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


When I was doing the landscape for a gal, we got a 2/3 yard of garden mix (dirt/topsoil/compost) and it was all the truck could hold volume wise but was no were near weight (2nd gen stock - 7' bed) , when I got rock I debated 1/2 or 1/3 by needs and decided to ask for a 1/3 yard cause I was nervous about borrowing the family truck and hurting it... it touched the stops, no where near the volume. I was real glad I decided to go smaller.

If you got a full yard of anything in a ranger I am very impressed.
 
After I put the new control arms in, and the mornings got cold, I've been hearing a squeak when going over speed bumps. Nothing major. Just noticeable when hitting a speed bump a little hard. It didn't do it when the temperature was above about 65. Several mornings ago someone mentioned to me that it sounded like a loud duck. So, I went to Lowe's after work several days ago and bought a can of Blaster silicone lubricant and hosed down the bushings with it and took it for a test drive. It still squeaked. I sprayed some of it on the cab mount and that didn't fix it. Yesterday I crawled under the front to start a better inspection because I was slightly concerned it could be that one of the new ball joints was defective. While I was under there I noticed the sway bar bushings that I cleaned up and regreased when I replaced the links appeared to not have any grease. So, I gave the bushings a shot of silicone lubricant. This morning I didn't hear any ducks in the wheel well, so I think I figured it out. I used sil-glyde to lubricate the bushings which could have washed out in the heavy rain. However, I was using that to lubricate the caliper slide pins and noticed there was hardly any of it left in the slide pin bores. If the squeak comes back I'll try silicone brake grease.
 
Added rock guard for the hood and rain guards to the windows

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Hopefully the husky floor liners come tomorrow and side steps show up soon. I hate not being able to step out and having to try to not slide across the side
 
Big day today:
- Replaced the radiator
- Replaced the valve cover gasket
- Cleaned out the throttle body and IAC
- Removed the cracked grille and old headlights, and turn signals
- Removed the passenger side caliper in preparation for switching it out
- Yelled at the brake flex hoses (a lot) Was not able to change them out yet.
 
When I was doing the landscape for a gal, we got a 2/3 yard of garden mix (dirt/topsoil/compost) and it was all the truck could hold volume wise but was no were near weight (2nd gen stock - 7' bed) , when I got rock I debated 1/2 or 1/3 by needs and decided to ask for a 1/3 yard cause I was nervous about borrowing the family truck and hurting it... it touched the stops, no where near the volume. I was real glad I decided to go smaller.

If you got a full yard of anything in a ranger I am very impressed.
My first Ranger I hauled a yard of 2b limestone (normal gravel size chunks) a few times. It was like a mile from the yard to where I was going. I wasn’t thrilled about that amount but their bucket scale was broken so you got a full bucket or they would guess at half a bucket. I went with full bucket for consistency and rode the bump stops back. I was backing it up to a small retaining wall and shoveling it off.

My F-150 I’ve hauled 5 cubic yards of mulch in one go a few times. The yard thought I was out of my mind when I told them to load it up. They finally agreed to start loading and stop either when it was full or we reached 5 yards. Mind, I have ladder racks on the 8’ bed plus side tool boxes and added plywood end caps. I had run the math, the volume is there and the truck was beefed up enough to handle it. Those guys couldn’t believe it, I just had to flatten it out as they loaded it.
 
Started the front end rebuild today:

Tore apart the drivers side, removed the knuckle
On the pasenger side popped out the outer tie rod, got stopped by a rusted cotter pin inside a castle nut of a lower ball joint. I think I'm going to shear it off by brute force since i'm replacing the ball join anyway
 
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Started the front end rebuild today:

Tore apart the drivers side, removed the knuckle
On the pasenger side popped out the outer tie rod, got stopped by a rusted cotter pin inside a castle nut of a lower ball joint. I think I'm going to shear it off by brute force since i'm replacing the ball join anyway
I try to get cotter pins out, or at least break off as much as I can, then just put the impact on it and let it eat.
 
Loaded three sets of wheels and tires in it and took them to a buddies shop to get stuff swapped around. And the day before I flogged it off road, forcing it to spend a considerable amount of time above 3krpm which the valve train hatttteeeessssss.
 

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I think one of the two horns on the '97 broke on me tonight while I was letting the person that ran a stop sign just to be in front of me and do 52 in a 55 (no one behind me for 3/4 mile) know how special they were for the half mile before they turned on the next road making me stop... I hate people...
 
oh wise ones.

The check engine light came back on pretty quickly. The error message and proposed cure is to replace the vacuum line between the evaporative canister and the head of the engine. All of that has been replaced, but it still didn’t fix the problem.

Any suggestions?

Try a smoke test? Hook a smoke machine up to the system and see where it leaks out. Showed me a bunch of leaks on my 99 V8 swap in both intake/vacuum and exhaust.
 

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