What did you do to your Ranger today? (Part Deux!)

[sgtsandman]

I used an electronics "hobby box" to build a charge/switch box fir the bed of my truck. Ran 10 AWG to the back with a fuse link to power it. The screws on the bottom hold two insulated posts that will supply power and ground for everything the box will do. Main purpose is to power my 12 volt fridge. The empty hole gets a voltmeter. I had it out of the package to test it... and not sure where I put it.

View attachment 116203

I still need to work on that for the 2011. The 2019 has a power block in the bed. Rudimentary but it will work for now until I make something better.

 

[Rick W]

I effing hate rust and Ford engineers.

So here is my last few days on redoing the master cylinder and brakelines.

Thursday after work I
started the "let's replace the failing master cylinder" in the Ranger. This repair also includes replacing the brake lines and the booster because of rust. And to start, I tucked out as much brake fluid as I could, then then loosen the brake lines, which crumbled apart. I figured that would happen. Then remove the two 9/16 (yes, SAE not metric) that hold the mastercylinder to the power booster. Those nuts and studs were rusty, had to fight them all the way off. And yes, I soaked them in pb blaster several times over the last two weeks in anticipation. After those came off, it was time to remove the booster.

That thing is a pain in the ass. This is all done underneath the dash and thankfully I didn't have to remove dash to get to it, i did have to do mechanics yoga to get under the dash. To make this easier on my aging back and joints i used two dining room chairs and some pillows that more ore less lined up with the floorboards...
To remove it, There is a weird kotter key that holds the actuator arm to the brake pedal, then the brakelight switch and a plastic bushing must come out. This kotter key is a bit of a pain. Then pull back some noise deadening mat that covers the four 13mm nuts that hold the booster to the firewall. Yes, metric nuts on the same part with SAE nuts on the other side. WTH, Ford? Oh, those nuts are on 2 inch studs and I had to fight each one *ALL* the way off a quarter turn at a time with a deep well socket... while laying on my back contorted in an unnatural position...new booster went in much easier, but I still need to hook up the brake pedal which is a giant pain because I have to place the brakelight switch, booster actuator arm, brake pedal and bushing all at once, and did I mention I was contorted upside down with limited use of my right hand because I am laying on it?T


Yesterday I day I am working on the crusty brake lines and calipers. Ford conveniently put the nuts for the hard lines on the back side of the coil bucket at an odd angle that the fender liner is in the way of the wrench so you can only turn the wrench a degree or two. Driver side had two fittings to the soft line, one from the master cylinder and one to the passenger side wheel. Amazingly the coupling to the line that goes to the passenger side unsolved with no issues. Had to cut the line from the master cylinder with a hacksaw. New calipers, new soft lines and let's go to the passenger side.

Mother of god.. no room to get behind the coil bucket to get the wrench on the nut because of the fender liner which does not come out without removing a crapload of stuff from the engine bay. Briefly thought about cutting a hole in the liner, but did not want to repair it later. So modern problems require a centuries old solution: blacksmith. Fired up the forge er map gas torch and grabbed a cheap 7/16 wrench and bent it so that the handle followed the curve of the inner fender
View attachment 116179
The old unit. Notice the rusty brake lines

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One of the two very rusty nuts holding the master cylinder to the booster

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Back of the master cylinder. Had to use a 4lb mini sledge to separate it from the booster.


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Looks a bit rusty

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Old brake fluid. Brake fluid is normally clear... this has probably been in there since 1997

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pulled down the noise insulation barrier to get to the four 13mm nuts

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This is how I mitigated the Mechanics Yoga... worked fairly well.

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Old vs New

View attachment 116188
Surprisingly still solid even though it looks like you can stick a screwdriver through it

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old unit removed.

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New one in place and bolted in.
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This is the annoying little kotter key that holds the brakepedal/ brakelight switch and booster together. it is a pain in the ass.

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Old and new line from the master cylinder to drivers side front wheel. Had to fabricate that one from a straight price of brake line and create a double flare. And yes, I remembered to put the nut on before flaring the end

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Drivers side with new calipers and soft line. Waiting for the line from the master cylinder and the line from the passenger side to the softline


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Modern day blacksmithing


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See how that follows the fender? Oh and that soft brakeline below the wrench? It was rust fused to the coil bucket. tried pulling the clip out that is behind the coil bucket holding the metal part of the softline to the coil bucket. no dice. pulled about a third of the clip out, mangling and destroying it, and the line was still in. bent a small screwdriver as well. I even tried putting an 11/16 wrench on the hex part to break it free, no luck. Ended up going out to the Shed of Wonders (hey, @Rick W has the Shed of Miracles, so consider this the lesser, northern cousin...) grabbed my angle grinder and broke the metal hose part off with my hand and ground the rest of it down flush with the coil bucket and used a punch and a hammer to remove the rest. A fun 5 minutes of flying sparks and debri bouncing off the fender and coil bucket into my face...



View attachment 116200
Old and new line from Master Cylinder to the RABS unit. that was a cast iron B!tch to remove from the truck and a NiCop B!tch to put back in the truck, only to find out I put the wrong size effing brake line nut on the RABS end. Eff it. called it a day, sometime tomorrow I will go under the truck and redo the flare with the right nut.

Been there done that, one of the main reasons I live down here. You have a good feeling of success and confidence when it’s done.

Sweet pea was impressed but she had a couple questions. Number one, what were you wearing when you were doing the yoga thing on the kitchen chairs upside down and backwards? Number two, were you sweating when you did it? Number three, did you take any pictures.

And maybe a before picture standing sweaty over it with a wrench in your hand, and a determined look to conquer it.

Not me, I’m just conveying the desire, I’m just the messenger

 

[scotts90ranger]

It does have a part number - F37F-10C956-B, which comes up as a 93-94 Ford Explorer cluster. I guess that answers the question of why it would not work in my vehicle.
I guess I will toss it up on the classifieds and see if it can go to someone who can use it.

I did finally look at mine before it got dark, coulsn't see it from the front but I took my bore scope and found a hole I could get to the back of the cluster, it's blue...

 

[superj]

If you figure out how let me know. I even disconnected my phone and removed it from the radio settings and it was able to reconnect and start Android auto on it's own anyway.

I cleaned the truck up for LBL.

Looks pretty good for a 36 year old truck I think.

i haven't figured it out. i turned off those settings but, just as you, it turns stuff on even when its not showing the phone in the settings.

so the coolness of the radio is dropping down. i cannot turn off bluetooth on my phone completely because my hearing aids go through the phone and because of that, the radio automatically connects and assigns itself as the boss of the phone and stations

 

[Bgunner]

i haven't figured it out. i turned off those settings but, just as you, it turns stuff on even when its not showing the phone in the settings.

so the coolness of the radio is dropping down. i cannot turn off bluetooth on my phone completely because my hearing aids go through the phone and because of that, the radio automatically connects and assigns itself as the boss of the phone and stations

Please try going into Phone Settings and then to Advanced Features/Android Auto. There you should see Android Auto. In this tab you should see Auto Connect settings. Try turning this off. This should stop your Android Auto from connecting to the Radio. One issue this way is if you have another vehicle that you use Android Auto with it will no longer connect automatically. There is an option there you can select to manually connect Android Auto so you can still use it if you want to.

In the Settings tab under Connections there is a Bluetooth on/off selection, try pressing the Words to bring up a menu of Previously Connected Devices. Here you may be able to remove the Radio from the Bluetooth memory and stop it from connecting. The issue with this way is you can not play music from your phone because you have now unpaired them.

I have never connected my Phone to a vehicle (I still use a 3.5mm jack) so I do not know if more options are there to just remove a specific vehicle. If you can remove a device from your phone, it will stop it from connecting and the preferred way to go about it stopping it from connecting to a device but with draw backs. You will have to Pair the phone and Device again if you want to use its Bluetooth function.

Hope this info helps you find a workable solution to this dilemma.

 

[CamTheHedgehog]

Jumped on the bandwagon of the cool guy radio with @superj and @SenorNoob and bought a Power Acoustik CP-71W.

I wasn’t dremeling another dash bezel for a double DIN, but wanted CarPlay, especially before the trek down to LBL in a few weeks.

So far, nice radio. Only gripe is that wireless CarPlay is very hit and miss right now, even after the firmware update. Not a huge deal since I need to plug in my phone to charge anyway, so I just plugged my cable to the back USB port of the radio which is also wired CarPlay.

Working on making or finding a background of the 98-06? “Ranger” badge as the boot screen.

But so far, so good.

Edit- also worthy of note, the American International dash kits are much higher quality than the Metra ones and just fit better too.

 

[CamTheHedgehog]

Also, is there any good method for refinishing the dash bezel? I’m tired of the “soft touch” coating that ford put on and is flaking off- absolute garbage.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Sold part of it.

A car club member was looking for an axle to put under a '34 Plymouth. I sang the glories of the Explorer axle... then I tossed out that I had a 7.5 if he needed something to roll the car around with. Not sure if he is actually going to run it or just use it as a roller but he jumped on my 7.5.

So if you have a 7.5 kicking around keep your chin up, it only took me 12 years to rehome mine!

Also drove it to supper. It started making noise like it was going to fall apart. Turns out my pusher fan sucked in a piece of paper and was mulching it. Didn't hurt anything but it sure sounded terrible.

 

[Bgunner]

Stopped at the local parts store and ordered a new belt for Beer Fetcher. Of course neither of my local parts stores had it in stock so I just had them order it. I've been chasing this squeak since I bought it 7 years ago but after we did all the work to it it got way worse and I'm tired of hearing it.

The back side of the belt is shinny so it's either the water pump pully, tensioner pully or the idler pulley. The tensioner has been replaced with a NOS OEM tensioner. Squeak was still there after a belt change. The water pump was just replaced but about 25k miles ago the idler was replaced not long before I got it. My guess is the idler pulley is the culprit mainly because when we were working on it there was some build up of rubber on that pulley and only that pully. When I change the belt I'll look it over again and see if I notice anything amiss about it. I remember it being a little stiff to turn but no play in the bearings or crunchy feelings when it spun.

 

[MaicoDoug]

Installed the square diaper "box" that I scrounged off an exploder (ford will never forgive me) that mounts below the radiator. I discovered that something was missing when watching 1A Auto how to vids. This is my 10th radiator I believe so I do know how to R&R one. Just wanted to address any "you should watched a video and not tried it like that" situation. The transmission cooler in the rad swap dropped a quart on the the dipstick, so after almost $15 at SNapa....why is ATF so darned expensive anyway?

Looking for a "power block" add on for the back 40. Something with a beer tap preferably.

 

[ben_2_go]

Also, is there any good method for refinishing the dash bezel? I’m tired of the “soft touch” coating that ford put on and is flaking off- absolute garbage.

There is a thread around her on how to get that coating off and shine up the glossy black plastic. Otherwise, sand it all off and paint like any other plastic trim part.

 

[Rick W]

Stopped at the local parts store and ordered a new belt for Beer Fetcher. Of course neither of my local parts stores had it in stock so I just had them order it. I've been chasing this squeak since I bought it 7 years ago but after we did all the work to it it got way worse and I'm tired of hearing it.

The back side of the belt is shinny so it's either the water pump pully, tensioner pully or the idler pulley. The tensioner has been replaced with a NOS OEM tensioner. Squeak was still there after a belt change. The water pump was just replaced but about 25k miles ago the idler was replaced not long before I got it. My guess is the idler pulley is the culprit mainly because when we were working on it there was some build up of rubber on that pulley and only that pully. When I change the belt I'll look it over again and see if I notice anything amiss about it. I remember it being a little stiff to turn but no play in the bearings or crunchy feelings when it spun.

I know that pulley is probably a sealed bearing, but when you have it all apart, tie a rag like a scarf in the V of the pulley, and then spray penetrating oil/WD-40/lithium grease around the bearing and work the pulley a little tiny bit and it may penetrate. It may make the squeak go away. if it goes away and comes back, you know that was the culprit.

The purpose of the scarf is to keep the lube out of the belt channel. Put some brake cleaner on a rag and wipe up that channel before you put the belt on.

Also, if you can see anything that’s not supposed to be there or is inconsistent in the channel of that idler, if possible, use about a 4 inch wire wheel on a drill, assuming you can get it in there, and just drive the pulley with that wire wheel at a slight angle for a minute. That should clean out anything on the surface.

When I say turned at an angle, there was a sweet spot between just turning the pulley, and angling the brush so it cuts across the pulley. If you angle it too much you don’t drive the pulley. If you’re only driving the pulley, it’s not scraping the channel clean.

EDIT: if you can’t get a drill in there, you may be able to rig a wire wheel on an angle grinder and slide it down there.

I use that technique with all kinds of things on my bench grinder/wire wheel

my two cents, hope it helps

 

[Rick W]

@sgtsandman

Radioman (or anybody else):

Oh wise one….

Question on my CB radio antenna on the Road Ranger.

If you remember, I used two 6foot fiberglass antennas, and mounted them around the height of the door handle behind the cab. Yes, I know they are too close together, and they interfere with each other. They actually work a little bit, usually at distance, but I assume that is somebody either straight in front of me or straight behind me, not practical, not usable.

For traveling up and down the road, I quickly added a third 4’ fiberglass in the middle on a separate cable on top of the headache rack.

I have two connectors behind the radio, one is the factory built split cable for the twins, and then a direct line for the single. The single seems to work fine.

Here’s my question. If I just connect one of the twins, probably the driver side, do you think that antenna would work for casual communication up and down the highway?

If so, can I just connect that side of the split cable? Or would I have to run a designated cable. In other words, I would disconnect the cable from the other twin antenna.

The center antenna works, but I hate the way it looks, and it’s a pain taking it off when I go to cruise ins or whatever.

I have three cobra 29 LTDs, two 148 SSBs, a couple of other SSBs (Sears Roadtalker and a TRS) , a couple of vintage correct CBs for the Continental Mark V and town cars, and then about about 6-8 little modern CB radios.

There’s a great radio shop a little north of me. I want to use the 29 LTDs and/or 148s in the trucks, and then the roadtalker or realistic in the Mark V, and then simply something that works in the two town cars. I plan on taking the radios up to the radio shop two or three at a time to see if they’re worth a crap and have him tune them. $25 each to just take a look and remember, I can buy a brand new 29 LTD for about $125 delivered

The Road Ranger is my primary interest right now, and I’d like to get the antennas straightened out before I start playing with the radios. There’s a 29 LTD in it right now.

I also had the thought that if I get a pair of F150 style mirrors from the 90s, and put them on the Road Ranger for better rear visibility, I could use the existing rearview mirror mounts, without the mirror heads, to mount one or two antennas.

I must have 15 or 20 spare antennas spread around the shed of miracles from 2 foot to the 102 inch whips.

Any and all comments and suggestions and criticism are welcome as always

 

[Curious Hound]

@sgtsandman will likely have a much better reply.

But, from my limited understanding, the 2 antennas working as twins are not only fighting each other from being close together. But they are mounted so low that the cab is interfering. They have good, clear path to the rear and to the sides, but forward is somewhat inhibited. Really, for practical use, your single on the roof is best. It has the whole roof as a ground plane, which is important. I would just get it tuned to the radio with an swr meter and use it.

It would be cool if you had the trucker style mirrors and could mount twins to the top of the mirror brackets for show. That would probably make the twins work better than they do now. The other thing is to get them tuned properly.

 

[sgtsandman]

@sgtsandman

Radioman (or anybody else):

Oh wise one….

Question on my CB radio antenna on the Road Ranger.

View attachment 116273

If you remember, I used two 6foot fiberglass antennas, and mounted them around the height of the door handle behind the cab. Yes, I know they are too close together, and they interfere with each other. They actually work a little bit, usually at distance, but I assume that is somebody either straight in front of me or straight behind me, not practical, not usable.

For traveling up and down the road, I quickly added a third 4’ fiberglass in the middle on a separate cable on top of the headache rack.

I have two connectors behind the radio, one is the factory built split cable for the twins, and then a direct line for the single. The single seems to work fine.

Here’s my question. If I just connect one of the twins, probably the driver side, do you think that antenna would work for casual communication up and down the highway?

If so, can I just connect that side of the split cable? Or would I have to run a designated cable. In other words, I would disconnect the cable from the other twin antenna.

The center antenna works, but I hate the way it looks, and it’s a pain taking it off when I go to cruise ins or whatever.

I have three cobra 29 LTDs, two 148 SSBs, a couple of other SSBs (Sears Roadtalker and a TRS) , a couple of vintage correct CBs for the Continental Mark V and town cars, and then about about 6-8 little modern CB radios.

There’s a great radio shop a little north of me. I want to use the 29 LTDs and/or 148s in the trucks, and then the roadtalker or realistic in the Mark V, and then simply something that works in the two town cars. I plan on taking the radios up to the radio shop two or three at a time to see if they’re worth a crap and have him tune them. $25 each to just take a look and remember, I can buy a brand new 29 LTD for about $125 delivered

The Road Ranger is my primary interest right now, and I’d like to get the antennas straightened out before I start playing with the radios. There’s a 29 LTD in it right now.

I also had the thought that if I get a pair of F150 style mirrors from the 90s, and put them on the RoRanger for better rear visibility, I could use the existing rearview mirror amounts to mount one or two antennas.

I must have 15 or 20 spare antennas spread around the shed of miracles from 2 foot to the 102 inch whips.

Any and all comments and suggestions and criticism are welcome as always

The antennas behind the cab appear to be high enough over the roof to work pretty well but Eric is correct that the one on the roof is better. If you are going to use only one of the duals, use the one on the passenger side since that will angle the strongest transmission lobe toward oncoming traffic. The driver's side would do the opposite. A lot of antennas use the vehicle body as the opposite side of the antenna. So, if the antenna is in one corner, the the focus is going to be in the opposite corner, roughly.

As far as the connector, I don't know enough about split systems to be of any real help there since I've never had a vehicle big enough to use dual whips. I'm guessing you should really use the connector designed for a single antenna. This is the point where I would refer you to a radio shop that deals with customers who drive big trucks. They should know if using only one side of a split will work or not. There may be something in the radio requiring the load the be balanced off of that connector but that is only a guess on my part.