Ungrade my 04 ranger?

[Ozuye10]

This pretty well covers it…

if you really want to try to get the most, have the engine rebuilt with balanced internals and have the intake and heads flow ported. Add headers to the exhaust, e-fan, underdrive pulley setup, electric power steering… wouldn’t be exactly cheap to do all of that, but you’ll pick up some power and fuel economy without getting into the troubled waters of engine swaps that open up cans of worms. The easiest and cheapest swaps are like for like and a few scattered plug-n-play kind, like a 4.0 in place of a 2.9 in 89-92 vintage or 5.0 into 98-00. Or adding a turbo to a 2.3 truck (forget what years were ideal for that, but the donor was a thunderbird or the like for the turbo and wiring).

I had an 87 T-Bird with the 2.3 turbo, great car but not the most powerful of motor. You can mod the pants off of it though so it would be a decent base.

 

[Ozuye10]

5/16 is waaaay too big for the bolts for the splash guard that attached to the fender so is 1/4. That’s what I’m saying, may be a 7/32 was too big too. Really pissing me off

 

[bobbywalter]

I would consider the 4cyl swap.

That engine will take boost to the point of murdering that transmission. They are cheap here still. A 2wd trans is easily changed with your 3.0 parts.