Brent's '01 4x4 Build / Restoration / Money pit / Whatever

[smokinAMD]

Time for the project log of my 2001 XLT 4.0 4x4 Off-Road stepside. Not exactly sure if it classifies as a build, restoration, or a project. Falls under money pit though, so I'll go with that.

Project bug has been biting me for a while and I had been kicking around the ideas of snagging up a project vehicle for different reasons, finally settled on getting a truck. Being a mechanic and not having a project vehicle is kind of rare, so I needed to find something to fit the stereotype. I hate Chrysler, GM, and Nissan, so that pretty much left me with finding a Toyota or a Ford. Pretty much a Ford guy at heart, so that left me with finding a Ford. Plus for what I wanted to spend, I wouldn't find ANYTHING that had Toyota on it that had less 300k miles and still had a frame that wasn't rusted out.

Being that project vehicles require work to be done on them, I needed something that would fit in my garage. That ruled out the full-size and left me looking at the Ranger. Fine by me, not really a huge fan of full size trucks. Don't have a need for a full size.

Then came the hunt, searched on-and off for several months, more seriously when I got back from vacation in September of 2014. Drove hundreds of miles checking out examples I found on craigslist, autotrader, and cars.com. All got rejected for various reasons / sold before I got there to look at them. Then on September 30th of 2014 I found a "gem" that was only a few miles away from my house. It was roughly around what I wanted to pay, good color, and the body appeared in good shape as well as the interior. Met all my requirements. Decent mileage for the age, clean title, history of maintence was there, 4x4, 4.0. Took it home for a 24 hour test drive to check it out / decide if I wanted to buy it. Now on for the pictures.


Here it is on September 30th 2014 when I brought it home on the test drive to check it out. Ate lunch and then ran it up to my work to give it a good once over and find out what all it would need if anything. I figured since it came with a passed state inspection, probably wouldn't need much. I neglected to tell the stealership I'm a licensed state inspector / ASE Mastertech before I took it on the test drive. Figured that would leave some bargaining room on the table if I found anything wrong with it. Notice the $8,995 price on the windshield. That's actually NOT far off for what a truck like mine would go for here. They had it listed for $7,995 or $7,495 as an internet special.

Anyways, get it to work and confirm a few things I already new, needed a battery, and tires BADLY, no big deal. I knew that. However, what surprised me was the fact all 4 ball joints were bad (not uncommon on a ranger with 138k on the clock), however, it "passed" state inspection. TIME TO ARGUE PRICE! Also found the wipers were torn, a license plate light out was out, and various fluid leaks. Both pinion seals were leaking, lower oil pan gasket was leaking, transmission cooler hoses were leaking, again. Not a big deal. Easy fixes.

Went back to the dealer with what I had discovered and a nice $3,000 estimate from work (not with any of my discounts applied, cut that bill down by $2,000), and began the negotiation process. Dropped the bomb on them that I was a state inspector and wanted to purchase the truck but gave them the ultimatum of they need to work a good deal or I would be contacting the Missouri Highway Patrol about the bogus safety inspection (they would lose their license and have to pay MAJOR fines). Shot them an offer of $4,500. They took the bait and agreed at $5,000, which I thought was fair considering the work that needed to be done and the overall condition / miles on the truck. Still reported them to the highway patrol a few weeks later when I saw the trooper at my work doing a routine check up on us. I'm a dick like that. Said it wasn't the first complaint he had about that dealer. Anyways, once we had agreed on the price I took the truck home for the evening to show my wife and to think about it before signing any papers. Came back the next day and finalized everything.


One of the first thing I noticed about my new truck on the day it became mine was the floor mats were hideous. Needed to do something about that at some point. More on that shenanigans later.


Drove straight over the parts store after signing the papers on it and snagged up new ball joints, and eccentric cams to make aligning it a breeze. Opted for the 1 piece control arm on the passenger side to replace the original 2 piece that way I would get new bushings out of the deal. I figured I don't need the caster adjustment the 2 piece offered since I was putting cams in.


Confirmed what I already knew, the truck in fact would fit in my small garage. Started tearing it apart. Had only owned it a few hours and had put less than 20 miles on it.


Doing work. Would have been nice to replace the shocks then while I was in there, but that would have to wait until later.

Drove it up to work the next day after I replaced all the ball joints, put 4 tires on it and gave it the best alignment any Ranger has ever seen.


3 weeks after I bought it is when I addressed most of the fluid leaks and caught up on all the maintenance I wasn't sure on the history of. Replaced both pinion seals, and redid both differential cover gaskets. The front one sucks, in case you haven't done one before. Changed the transfer case fluid, changed the transmission filter and gasket, replaced the oil pan gasket / changed the oil, did a coolant flush, threw some wiper blades on it, replaced a license plate light. Had to leave the truck sit overnight at work because we didn't have any gear oil to stick in the damn thing. Oil guy was coming in the morning. Oh well.

Had to redo the front pinion seal a few weeks later because for whatever reason, the one I got wasn't exactly right and started to leak even worse than the original one. That's when I replaced the leaking transmission cooler hoses too. As it sit's now. Nothing is leaking anymore, yay! Well, besides maybe a small seep from the rear main, but it's probably only a drop or two every several hundred miles. Nothing to worry about. I'm not pulling a transmission to fix something THAT small. And it's not leaving any drops on my driveway or garage, so I don't care.


Then I did a fuel system service and cleaned the throttle body. St. Louis can thank me when there aren't any mosquitoes this year. Killed all those bastards.


Then I polished some of the haze out of the stock headlights.


It looked somewhat better. My helper didn't seem to care that much.


At the same time I took a heatgun to the back and took off that godawful crappy hole in the wall car dealership logo off the tailgate. Yes, I know my truck has the crappy bumper lean when someone uses the bumper to tow with. Fixed most of that later when I did the body lift. Bumper brackets were bent BADLY.


Then came spark plugs and wires. Not sure if those plugs were original or not, but they were pretty smoked. Truck ran MUCH better after that.



And then came the fishbowl delete, aka, I tinted the windows. 20% on the front 2 to match the factory rear tint.

[smokinAMD]

Finally got around to replacing the hideous floor mats after finding something I could deal with. This is when things took a turn for the ugly / interesting and money started flying everywhere. I noticed my drivers side carpet was wet when I was putting the mat in place. I had noticed it was damp, not wet, when I had taken the truck for a test drive before I bought it. Didn't think anything of it then because they had shampooed the carpet in it. Thought it was damp from that. However, since it had been a month or so since I bought it, and it hadn't rained in a couple of days, something was up.


Peeled back the carpet and found this. Poked a hole through the floorboard with my finger. Was immediately pissed off because the condition of the UNDERSIDE of the cab looked CLEAN, nothing that would indicate a rotten out floorboard. Wouldn't have bought the truck if I had known about this. Oh well, nothing to do at this point but to fix it, take my licks and move on. Called up an old buddy from highschool that happened to own a body shop, told me to bring it by and we could figure out a plan of action.


Found a GPS tracking device / radio transmitter hidden underneath the carpet when I took it to my buddies shop. Truck was a fleet vehicle at one point in its life. Had 3 prior owners to me. Ripped that damn thing out and destroyed it. No big brother watching my truck!




The extent of the rust was localized to just the drivers side. My buddy said we could fix it for relatively cheap. Especially since I did all the fun work of gutting the interior and getting it ready for him to start cutting out and welding. Figured since rust came and surprised me, I might as well tackle other things before they became an issue.


So off came the bed so I could tackle the frame and the rear spring shackles / hangers. Also stuck a new fuel pump in while I was there because mine was giving me warning signs of failing. Sure enough, that fixed all issues I had.


One side done, damn right, rust proofed behind the hanger before I put it on.


Once you peeled off all the flaking paint from the old hanger, you could see the rust was starting to eat holes in it. Caught these just in the nick of time.


My buddy was making pretty good progress on the floor pan at that time.


All fixed up and rust proofed.


Truck then made it's way outside so he could finish a 3 day restoration on a Corvette. Don't ask, nightmare job that a client HAD to have done QUICKLY. Full color change job.


While I was on the task of preventing rust, I ripped out the factory drop in plastic bedliner (water trap) and had a spray in bedliner done. Looks so much nicer.


Had the bedliner brought down the side of the bed rails for more protection / a clean look.


Wasn't going to half ass fighting rust, entire underside of the bed got coated in POR15.


Frame got tackled too. Wirebrushed everything and then spraybombed POR15 on it. Rust wasn't gonna win the war with me.


At the same time of doing all this, I needed to get new bolts to hold the bed in place. It was cheaper and easier just to get a body lift since it came with new bolts. So I got a 3 inch body lift out of the ordeal. Wasn't exactly planning on it, but hey, it's fine by me.


Several months after ordering, my new shocks finally showed up. Of course they couldn't have come when I had the bed off my truck, would have made installing the rear ones super easy.


And then my HID retrofit arrived. Mixed feelings about this. More on this later.


I was impressed with the light out put and cutoff though. Looked awesome.


Bought an explorer OHC off of here, because I couldn't find any at the time in the junkyard that weren't broken. Figures after I buy one off here, they magically become plentiful at the junkyard.


Acquired motivation / time and was able to install my shocks.


It's safe to say the originals were wasted. Especially the fronts. 139kish miles and 13ish years, I'd say they had a good life.


Condensation in your $600+ HID converted headlamps is normal. Don't worry about it, no big deal. These headlights are honestly what probably burns me the most about this truck. For one, when I bought them. The wiring harness was wrong. Highbeams were lowbeams, and lowbeams were highbeams. Had to repin it. Then, condensation happened. THEN my drivers side stopped working. Turns out the ground wire on the provided harness was junk, and I had to repair it. I bought a conversion off a member here so I wouldn't have to do any work. I don't have THAT much time to devote to a project like this. I'm kind of regretting not doing the conversion myself with the amount of time and work I had to put in into it. I could have saved myself a couple hundred bucks. Whatever, it's fixed now and working.


Snagged up a bunch of explorer goodies, still have to install the OHC I bought, as well as the seats and center console. Needs a nice warm day of me off work for a good cleaning and to figure out the entire seat belt ordeal.


Tracked down one of those hard to find UWS boxes which seem to be the only option for a stepside.


Had some custom exhaust work done with a flowmaster 40 and a turn down to eliminate the stupid look of stock exhaust after doing a body lift. Sounds OK, getting better with time as I drive it more.

That's pretty much where my truck sits now. I've tried to document most everything along the way. About the only thing I've done that I haven't listed is the Mustang dome light mod, and converting most of the bulbs over to LED.

Sorry for the long first post, but that's what happens when you don't start one when you begin a project. Thread will be updated as things happen. Need to have time and decent weather first. Too damn cold to be messing with a lot of stuff right now.

[JesusFreak_2000RangerXLT]

What a great project you got going. Looks like it needed some help and it got one heck of an owner to do the job. Gotta upload a current picture of the truck!

[trailbikerider]

Wow you've practically rebuilt this thing!

[smokinAMD]

Yep. I wanted a project, I got one, ha.

Although I was looking for more of a project to modify, and not restore. Oh well, got both. I can't complain though. The rust ordeal wasn't that expensive. Only cost me $600 for a spray in professional bedliner, the new spring hangers and shackles, all of the POR15, and having a new floor pan welded in. Perk of knowing people.

Line-x bedliner would have cost about $500, so I'm sure I came out WAY ahead on everything.

Also forgot I put in 2006 tail lights when the truck was apart since one of them turned into a fishbowl and had about an inch of standing water in it.

[ranger024x4]

Any pics with the headlights installed?

[97rangerstepside]

Subd, what did you use for your spray in bedliner?

[smokinAMD]

Originally Posted by 97rangerstepside

Subd, what did you use for your spray in bedliner?

SEM Rockit liner. It's professional grade stuff, comes as a kit with the spray gun and everything. It's what his shop uses. Holding up pretty good. Couple spots were a little thin and will need to be touched up at some point, but I think I'm going to hold off on doing that until it gets warmer outside and having my tool box done as well.

[smokinAMD]

Originally Posted by ranger024x4

Any pics with the headlights installed?

Some, nothing spectacular. I don't really have any "glamour shots" of the truck yet, everything has been basically work in progress pics to document the journey.






FX4 cluster showed up the other day. Need to work on getting this in at some point too, since my tach likes to stick and I have to smack the dash to unstick it. Shame you cant just get a new stepper motor like on GMs.

[smokinAMD]

Woo yay. Bigger tires went on today, rocking 33's.....wooo no one cares.

[Fx4 Beast]

Originally Posted by smokinAMD

Woo yay. Bigger tires went on today, rocking 33's.....wooo no one cares.

Pics??

----------

Originally Posted by Fx4 Beast

Pics??

Nvmd. Saw your other post.

[smokinAMD]

Pictures from today. The 285/75/16s really took care of the major wheel gap issues after doing the body lift. It's almost comparable to the stock 245/70/16s without the body lift now.

[Fordzilla80]

Looks so much better now! No more skipping leg day!

[Fx4 Beast]

Originally Posted by Fordzilla80

Looks so much better now! No more skipping leg day!

^^^

[smokinAMD]

Need to do something about the engine splash shields. They were janky before the body lift, they are even more janky after the body lift, and now with wide tires, they are superbly janky and rub at full lock when reversing. Which is strange, because even with the front suspension compressed and fully flexed while doing some off-roading last night they didn't rub at all at full lock going forward.

Might need to check into the performance accessories ones or just say screw it and rip the damn things off.