The Lone Ranger – Kage’s ’94 X-Cab Leaf SAS and Bed Bob

[Bray D]

Awesome report. Looks like a great trip, and you got some quality time in with the lady. Win-win.

 

[Kage]

What is this that you use? Is it an app for a phone or what?

I've got a Delorme PN-20 (now discontinued, looks like the PN-60 is the new one) with their mapping softawre. There is a bit of a learning curve to getting it to work right (at least with the version of software that I'm using), but it's awesome for navigation.

I know there is some phone apps that will do similar things, but they require cell service which isn't allways available where we play at.

Get with the times brother! The ranger will be wheeled again. It won't see the caliber trails I'll take the Explorer on, but it will still hit some dirt.

Bah! Maybe this week, we'll see how long it takes for you to change your mind again

Awesome report. Looks like a great trip, and you got some quality time in with the lady. Win-win.

Yup! Its one of the parks she likes to go to. She does like to complain when I do some of that 'stupid' stuff though

Looks like I need to pull the radiator out of the truck as I think that's what's causing my overheating issues. When Playing with the IR gun, I'm not getting much of a temperature drop across it (about 8°F). So I've either got some build up inside, or there's just crap built up in front of it. I'll use that as an exucse to go ahead and replace my leaking lower intake gasket at the same time (I've allready tried to tighten it once before, now its replacement time).

In a little less than two weeeks, we head out west again. Unfortunately, it won't be in the Ranger but in a more stock-ish XJ. I've got some mixed feelings about that, but the Truck isn't where I want it to be for another westward trip right now. I'll put up some photos form that trip when the time comes.

 

[escort_gts]

I've got a Delorme PN-20 (now discontinued, looks like the PN-60 is the new one) with their mapping softawre. There is a bit of a learning curve to getting it to work right (at least with the version of software that I'm using), but it's awesome for navigation.

I know there is some phone apps that will do similar things, but they require cell service which isn't allways available where we play at.

I've been using My Tracks by Google. Works good for me. I can view it on Google maps and even save it to my Google account.

Sent from my HTC SUPERSONIC using Tapatalk 2

 

[Suffolk JK]

On the Bronco II tank, does the Ranger pump, sending unit, etc. swap right over to the Bronco II tank or were Bronco II units needed? About to start my 1 ton swap onto my 2WD Ranger and have been reading your thread relentlessly.

Thanks for all the info!

 

[crawlin91]

You need a efi BII tank that has the larger 3 5/8" opening, then the Ranger pump assembly will drop right in. Then just extend the lines and harness and you are good to go. I believe the split was in 1986 but you can see the difference in tanks in these pics.

84 BII tank

88 BII tank on left, 84 on the right

 

[Josh40601]

I don't think the newest ranger pumps will fit though. The pump I am using from the 01 cab is much larger than the 94 pump

 

[Kage]

On the Bronco II tank, does the Ranger pump, sending unit, etc. swap right over to the Bronco II tank or were Bronco II units needed? About to start my 1 ton swap onto my 2WD Ranger and have been reading your thread relentlessly.

Thanks for all the info!

I apologize for the delay in getting back to this, but it looks like Crawlin did a good job of answering the question. And yes, I literally dropped my Ranger pump into the BII tank paying attention to how the fuel level sender was sitting. I did not bother trying to make the fuel gauge read correctly, I just know that when the gauge reads 1/4 th tank, I need to start looking for fuel!

Despite others complaining about the loss of ground clearance by going to the BII tank, I have yet to be in a situation where it caused me an issue. I can safely say that having the extra fuel capacity its friggin awesome for the amount of driving I do with this thing (I have a very comfortable range of 260 ish miles, though I've pused it as high as 290).

Hope that Helps

I don't think the newest ranger pumps will fit though. The pump I am using from the 01 cab is much larger than the 94 pump

I think things changed a bit when they went to a 'returnless' style of pump, but I have not played with one first hand.


For some entertainiment, here's the link from our trip that we recently took out west in an XJ (I missed the Ranger during the trip alot!).

UT/CO in an XJ 2012 (Link)

 

[Kage]

Misc Maintenance

I’ve been fighting a bit of an overheating problem on the Ranger on the trail as well as some highway conditions (pulling long hills for example). I’ve also known that I needed to do something about my leaking intake and valve covers. Over memorial day I tackled both issues.

The first part of the maintenance was easy (though time consuming) and well documented on the interwebz for the lower intake manifold gasket replacement.

You take this:

Pull all the crap off and you get this:

Assembly is the reverse of removal I took the time to swap out my rusted though valve covers with some less rusted through ones while I was at it. The big surprise here was that this truck was running as well as it was with the lower gasket in the condition it was in. With all the crap cleaned out of the runner (one runner was blocked about 35%), I now have something called ‘low end torque’. It makes it much more pleasant to drive now though I still need to throw some gears at it in the near future.

While things were tore apart, I swapped out my fan clutch for another one which solved my slow speed cooling issue, though the truck ran warmer than I’d like it too. So I did what I thought was going to be a bolt in swap by putting in a 2 row radiator from a 1994 Explorer with the ‘heavy duty cooling’.

Edit: Info added:
Application:
1994 Ford Explorer
Auto Tranny with A/C
"Maximum" cooling option

Murray 432217 (from O'Reilly Auto Parts)
UPC: 40876422179

Part of this swap was pretty straight forward. The new radiator is on the Right, the old one on the left (note: you need a different lower radiator hose if you’re running a manual). The inside of the radiator didn’t look bad IMO, but it did have some build up in there:

The problem is here, the new radiator in addition to being thicker, also stands off from the body further than the old one:

Which puts it closer (but not too close) to the fan. This is good as it seems to make the fan clutch lock up sooner:

As a quick side note, you can’t really fit a Taurus fan in between the motor and the radiator with the Explorer radiator in the Ranger. The fan is hitting the Taurus fan is hitting the water pump in this photo:

In the end, I wound up hacking on the stock 4.0 fan shroud quite a bit to make it work. I don’t think that even the Explorer fan shroud would work in this application, so you’re pretty much left to make up your own fan shroud, or hack up your original 4.0 shroud.

In the end it worked out:

We took it on a bit of a road trip today (next post down) and it did very well keeping everything cool. I hope that my running hot issues are solved at this point.

 

[Kage]

4th Road Trip – Valley View Glades Mo

Since we left the poor dog and the truck home when we recently went out west, we made it up to both of them this weekend by going on a short road trip to Valley View Glades in Mo near Hillsborough.

We started out early on a rather chilly June morning:

Arrived at the Rec area with one excited mutt:

And a wife that takes lots of photos:

And proceeded to hike all over that park (about 2.5 miles total):

Little dry around here, so no running water over the various falls we came across:

Stopped by a covered bridge on the way back home:

And took one very tired, snoring, and farting mutt back home:

Once we were home, I started what I thought was going to be a simple project of replacing the cartridge in our shower that decided to start leaking heavily. Unfortunately that simple project started to look like this:

And this:

And after 7.5 hours of no running water in the house, 5 trips to Home depot, 1 trip to Lowes, and 1 trip to Ace, I had this:

And running water again. I think the good Lord is telling me that being a professional plumber isn’t in the cards for me….

 

[cdawall]

I just did the same thing with mine. Still haven't gotten to test drive it to far. Good news is gen 4 trucks will straight swap with a gen 2 5.0L rad.

I hopefully fixed my overheating problem.

http://www.fordrangerforum.com/how-submissions/63355-explorer-radiator-swap.html

New

Old

 

[Kage]

I just did the same thing with mine. Still haven't gotten to test drive it to far..

I've only got about 120 miles of mixed driving on mine so far, but the initial results give me the warm fuzzies that the cooling problem has been resolved.

Your post did answer the question as to why the standoff is so much differnt between the radiators. I didn't realize that the exploreres had the condensor attached to the radiator.

 

[Josh40601]

Hmmm, I may look into this for the Ex. It gets warm when powering uphill. In crawl mode it's fine, but under pretty heavy power, it warms up pretty quick

 

[Kage]

9th Offroad trip – Washita MX 6-16-12

A good friend of mine finally had a day off so we snuck down to Washita for a quick day trip. We snuck out the door earlier than usual to beat the heat, which worked out perfectly.

Travel:

Just a group of two for this trip:

It was stupid dry down there, but I did managed to immediately get stuck in a mud hole (guess it wasn’t that dry after all). Once I was freed from that embarrassment, we started playing around on one of the ledges off of the main access road:

And continued to wander through the park:

I adjusted my front shackles some, so I flexed it out to see where things are sitting. It looks like I need to adjust my front straps so that I can take advantage of some extra droop:

Casper the white XJ had a small tire mishap. I’m actually kinda surprised it took us this long to kill one of these tires as neither one of us are nice to them at all:

Kept on wandering up to the top:

[/quote]

Big ole lizard running around these parts:

A few videos (click on the photo):


He made it up that too easy so I told him to move over and try the harder line. Excuse the Midwest Dumbasses laughing, things aren’t usually dry enough around here to get enough traction to ‘bounce’ on so it was a bit of a new experience for us ^_^


Quick video of the day (with the ranger in action):


At the end of the day as we were airing up, my buddy commented that the ranger was leaking more than normal. Turns out the damn transfer case decided to loosen up from the crawl box once again. We were ‘just’ outside of AAA towing range for me, and I couldn’t find anyone with a trailer to come get the truck (I don’t like leaving vehicles down at that park). So we ratchet strapped it back together and see how far we’d get:

Turns out, I made it all the way home (over 100 miles), though the last few miles I was definitely limping it as the plastic shift fork pads were gone so it wanted to pop out of gear.

The damage isn’t too bad, wasted the shift fork:

And the Range Hub got chewed on a bit as well:

Anyone got some 1354 parts laying around they want to sell cheap?

I “think” what is happening is that the ford factory tranny mount just isn’t doing a good job of keeping everything in place, coupled with the fact that I can destroy motor mounts at will this setup, is allowing the transfer case to beat itself to death against the cab floor (even though I’ve got over 1” of clearance). This beating is causing everything to loosen up.

I’ve got a poly mount for the tranny, but it looks like I need to also do the motor mounts at the same time. I’ve got the Ruff Stuff mounts, I’ve just been putting off doing them as they look like a pain in the ass to get in there. Guess its time to buck up and get it done.

The only other causality was a rear U joint, but I didn’t find that one until I got home and pulled everything apart (no vibes going down the road oddly enough).

I am also going to bite the bullet here and regear while I have everything apart (4.88’s). I’m hoping this will help keep the drive line from ripping everything apart as well as help move the truck around a bit better than it does right now. With my new cooling setup, the fan will actually engage on these really warm days when going down the road, and it SUCKS the power down hard core.

On the note of the cooling system, no overheating problems at all while wheeling in mid 90’s temperatures, so that problem seems to be solved.

 

[RangerSVT]

Hey Ben, I think I might be able to help you out once again. I've got my 54 from my Trac, and i also have a 4405, which is basically a 54 with a clutch front output (torque on demand) we can pull apart for parts. They are both electric cases, but i can pull em apart to verify they have the pieces you need...

SVT

 

[Kage]

Hey Ben, I think I might be able to help you out once again. I've got my 54 from my Trac, and i also have a 4405, which is basically a 54 with a clutch front output (torque on demand) we can pull apart for parts. They are both electric cases, but i can pull em apart to verify they have the pieces you need...

SVT

Sure, zip them apart and let me know, otherwise It looks like Ebay has the parts I need.

Thanks!