lookin good, cant wait to see it finished

 

Sorry it took so long to respond Ron. The hump that is in the bed at the rear was not tall enough for when i moved my tank. I had to "raise" the hump. It since it is painted "close-enough" yellow and already has dirt and grime on it, and with as beat up as my bed floor is, it blends in rather well.

I firmly believe a picture is worth a 1000 words, so here is a couple shots for you. The first one shows how i "raised" the hump. There is much more detail in my build thread. It doesn't look great, but then again I wasn't too worried about it with being inside the bed. The second shot is what i did instead of moving the filler door. I just used a Jeep filler Neck.

 

Thanks for the pix. We haven't tried to fit that area yet, but we plan to make use of that same bump in the bed. When we tackle that, I'll give you some pictures of what we did. I am using the filler from the Explorer, since it matches up with the gas tank. The gas tank fills from the back and the Explorer filler has a natural bend in that general direction. With a little luck and the persuasion of a fire wrench, it should work.





The metal work is just about done on the passenger side and all the body lines flow. Next, tonight, it's on the the driver's side.

 

This thing looks less and less like the Ranger I remember every time I see it... Don't forget, you've got about 10-12 days left to get it roadworthy and 3 or 4 days to work out the kinks (and of course, the paint job)! As of right now, looks like you're going to make it...

Are you still planning on doing the power windows/door locks from the Explorer, too?

Besides, I'm waiting for the Vicky... Do I have to wait *another* 25 years for that one?

 

We'll make it.

The power stuff will have to wait until next summer, along with a better paint job. We're just going to spot in the places we modified with the same color.

As for the Vicky, nobody like a smart a$$. When you liquidate my estate, you can figure out what to do with it.

 

We'll make it... It will still be green ,it will still have manual locks/windows. But, as you can see it's a little different then when you owned. Now it has an automatic though. That's all and the V8 of course.

 

No doubt... I'm looking forward to seeing it on the road... actually, I'm just looking forward to seeing the bed back on it, I think it's going to look pretty cool...

(although I think with an extra few weeks and another $1000, extending the frame to keep the full bed would have made a hell of a project...)

I suspect the Vicky will be on the road before then... but I doubt it will be something that gets liquidated!

 

Yeah I am sure you are actually looking to seeing it your driveway ..

 

Well, here's what the Vicky COULD look like in a few weeks.



This is more what it actually looks like (sans crate).



These are not my pictures, I borrowed them from the internet. You can almost catch a glimpse of the real thing is some of the pictures I've posted.

 

You can see the side of it in the picture of your "Green Giant sawhorses" and I *think* that's one of the doors on the back wall in the picture where the mod Ranger bed is being welded...

I second the comment about doing a project like this though... ripping apart that Mustang II that was *supposed to be* the Vicky's suspension was a lot of fun, even if it didn't end up getting done that way...

 

Actually, it did. Right now the suspension is off of it. I will be repainting and maybe even powder coating the parts. After all that sitting, time starts to take its toll, even on brand new parts that never hit the road. I have to replace the shocks because they are frozen solid. Zero miles on them. The Cragar wheels are pitted, again zero miles. I'm thinking of having them blasted and then powder coating them with some candy color.

 

Andrew did some more welding on the bed today. We cut in a patch where the gas filler was, welded the seams on the driver's side and across the bottom of the bed. We'll put the filler door in to the rear of the wheel well after we mount the bed on the chassis.







I'm going to have to run over to AirGas tomorrow to pick up a new tank of Argon/CO2 for the MIG welder. It's not quite empty, but I don't want to run out over the weekend. We still have to form and weld in the inside corners of the bed. That's going to take a little massaging.

 

Looking good gents.

 

+1 Im glued to this thread!

 

Thanks for the encouragement and compliments. Keep watching. More to come. When we are finished, I will post a complete A to Z thread in the project section with more detail. I also have a 93 Explorer and a 94 F-150 sitting behind the garage, both in pretty good shape. Any ideas?

 

93 Explorer to this

 

Very interesting, but off-roading is not my thing. I'm one of those '60s cruiser kind of guys. Of course, if anyone would like to buy it and pay me to do it....

Anyway, here is the latest from the last two days. The inside of the bed is all welded up now and fits pretty well.







Here it is on the chassis. We still have to fabricate some rear bed mounts, the brackets for the rear bumper and cut in the gas door and connect it to the gas tank.

.





I drove it around our property today and it runs like a scalded ape. Here is Andrew backing it into the garage.



Tomorrow, we start on final mounting of the bed, body work, incidental wiring, interior and a whole checklist that we have to finish in the next week to 10 days.

 

Its a megashort bed lol. It actually looks kinda cool. Youll definity have people scratching their heads

 

A "scalded ape"? I though that was pretty funny.

 

^^^ Lol I got a chuckle too. I feel better suspension as a winter project comin up

 

The bed looks short from the angle that I shot the pictures. I'll put some direct side shots up so you can see how it looks. The original bed measured 6 feet. It now measures 5 feet 3 inches.

 

Well, i guess i should take more interest in these random threads. It looks like you've gone a long way and i think its great that its a Grandfather - Grandson project. When i was 19, all i did with my grandparents was fish.
I have a few questions through.
You swapped frames and took out the core supports. How did you make sure they're strait?
I don't mean to knock the 19 year old's welding skill, but is that welder set up too high? or are those just your marks from grinding it down?
as for the drive line, your going to use the stuff you already had from the 5.0 correct? that all still fits even though you've done frame modification?

 

The welds were ground down partially before the pictures. And yes,everything fits ,there was no frame modification. We measured from corner to corner to check for the frame being square. And we are going to use the explorer 5.0 and driveline due to the cleanliness of all the internals absolutely no sludge and what it sounds like,I think is has an e303 or something similar.
As for the core support we first straightened out the small bit of damage. Then we put in the original mounting holes and bolted it down tight and checked it measurements and a level..

 

We are taking pictures as we go along. Anything you see so far is not in a completed state. We are using a Miller 210 MIG Welder and as you can see, it can't be set any lower than we are already running.





When putting thin sheet metal together, unless you are using TIG, it is a bunch of tacks, jumping from place to place as to not warp the metal. Eventually, they all meet together. We've done some preliminary grinding, but it is not completed.



Most of the wiring was plug and play, but there is a bunch of stuff in the Explorer wiring harness that we are not using. I'm not cutting anything up, but bundling what we don't need and tucking it away in the body in case I decide to add in the power stuff at a later date. Here are the extra wires that I don't need. They will look neater tomorrow.



This is Andrew's first major welding project and I think he is doing very well.

By the way, I HATE fishing. Why drown bait, when you can go to a perfectly good fish market and get whatever you want?

 

Let's face it, 92% of all guys* fish for one of two reasons (or both):
1) To get out of the house and "away" for a bit, or
2) To sit in a boat and drink beer all day

And, since you "get away" by working in the garage or on your computer AND you hate boats AND don't drink beer, there's nothing in it for you when it comes to fishing!


*This statistic, like 78% of all statistics (including this one), is made up on the spot.