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

[ben_2_go]

added 400 cubic inches of traction.
short block only, for now.

View attachment 123647

since I already have a complete 351M all I wanted was a crankshaft but had to settle for a package deal.

Build two engines, one back the way yours was and an all out full power build for future plans.

 

[pjtoledo]

Build two engines, one back the way yours was and an all out full power build for future plans.

actually that is in the works.
combine my 351m with the 400 crank for the 78 Bronco that has been a longggg term project.
that will be a mild build, completely street friendly.
the "other" is a 90% complete 429 SCJ w/ 460 crank that was originally intended for the Bronco.
not sure what the future holds for that longggggg-er term project.

 

[Saddle Tramp]

Had it towed home.

Evidently the hub caps were dented enough that the grease shot out when it heated up.There were grease spray cones on the rims.

I should've bought new caps for the hubs

Oh well. I'll see how bad the damage is over the weekend. (Gotta feeling some bearings are toast.)

 

[Saddle Tramp]

Pulled them apart yesterday. I found that the passenger side was worse that the driver's side. The outside wheel bearing had broken part of the casting in-between two bearings. The rotor needed a little help sliding off the axle, so I inspected the inside bearings after cleaning them. No visible damage anywhere and they spun freely. I repacked them and packed the new outside bearings. I did the same to the driver's side.

I had to go to two different auto parts stores to get new dust caps. TRQ instructed to put gasket maker on the edge on the cap. I have to say the caps were a real bear to put on. One was so stubborn; I crushed it with the hammer. That ended the night for me.

I got a new cap and used a 2 inch piece of PVC pipe to drive it in. (PSA: Don't buy the pvc cap that fits to use as a hammer point. Use a block of wood behind the pipe. That cap exploded dramatically!)

Once everything was buttoned up, I took it for a low speed test drive to make sure everything settled in. 15 to 20 mph was the top speed. When I got back, everything was tight and dry. No grease oozing out anywhere. I'm letting it rest again and will do a faster test drive of 35 - 40 in an hour or so.

So far, so good.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

So, today since it was kind of nice out, I thought that I would see about the exhaust leak on the green Ranger and maybe try resolving a couple other things and get the crossmember in dad’s truck…

Seemed like I had some loose bolts holding the downpipe to the header on the passenger side, so I put it up on ramps and snugged those up. Started it up to hear a smaller leak on the drivers side. Went over there and the bolts were tight but there are a couple pinholes over there. Ok, I’m not dragging the welder out today, but that is easy enough to fix…

And then I notice something… and then I moved to the front for another look…

Ahh fudge… I was sure that I had checked the frame good when I had things apart and this would have been accessible, but apparently I didn’t check well enough. This is probably the vibration I’ve been chasing too…

Whole front axle has to come out and I have to get it high enough to work on. Argh. So could use a lift right now. What a kick in the nads. I’m gonna fix it, but I’m not happy about it right now. Might just gather some stuff and try to deal with a bunch of things at once like my upper control arms and shift kit…

 

[mikkelstuff]

Unusually warm 60F day in Colorado. So changed the engine oil and the automatic transmission fluid.

My gawd changing transmission fluid is a messy job. At least I installed a replacement oil pan with a drain plug the last time I did this. Still got a face full of fluid when changing out the filter. I change fluid every 30,000 miles which has taken 8 years.

I was so careful this time to catch all the fluid and measure it so as to know how much to replace. Well ha ha. Spelled some unknown amount out in the side yard trying to fill a quart jar. So far I've put 4 quarts back in the transmission but will have to warm it up good and check tomorrow.

Meantime I need a shower!

For what it's worth, it took 5 1/2 quarts to refill the transmission.

 

[sgtsandman]

Unusually warm 60F day in Colorado. So changed the engine oil and the automatic transmission fluid.

My gawd changing transmission fluid is a messy job. At least I installed a replacement oil pan with a drain plug the last time I did this. Still got a face full of fluid when changing out the filter. I change fluid every 30,000 miles which has taken 8 years.

I was so careful this time to catch all the fluid and measure it so as to know how much to replace. Well ha ha. Spelled some unknown amount out in the side yard trying to fill a quart jar. So far I've put 4 quarts back in the transmission but will have to warm it up good and check tomorrow.

Meantime I need a shower!

I ran into a similar situation when changing the transmission fluid on the 2019. All was going well until the final drop of the pan. It snagged the exhaust on the way down, slipped out of my hands and right into the drain pan of neatly contained fluid. It splashed everywhere, including on me.

It was a good thing I had ordered more fluid than I thought I would need. I used all but one bottle.

 

[JoshT]

Had it towed home.

Evidently the hub caps were dented enough that the grease shot out when it heated up.There were grease spray cones on the rims.

I should've bought new caps for the hubs

Oh well. I'll see how bad the damage is over the weekend. (Gotta feeling some bearings are toast.)

Yeah, bearings tend to not like it when the grease leaves the chat and when that grease gets warm and running, it's going to take any exit it can find.

Glad it worked out to be a relaitvely easy fix. Annoying? Sure. Expensive (especially considering tow bill)? Sure. Still relatively quick and easy.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Drove it to my first day at my new job today.

 

[JoshT]

Drove it to my first day at my new job today.

Considering what DOGE is doing, I wonder how soon I'll be doing that myself. I've got 20+ years in so I should be relatively safe, but don;t know if anyone truly is. Not complaining about what they're doing, just wondering how close it's going to hit.


Didn't post what I've been doing recenty in this thread so need to give a little backstory. The '99 is 5.0L V8 swapped with fresh rebuild that has ported heads, intake and camshaft. I hated doing it but I reinstalled the original 180k miles injectors from the donor Explorer with the rebuild. Wanted new injectors, but if I was spending money money on them I was going up a size to 24lb. Stock 19lb might have been sufficient but I wanted the cushion. It isn't good to increase injector size on stock tuning, though that might have been borderline within the conputer's ability to adjust. Wasn't getting tuned until I got exhaust and leaks fixed, which just happened about two weeks ago.

I've had my injectors on hand for several weeks (didn't expect exhaust to take over a month). Orderded my tune Wednesday. It was in my inbox Thursday morning, so pulled top end apart when I got home from work. Reassembled and installed tune Friday. Truck wouldn't run for s#!t. Seemed to me like it was cutting fuel, tuner says it was really rich from the datalog I sent, he's the expert. There's a thread on that in the V8 section. Suffice it to say by Sunday evening I'd determined it to be something off in the tune, cause it ran decent on factory tune considering the injector missmatch.

New tunes in my inbox today. Got home, installed, and it's alive! Thing has some go now! Next step in the process will be to make the transmission shift with more authority, probably j-mod (DIY Shift kit for 4R70W), but I'm not going to rush into it. It's already a 180k miles transmission. I figure that once I j-mod, it probably won't be long before I'm rebuilding and I don't want that to be this year if I can avoid it.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

@JoshT …

If you’re not in a huge hurry to deal with the transmission… things are about to happen on my end. I have a TransGo stage 2 shift kit for mine and similar mileage. I came across a guy who mentioned there was some other things you can do to the valve body but wasn’t specific at all as to what exactly. So I’m doing some research yet. I think I might take a quick rip in the green Ranger to record a baseline before I tear things apart, but I’m going to try resolving some issues while it’s down this time and get the shift kit in. So I’ll be patching the frame and trying to smash gremlins, probably trying to do something about my upper control arms and resolve some transmission stuff.

I did see a video where someone put one of these TransGo shift kits in a Mustang and it would chirp tire on the 1-2 shift and it looked like it tried to chirp on the 2-3 shift, so that’s encouraging.

 

[Rick W]

When I drove the Missing Linc yesterday, I realized my fall autumn leaves arrangements around my handicap pass, and my light permit were a little faded and tired.

Lincoln likes it when the back window was open so he can put his paws up on the toolbox and bark at whatever. I always forget after the winter to blow the leaves out of the box and I get showered once I hit about 30 mph.

But now I’m thinking about the spring flower arrangement if you guys have any suggestions.

 

[Uncle Gump]

Shut yer windas....

Get yersef one of them there flowa vaces from a ol slug bug...

 

[JoshT]

I came across a guy who mentioned there was some other things you can do to the valve body but wasn’t specific at all as to what exactly. So I’m doing some research yet.

That would be the J-mod. Developed by one of the transmission designers. It can be taken a step further by upgrading the solenoids and stuff. A lot of this information can be found on TCCoA IIRC.

Definitely in no rush. Don't plan to touch it for at least a year, unless it fails on me before I get around to it.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

In case you want to look at what's involved with the Jmod, here's a direct link;

Tech Article: Ford OD Transmissions 101 - Jerry's mod

Will the Jerry Mod article be available again?

www.tccoa.com