch out, remove the axle shaft, drove back to town and fortunately I had a spare and O'Reilly had a spindle bearing. Back on the road for the rest of the weekend.

My buddy broke the passenger side tie rod end somehow - just sheared off right by the jam nut. Weird place to break but he had a ready welder so a quick burn back together had him rolling again.

Everything squeaks and rattles and makes weird noises but it was noticeably worse after Saturday. Somehow all four leaf spring bushings have mostly evaporated? Very odd, they are only 6 years old and still have the stickers on them.

Also used the crap out of my new M18 inflator. It's perfect for airing up back at camp... one 8ah battery is enough to air up four 35's and four 33's from ~15psi to 30. It will fill a dead flat 35" tire to 30psi in 6 minutes.

All in all it was a really good weekend. We were at a new campground that everyone was nervous about but it worked out extremely well. I had a blast running my favorite trail, my wife had a lot of fun except the almost tip over moment and she actually did some crawling down a sketchy section unbeknownst to me while I was spotting some other people haha. Truck needs a lot of repairs - hopefully I will have time this winter to mess with it.

 

[Shran]

Warn won't warranty my broken hubs so I picked up a set of these babies. Spendy but not much else out there besides drive flanges for a 30 spline D44 application. The old Ford hubs of this design were bad ass, I'm sure these will be even better.

In other news I did a bunch of maintenance that was way overdue, which included:

- C bushings
- All four leaf spring eye bushings
- Pulled a bunch of dents out of the cab that were messing with the door strikes
- Wired in a couple new rock lights
- Add-a-leaf on the driver's rear to fix a leaning truck issue
- New power steering pressure hose
- Fixed rear brake hoses that were ripped off their mounts
- New brake master cylinder, I have working rear brakes now for the first time in almost 15 years
- Fuel injectors sent off & cleaned
- Replaced throttle body with one that doesn't stick
- Redid the upper heater hose fitting, Dorman makes one that is angled instead of straight up, huge improvement
- Moved the front clip over about 1/2" so that the body panels line up better and the hood closes straight
- ^ that required me to move the inner cooling fan over slightly
- Replaced the RCV outer shaft that I broke + the "bell" part of the CV joint that RCV made me swap out
- Replaced both driver's side wheel bearings, cleaned & repacked the passenge side
- Cleaned and fixed the Warn hubs that are being replaced
- Swapped out the distributor to rule out a squeaking noise, didn't help
- Cleaned up & painted my spare fuel tank w/ galvanized spray paint, swapped that out and installed a new rollover valve grommet and lock ring seal
- Built a better fuel tank skid plate out of two stock skid plates sandwiched together plus some reinforcements
- Organized my tool box and replaced a few things I either used or lost

Small things left to do. Hopefully I don't let things get this bad again, I've been making a list of things to do "later" for years and it feels good to be somewhat caught up.

 

[Shran]

Small update - those Yukon hubs are pretty cool. They are sometimes hard to unlock...guessing they get bound up like the old Ford ones do. Have not broke them yet though.

I also redid part of the fuel system. Previously I had the stock two pump setup but I deleted the front tank so that required some fuel line changes and there was way more rubber than I was comfortable with - in fact all of it between the tank and high pressure pump was rubber, and the return line was all rubber (and still is.) I was having some problem with the truck cutting out, dying randomly and backfiring and it ultimately traced back to a very loose external plug on the sending unit. I figured it would be a good time to just remove all the janky rubber hoses... I also deleted the fuel reservoir and high pressure pump, and converted to a single in-tank pump. Used steel brake line from the tank to the filter for the supply side and only have about a foot total rubber in that whole section now.

No more backfiring, no more random stalling out on the highway!