Thread: [486]'s 90/91 ranger 2wd

I haven't really gotten around to the suspension stuff that would qualify this as a prerunner type build yet, but someone might find the build so far interesting.
It started out as a DNR truck, painted a hideous bright green, so I painted it OD green with a brush. It doesn't look too bad from a distance. lol




One of the front spring pockets rusted into nothing and dropped the truck on its bumpstop in that corner. So, I made a new one outta 1/4" plate.


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Used an AC buzz box at 110 amps with 1/8" 6011 electrodes.

Also put new brake lines into it at that point, all of them were gone and I had to use the E brake to move it, and it stuck on...

Gonna be doing a 63/64" spring swap on it too, the springs came off of a 1500 suburban. From what I hear the 1500 pickup springs have 2 less leaves than mine, so I guess these might be like 2500 pickup springs... I should probably take a leaf or 2 out, but I dunno if I'm gonna just yet considering my axle choice.


It needs rear wheel bearings in the 7.5", but then I got a deal on a corp. 14 bolt DRW axle with 4.10 gears.

I've already got it cut and shortened. The stock axle takes a long shaft and a short one, the difference between them being 6", so I got 2 short shafts and the pinion will just be 3" offset to the passenger side.
I'll post pics of the shortened axle housing as soon as I can get pics. It's sitting at my dad's shop right now, 11 miles away, so I can't exactly walk out and take pics.

Sorry if formatting is a bit funky, I copy/pasted most of this from another forum...

Well, haven't updated this thread in a while... Dunno if anyone's interested since this ain't going in a prerunnerey direction at all any more, but hell, cross posting it is easy enough.

Stripped the housing down and cut the shock mounts off with the arc welder, max amperage, and some old rusty shitty welding rods that were worth nothing.

Nice big brakes. 3.5x13" IIRC



A wild power hacksaw appears!




Some machining pics from some backing plate spacers.


We don't have an independent 4 jaw chuck for the lathe, or hell even outside jaws for the scroll 4 jaw, so I had to improvise. Oh, assembled a power feed sorta thing for the rotary table too out of a 1/8" punch that happened to be made of 3/8" square stock...

Machining the sleeves I pressed on to final dimension. Did this so I could put the brake drums on the outside of the hubs...
With all my measurements with the wheels I've gotten the outsides of the tires will be 66" apart, which is what I've found the dimension of the bedsides is. Long story short, I probably won't need fender flares to be legal! Also, I'm doing spring under on it to keep the ride height closer to stock, I hate the look of trucks that are ridiculously lifted to fit big tires, I'm probably gonna end up doing some trimming here and there later on...


At this point I was close to putting the axle in under the frame as is, but then decided at the last minute to drop the tank to at least clean out all the leaves and dirt packed between it and the frame. Big mistake, found the frame rusted through right there, now I feel like I need to replace that damn section of frame. I'm an idiot.


Started rebuilding the frame rails for the pile'o'shit. The original plan was to have the frame be straight, but that would result in 0 suspension travel at the stock ride height. By keeping a similar profile as the stock frame I'm able to get a solid 3" or so of travel at stock 2wd ride height, 1" of which will be eaten by bumpstops. When I go up to 4wd ride height later once I get a drive axle for the front I'll have 4" of travel bumped.

Pic of frame damage, arrows indicate rust holes. The gas tank held leaves in there and they eventually turned into dirt and got soaked with saltwater in the winter, and rain water could get in from the gap between the box and the cab when it was sitting. Rusted right through the frame...



Ended up with a bit too large of a gap, so I filled it in with some 1/8" 6013 rods I'm trying to get rid of. Ran them real low at 60 amps to keep the heat low so it'd fill in the gap. Ended up welding over the top of slag and all that shit, so I got the grinder out and ground most of the shit out and redid it with 3 passes of 6011 1/8" rod at 90 amps AC, cleaning with the grinder between passes. Turned out to be some pretty welds, forgot to take a pic though...

Actually, that's the only progress pic I've got... Ended up welding most of them up and then deciding that the warpage was too much and cut the legs of the channel and hammered it to straight. Ground the gaps and rewelded with 1/8" 6011@100A.


Done frame rails.

Since then I've gotten the ass end of the frame cut off and the new bits welded in, just gotta stick some crossmembers in and figure out spring mounts. Probably have to get some flatter arched leaves too to keep a reasonable ride height, but that is so much in the distant future that it can be considered later.

The direction I'm taking with this truck now is making it into a little service style truck. Small agile, heavy duty thing that can get a engine driven welder thrown in the back, set up an onboard air compressor outta a york-style A/C compressor I've got laying around, and some tools thrown in the back to be carted around to wherever they're needed.