Well here she is.

This is how I bought her about 2 weeks ago. She had 154k miles on here and a few little quircks but nothing to serious.

Long run goal: In the end I doubt I will ever call it finished, but my goal is a fun V8 swapped street truck. I live in the city so offroad isnt really a goal. Here in FL we dont have to worry stuff like snow. I don't see the point of lifting a 2wd truck. Im not going to pretend its something that its not.

I would like to get the stock Pioneer sub hooked back up in the truck somehow to the aftermarket head unit.

Few little mods I have done so far.
Took off the Front plate.
Led dome light.
HD radio.

I have black headlight housings and side markers on their way (Should be here tomorrow) Along with LED reverse lights and LED license plate lights.

I have an OHC and dual visors from my dads dead explorer that will get installed eventually...


Mods I plan to do are:
6k HIDs and 6k HID fogs.
06+ power side mirrors
06+ tails
I need to put on a tow package.
STX grille.
I would love to be able to drop the trucks height a couple of inches. Don't want it slammed just better handling would be nice.
I may do 06+ badges to complete the look.
Remove the chrome side rails.
Biggest of them all would be a full explorer v8 swap.
Once that is all complete would be a full re-paint of the stock Ebony.


Quick shout out to Dewey who I was able to meet up with back on Sunday!


I'm excited to see where this is going to lead!

 

Glad we got to hang out. What you didn't mention is that there was a PA speaker screwed into your floor pan by the previous owner

 

haha Im trying to forget about that...

 

I don't blame you, but it needed to be mentioned

 

Sounds like a plan! Here's my .02, take it or leave it...

If you're going HIDs, do a projector retrofit. HIDs in stock housings are going to do nothing but **** people off because of all the glare, not to mention your stock housings simply aren't made for HIDs.

Ride height... I know you said you don't want to go really low, but a couple inches is a noticeable difference, and really hard to do with an Edge. You have the torsion bars hanging down there to take into account, and a lowered truck with fender flares is going to look a little off. So if you then pull the flares, you're going to have holes in your fenders.

Just things to think about.

 

I tried to tell him to lift it. He needs to go with E4 paint too

 

Torsion bars = Lift
Coils = Drop

 

E4= life

 

If I can find some projectors that I like the look of I will definitely go with them.
I know it will be tricky to lower it but I know that it's possible. As for the flares they will get ripped off and then bondo the holes before the last step which is paint.

 

Like I said the first truck I looked at was E4. I love the color, but not in the plans

 

You could always do a coilover conversion when you drop if you have the funds for it.

E4 = <3

 

That was my overall plan. Currently I like the hight of the front of my truck but my rear is way higher up and I'd like to bring that down some. looked into swapping the axle to ontop of the leafs but I fear that will drop it to far.
In about a week I will be leaving the state to tour the country with my real job till the end of the year, leaving my ranger in the hands of my father while I am gone 😭. Luckily this gives me a couple of months to save up some money so when I do get back I can knock out a couple of mods I want to do. Till then she will be content where she is. Thursday I will add some leds and replace the front headlight housings and maybe get the tint re-done, but that will be the end of the mods for a while sadly.

 

Okay so Today I did a few things. First was I swapped the headlights and side markers to Black housings and the Side markers are now LED.



So far i like them much better than the stock ones I had. It makes the grille (which im not a huge fan of) look a little better than it did. Also now my headlights should be able to aim where they are supposed to. My old ones were aimed so far down and their was nothing i could do about it. Sadly my Highbeams still dont really change anything. Don't know why.

Also I installed the Explorer Visors from our dead explorer. Didn't hook up power yet because i haven't finished pulling the pigtail from the Explorer.




So far I'm loving the truck. LED reverse lights and LED License plate lights come in tomorrow. Should be an easy change. Would like to get some HID fogs and LED white/amber switchbacks for the turn signals before I leave in 7 days. Thoughts?

 

Good start, I would consider removing the rear lift block and taking some of the preload out of your T bars for more of a street truck stance.

Then some nice 17-18in rims and you would be dialed.

 

IMO, for street with a future V8, I'd suggest an explorer 31 spline 8.8 and weld the spring perches and shock tabs. This way, you get rear discs and have a 31 spline to handle the power. Much more cost efficient since you have one sitting in your yard I believe.

 

I agree. However i'm probably just gonna wait to do that when i do the full v8 swap. Really need to use this truck as transportation currently dont have the time to change the rear end on it. However if i can just take the blocks out and lower it for the time being then i will probably do that on Saturday.

 

Hey you busy Saturday wanna help? haha

 

Hey! do you know if there is thread of how to remove the rear lift block? I figure that its pretty straight forward, but still...

 

I'm sure if you search around there is something, but the basics are jackup truck, stands under frame, lower jack, support axle with stands, remove U bolts, remove blocks jack up axle and install new U bolts. torque everything down and lower back to ground.

 

Well got a few more things done before I left.
Put in some stupidly bright reverse lights. Here is a before and after.


Also put in some LED plate lights and so far my favorite is i put in some LED switchbacks in the front turn signals. Because my edge logos were faded i took a heat gun and some goo gone and peeled off the old logos for now. Also found out that the water pump was leaking so had to tear apart the entire front of the engine to get it off and put on a new one. Way harder then it looked. Also found out that my belt was routed wrong. Don't know how the previous owner managed that but we put it on the right way now.

So this is how she sits for now! Won't see her for another 116 days! Dad is using the truck while I am gone. He says he is gonna get it re-tinted as my tint is quite bad and also take out the rear lift blocks because the rear of my truck is 4" higher then the front. He is also gonna try and hook up the stock sub to the aftermarket head unit.

 

Okay so still have another 50 days till i get to see my truck... However since my father is using it while i am traveling he has done a couple things for me. He did get the stock pioneer sub hooked back up. He also sewed a tear in the seat and put on new battery terminals since the previous owner broke the old one and it kept falling off. Also I figured i should put up a video of the LED switchbacks. They are pretty cool in my opinion. They just came out with a new brighter version but i am content with my current ones.

Still debating on new headlights. I will go 55 watt HID fogs because those are low enough they shouldn't blind anyone, but I'm torn on what to do with the headlights. Would be about $600 for custom projector retrofits. Or $250 for premade projector headlights but I am not a huge fan of the way that they look. I may just go with regular halogen bulbs but ones that put off around 5500k to match the LEDs and fogs. Don't like the contrast currently. Any thoughts? Thanks guys!

 

Whatever you do, DO NOT buy the eBay projector headlight assemblies. Justin had a set and tossed them in the trash when he got his custom retrofits.

 

Well got some more stuff done Thanks to the help of Dewey.

took us about 6 hours to wire up the OHC from my dads Explorer, a Mustang dome light and a TBL with Cargos.


(No that is not a PSP)





And then today I also installed some 55watt HID Fogs:


I fly back out of town on Tuesday so I don't think much more will get done but its at least a start to my big list of want/need to do. Still need to take the rear lift blocks out. with how much rain we have been getting i have a swimming pool in the back of my truck.

Still having an issue with the dome light not working sometimes. My guess is that it's a bad ground because the dome light and the map lights both don't work at the same time and they are both different power sources.

 

Might want to look into the power saver relay.

 

Okay new update time! Finally back in town for a while!
Dad got a ranger about a week ago:


Took out the stock lift blocks out of the back of my ranger lowering it about 1 1/2". Makes it ride a bit better and looks more even as well. It cost about $35 for the u-bolts from Autozone and took just over an hour with hand tools.
During the process:


Before the removal of the blocks:


After the removal of the blocks:


How she sits now:


I have a lot of little things planned, but first things on the list are a new head unit (since the one in my truck is technically my dads), I need to put a hitch on it before new years and I need to install some HID headlights to go with my fogs.