Flushed coolant and transmission. Washed and polished the rims.

 

Took nuts off motor mounts, transmission mounts removed a whole lot of bunk and cables from tranny, motor would be out if I hadn't been doing it by myself. I could probably get the motor out but I don't want to damage anything removing the hood. Hood isn't heavy but it is large.

I can't get the bolts out of the thing that holds the drive shaft to the rear end. 12MM 12PT socket and a 1/2 impact...no luck. Going to put it on the rack and use a breaker bar and a pipe.

 

Heat the flange with a torch one bolt hole at a time then remove each bolt.

Using too much force may brake the bolt.

 

Was in fear of baking the seal in the front with the torch, is it pretty tough?

 

You shouldn't need to get it cherry red to help brake it loose

 

Hey Everyone, Im new to the forum and I have also started a new youtube vlogging channel and I only upload vlogs when my ranger is in or has something to do with my ranger! Please go help me out and check out my videos and leave a comment saying you found me by the forum and that would be awesome! thanks guys!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcu...r9DfQKKOfuI_3w

 

Last Monday, from 8 in the morning to 1:30 the next morning, me and two of my buddies replaced my front end. Everything we did on one side, we did on the other. Upper control arms, upper and lower ball joints, shocks, tie rod ends, wheel bearing(hub assemblies), rotors, brake pads, and lug nuts. The wheel bearings were from Detroit Axle, the pads and rotors were BrakeBest Select, the shocks were Monroe: Monro-Matic, and everything else was ACDelco. A few notables:

-The lug nuts we needed to replace because the previous ones had caps on them and were a pain in the *** to get off, either the caps broke off or the lugs got stripped. We used a blowtorch for a few of them. It took us an hour to get the front wheels off, fun fun. Then we needed to put the new ones on a lathe to reduce the trim because my wheels have recessed pockets.
-We learned after the first side to keep the old shock attached while replacing the upper control arm so that the lower control arm did not fall away from where we needed it.
-The knuckle was tough to disconnect from the lower ball joint(even after we cut the castle nut and bolt off). We used a wedge an hammer to separate the two pieces.
-One of the shocks was missing some hardware in the packaging, so we used the old pieces. The knucklehead at O'Reilly's gave me a hard time to get the missing parts. He stated that he couldn't give me them from another package because then they would be missing for the next guy to buy the shock...let that sink in. I finally got them and will replace them tomorrow.

If anyone has any questions about the parts or processes or anything, just reply or PM me.

 

Bought a $50 Snap-on socket to remove the driveshaft bolts. He said it would do the trick being I wouldn't need an extension. It worked.

Using an extension with the impact turned out to be the problem. This socket is 3 inches long 12 point 12 MM. impact duty

 

got half my way through lowering my truck

 

I was reading some threads and found one about the throttle cable mod. My truck was doing the same things everyone was mentioning, so I checked. Sure enough I had slack. One zip tie and less than one minute and it was fixed.

Response is much better now. Downshift kickdown is no longer sluggish either. Wish I would have done it sooner.

 

Made a custom 2.5" stainless catback with all mandrel bends and a Dynomax Turbo muffler just to add a little sound.
Tomorrow it is getting a valve body rebuild to eliminate the rpm spike during shifts aka."shifting flare" and the no shift at WOT.

 

Took off rusty nerf bars. got two brackets off but rear two will have to be cut. Run it around the mountain awhile. new tires tomorrow then replace front bumper when it arrives. any advice on cleaning and coating the salt rust under the frame?

 

Got her finished and all aligned

 

Installed front rotors, bearings, pad, a 2000 Exploder disk brake rear with new e-brake shoes, rotors and pads and a better looking set of gauges.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bw...UZVdEk0Q1V0SDg

 

No words

 

New fuel filter and air filter. I also polished my wheels.

 

I backed up into a guard rail last night, so that was beautiful. Fender flare is mad at me.

 

Been doing quite a bit lately, ( not just today ) just to name a few I replaced front and rear shocks,rear break pads, wheel cylinders ,drums, axles and break master cylinder. My poor ranger is going into retirement and I will have numerous daily and weekend projects that are and will be well deserved, including new paint. Hope to get another 26 years out of her.

 

Over past couple days removed completely 2.5 4 cyl and trans, ecm and all wires from the square plug back. Now for those darn motor mounts....

 

My parking brake has not been working, so we took off the drums to find absolutely shot pads. replaced those, but then we couldn't put the drums back on. Why? Because the cables were frozen. Didn't have those parts so we cut the cables to release the brakes, pried them back to their "off" position, and will order the parts and do the rest of the repair this coming Friday. Meanwhile i'll be tutting around on an overdue inspection sticker.

 

Went back at fixing my E-brake. Got all the cables ordered and delivered(Rock Auto w/ 2 day delivery, grand total was $46).
When we got the drums off we were looking at 4 cracked shoes -_- so we went back to Advanced and replaced those. Connected the cables to the drums, and then got the drum setup back. But first, as usual, we hit a speed bump. The pins in the shoes were not small enough for the metal clip(the one that meets the adjuster switch) to fit over and then slide onto). So we stuck them in a vice and filed them down. After that everything went on per usual. We connected the cables to the front cable, and now I have an E-brake.
As I discover all of my reverse lights are not turning on, so that's one more repair I must do before I get it inspected.

 

Fiddled with the reverse lights yesterday. Used a current checker to see if there was power getting to the sockets. There wasn't, so I checked the next plug down. Still nothing, but they were dirty, so I cleaned them out and connected them to find working reverse lights.

 

I found something the other day. When I was doing my rear drums, we found an electrical component in top of my rear diff. My buddy told me that it was probably a diff lock, activated when I put the truck in 4WD. Anyone have any tidbits on this?

 

Welp, FINALLY did the headliner in black suede. Was harder than I had imagined and I even had less material due to the giant hole for the sunroof. I have a lot of respect for people that do upholstery and able to make it look 100% amazing.

Turned out well, no wrinkles or creases. Just took my time as it did take a couple hours. My gray headliner was both starting to sag in the back and faded/ripped in spots. On top of that but where the sunroof was it was all rippled due to me tucking the headliner in the fall and then come spring it expanded and looked bad. I did a different method tucking the new one so it looks so much better.

I am probably going to get fabric and do the sun visors as they look out of place now and should be black.

Not pictured which I'll get photos tomorrow is of the painted overhead console. It was the stockish gray, but I painted it black. Now it matches the interior black perfectly. I broke the rear light for the last and final time so I ordered a black mustang dome light as that will probably look better than that POS that ford used and a nightmare to remove rear light...lol

-Nigel

 

In the last couple of days I took care of the air bags recall, waxed it and recoated the rear bumper step-pad (for the second time). But this time I took it off, it turned out much better.