Scottydog's Build Thread

[Scottydog]

Guess it's way past time I started this.

My truck is a 2009 Sport 4x4 auto. 200,000 ish km but seems to have been well looked after. She was born on July 5th 2009 at the Twin Cities plant.

Here's how she looked when I picked her up from the dealer:



EDIT: cut down on the number of pics for ease of loading and to make the thread more viewer friendly.

Stuff that needs to be fixed:

-Rear axle/box alignment issue.
-Some slightly misaligned panels.
-Scratches, paint flakes, tide-marks and mounting holes from the old fenders.
-Rear bumper is a little bent.
-Vinyl floor could do with being pulled up to check for rust.
-Pretty sure my AC is leaking.

Stuff that I want to do:

-Torsion bar crank.
-3" body lift.
-Patch fender flare holes or replace panels.
-AVS tail light slots.
-AVS side window louvers.
-Willpak or Astra Hammond rear window louvers.
-Wolo dixie horn.
-Bedliner paint.
-Accent paint on stuff like the torsion bars. Maybe red.
-Paint brake calipers and drums.
-New shocks. (Bilsteins?)
-Fancy rear diff cover... or paint it, just somethin'.
-Debadge the tailgate and replace with oldschool F O R D lettering.
-Debadge the sides and replace with old Ranger script from when it was a trim level.
-Remove "Sport 4x4" decals. Replace with chrome 4x4 badge on tailgate.
-"adapter" spacers on rear wheels to bring rear track equal with front.
-K&N cold air intake.
-Flowmaster 40 series or super 10 cat back system.
-Traction bars.
-Do something with the interior and dash.
-Have seats upholstered in tan vinyl.
-Dual bedrail mounted 3' firestik cb antennas.
-Bug shield.
-Westin Bull Bar.
-Lund dual hood scoops.
-15x10 wheels -44 offset.
-33x12.5r15 tires.
-Headlight blackout mod.

Stuff that I'm undecided on:

-4.10 LSD axle swap, 4.56 gears in current axle, or keep 3.73.
-Front torsen.
-If 4.56 gears, rear LSD OR rear ARB.
-Lund cab visor... lighted, unlighted, which style... do I want one or don't I?
-Wolo cab roof mount truck style horns.
-Bed bars.
-Chrome front and rear bumper, or stay black?
-Swap to old style front bumper?

Stuff that's done
-Removed mudflaps.
-Removed fender flares.
-Added offset 15x8 rims.
-Added 31x10.5 mud terrains.
-Added ventshades.
-TPMS "pipe bomb" - no more TPMS light!
-Trimmed front bumper valance.
-Upgraded headlight bulbs.
-Mounted and wired front amber marker lights.
-Mounted and wired backup spot lights.

[Scottydog]

So today I pulled the fender flares off. Took me a while to figure out how to do this since there's not a lot of people who seem to want to do this to the newer rangers. Seems like ford didn't really change anything though, once you remove the panel pins inside the wheel arch you can just pull it off starting from one end working your way round.







It's not as dramatic of a change as I thought, but I definitely like it better. The flares were just way too big for the truck IMO and I think it looks more oldschool without them. I also really like how the offset is more apparent now, and I think it's really interesting to see a sport 4x4 without the flares as I'm pretty sure the flares came default with the sport trim level - I've definitely never seen one without them. So now I guess I'll just have to figure out what to do with the holes. I figure I'll probably debadge it at the same time since I'm fairly certain that will also leave some holes. This is pretty much the one time that I'm actually glad my truck is boring black!

[Scottydog]

Been trying to figure out for a while what I want to do for lift on this truck. Could never really decide if I wanted to do the pre-key and lift block/belltech shackle mod, or if I wanted to body lift it. I've seen both in person and I always kinda preferred the body lift. So I decided to play around in MS paint to "add" 3 inches to my truck. Here's a before and after:




Now I know this isn't exactly 100% accurate, but I think I got pretty close and I LOVE the look. Kinda reminds me of the older Toyota Tacomas which is exactly what I'm going for.

[Scottydog]

Welp, just found out that my torsion bars have never been cranked. There's well over an inch of adjustment there. Guess that's one more thing that the mechanics at Steel Horse lied to me about considering they told me that they had "maxed" it. So basically they charged me for a 4 wheel alignment for no good reason. I guess I'll be paying them a visit very soon to express my dissatisfaction with their "service".

At least that gives me another thing to try; cranking the torsion bars! Guess we'll see how it looks leveled.

[Scottydog]

So after enduring the TPMS sensor warning light on my dash for long enough, I finally built this:



7up for scale. This black thing is the so called "pipe bomb trick" because it really does look like one. It's a threaded male and female 3" abs pipe adapter glued together, with a threaded cap on each end for convenience. On one cap there's a valve stem to allow the container to be pressurized. Simply unscrew the lid, put the TPMS sensors inside, screw the lid back on, air it up to 35psi, and put it under the passenger seat!

I'm going to go test it right now and edit this post if it works.

EDIT: Damnit, it won't hold air. Gets up to around 28psi and that's the most it will sustain with the compressor running. Seems to be leaking out the threaded caps so I'll have to use some PTFE tape. I was hoping the rubber O ring would do the trick but I guess not. But hey, it's progress! And PTFE is cheap and should solve my problem.

DOUBLE EDIT: So it now holds air. I had to permanently glue the screw-caps onto the body with the TPMS sensors inside, since nothing I tried with PTFE/Teflon tape worked. However I now have a new issue; despite the TPMS sensors being in a tube pressurized to 60 PSI, the light still comes back on after doing the manual reset. Anyone have any ideas?

[Undrstm8ed]

Originally Posted by Scottydog

Welp, just found out that my torsion bars have never been cranked. There's well over an inch of adjustment there. Guess that's one more thing that the mechanics at Steel Horse lied to me about considering they told me that they had "maxed" it. So basically they charged me for a 4 wheel alignment for no good reason. I guess I'll be paying them a visit very soon to express my dissatisfaction with their "service".


At least that gives me another thing to try; cranking the torsion bars! Guess we'll see how it looks leveled.

Wait what? a 4 wheel alignment? HOWWWWwwwwww?

[Scottydog]

Originally Posted by Undrstm8ed

Wait what? a 4 wheel alignment? HOWWWWwwwwww?

They call it a "4 wheel alignment", but as I understand it all they're actually doing is adjusting the front end using the rear wheels as a point of reference. The rear gets measured in that process, but can't be adjusted obviously.

What bugs me about it is that they charge me the same amount as they charge someone with a sedan that requires adjustment on all 4 wheels. This seems to be pretty common.

[NewShockerGuy]

Do you plan on plugging the holes in the fender when you removed the fender flares?

Not to sound like an idiot but why were you getting the TPMS light on? Is there something wrong with the TPS or do they need replaced, I don't understand the point of the pressurized unit?

-Nigel

[Scottydog]

Originally Posted by NewShockerGuy

Do you plan on plugging the holes in the fender when you removed the fender flares?

Not to sound like an idiot but why were you getting the TPMS light on? Is there something wrong with the TPS or do they need replaced, I don't understand the point of the pressurized unit?

-Nigel

Yeah the holes are going to be plugged. I'm either going to lead-load the holes or mig weld them, and then repaint the panels.

The TPMS light is on because I removed the stock wheels and replaced them with American Racing 15x8 D window wheels. This meant that the TPMS sensors were no longer on the truck (because they were still strapped to the original wheels) so the light came on because the computer could no longer see the sensors.

The reason for the pressurized container is that having the sensors put on the new wheels will cost upwards of $300, when for about $20 in parts I was able to simply put the sensors in a container and bring it up to pressure to fool the computer into thinking the sensors are inside correctly pressured tires.

However the problem I'm now having is that despite the sensors being inside the pressurized container, the computer still isn't detecting them. I'm not sure why.

[Undrstm8ed]

Originally Posted by Scottydog

They call it a "4 wheel alignment", but as I understand it all they're actually doing is adjusting the front end using the rear wheels as a point of reference. The rear gets measured in that process, but can't be adjusted obviously.

What bugs me about it is that they charge me the same amount as they charge someone with a sedan that requires adjustment on all 4 wheels. This seems to be pretty common.

Yea, they call it an outright scam.. lol

Sounds like one of those shops you hear about on "Dateline NBC where they show the mechanic and a small squirt tube shooting oil on things under the cars to say there's a leak when in fact they're charging for work NOT performed... Ughh

I hope you trust these clowns my friend.

[Scottydog]

No more TPMS light! I have no idea why it stayed on for so long after airing up the tank, but I guess the computer just has to do a few cycles of checking things before it decides that everything is okay. I would not be surprised at all to find out that it's connected to the odometer and needs to send back consistent pressure readings over a certain number of miles before it gives the "all clear".

Also I trimmed the valence today. I love it, what an easy mod that was. I did take a picture of it, but unfortunately my phone decided that it was only going to take the picture and not store it. So I guess I'll go try again later.

[Scottydog]

Alright so camera worked this time. So here's the "after" photo for the valance trim.



It's such a small thing but each time I look at the truck I can't help but say to myself "wow that looks so much better".

[Undrstm8ed]

HOLY GIANT PICTURES BATMAN !! lol

And thats how you know you bought the right truck when you park it and look back at it every time..

----------

oh nevermind, my puter' was just being stupid and was downloading your valance pic weird..

[Scottydog]

Originally Posted by Undrstm8ed

HOLY GIANT PICTURES BATMAN !! lol

And thats how you know you bought the right truck when you park it and look back at it every time..

----------

oh nevermind, my puter' was just being stupid and was downloading your valance pic weird..

Sometimes it takes a little while for the images to resize. And yeah I agree, if you don't look back at your vehicle when it's parked, you own the wrong vehicle. The more work I do to it the better it's gonna get.

[Scottydog]

So today I added some running lights to the front:



Really like the way it turned out. Haven't wired it up yet, but it looks like it'll be pretty simple. I want to wire it so that it turns on with the headlight in the "on" position.

I also purchased a pair of these spot lamps:



I'm going to mount them on the corners of the box either side of the tailgate, where they'll act as back up lights. It'll be nice to actually be able to see where I'm going when I'm reversing! Obviously these will be wired to turn on when the reversing lights come on.