Local Legend "jolene" 1993 ford ranger

[marcytech]

bout time i brought the thread over to the new, hip, happenin spot eh?

im gona try to make this as painless as possible, without repeating the non necessary shit.


what we have here is my dream build ever since i was a wee little lad sitting with kevin (dialed shock prep) in his dads garage lookin at pics of plank/si/newline rangers
now, obviously im noone that can afford a true SI truck, BUT i did somehow manage to get all the important pieces! more on that later

what we started with
i went out and bought a truck with good bones. its a 1993 4.0 ohv manual trans ranger that had cut and extended beams up front with some 2.5 x 14 kings and a simple little engine cage
the inside was pretty gutted with a god awful dash BUT it had a 2" 4130 cage.
outback it sported a cool little bedcage, f31 deavers, king 2.5 x 16 bypasses and a ford 9" rear end that had a cool bottom truss built by morgan clarke wayyyy back in the day.

i got the truck for a good deal. knowing my plan this was a good place to start as i could sell/ re use alot of these parts to fund the actual build. also it allowed me to build the truck in stages over the summer time while still enjoying it in the dirt in the winter.

heres some pictures of what i bought

 

[marcytech]

first order of business was tuning up the interior. i love stock looking interiors im trucks so i found a stock dash that was in decent shape and re fit that back in the truck along with its matching door panels! changed the manual windows over to power as well.
added new prp seats... lesson learned; yo back get sweaty in all vinyl seats... NEVER AGAIN.
oh ya, i repainted the cage too.

Heres some before and after pics

 

[marcytech]

drove it once in the dirt and decided that was enough leaf sprung activities for me. time for links!
went down to SI motorsports and put in an order for his link kit. for anyone that isnt familiar with it its a fairly simple system. the lower link pivots are on a big plate that locates on the frame via the 4 holes for the rear body mount. the upper link is obviously on the inside of the frame and shares bolts with the outside lower link pivot. since the frame is sandwiched between the two you drill out the hole in the frame for the upper links misalignment to key into thus taking a lot of the load off the bolt! kinda neat
he includes all misalignments, upper and lower links, brackets, abs for the rear housing and of course some blue prints so you get all the measurements right.
pics

 

[marcytech]

now, since im building my own SI truck it was only right i kicked the frame up and copied his usual tube layout
this first required me to fill in the c notch that the previous owner cut into it. after the kick my frame ended up 7.5" higher than stock
this allowed me to get 24" of over all wheel travel and 14" of up travel from ride height. all of this work was done in my parents garage cuz i didnt have 220v at the place i was renting at the time.

 

[marcytech]

now that the back was "done" with what i was gonna do here i turned the truck around to fix up a few minor things on the front

the front 2.5 coilovers were now on the back along with the 2.5 bypasses that the truck came with so i scored some 3.0 x 14" king race series and made them fit the front as well as some new 2.0 bumps
i knew all this was temporary and desert season was coming quick so i just made some shock mounts on the existing cage.


also cut out the inner fender structure and replaced it with a single tube and then built a new super tight bumper!


now it was time to get it towed back to my place where i would replumb the wholre truck and finish mounting a few things with my 110v tig welder

 

[marcytech]

plumbing and stuff

 

[marcytech]

finally time to play! got it in the dirt and drove the ever living shit out of it. broke an beam in half in glamis and welded it back together with some scrap metal and a 110v mig welder lol





BAD LINES GOOD TIMES EH?

 

[marcytech]

after 2 years and many miles it was time to upgrade the front.

i dont remember when but i found a pretty complete steering set up for the SI front end on craigslist of all places so i went up to phelan and bought that.
a year or two went by and tom from SI texted me and said he had a customer upgrading his beams and radius arms to the billett offerings and asked if i wanted his old stuff... uh duh! we worked out a deal for the used bits and new pivots for everything and i was finally ready to install it all. im super thankful he helped me out in the way that he did because without piecing it together in this way theres no way i coulda afforded a brand new kit


i built a complete new engine cage with added tubes comin through the firewall for more strengf. the shock angle forced me to switch to manual brakes which i actually really like alot better now.
also upgraded the wheels to method beadlocks (thanks steve!!!!!) because the new hubs were 5x5.5

 

[marcytech]

MOTOR SWAP TIME!
the 4.0 ohv was a absolute waste of fuel and effort so i ditched it for a 4.0 sohc. it was almost as easy as swapping in another ohv with a couple custom bits here and there but all in all it bolted right in and is ruinning on the original obd1 computer. i went and got it tuned and it made 180hp and 190tq (or around there i cant remember exactly)
to put that into perspective the ohv made 100 hp and 140tq lol
this engine completely woke the truck up and ive considered it done ever since! couldnt be happier

the engine needed a little work before i could put it in. it looked like it was a passenger in the titanic and upon inspection it had a few broken timing chain guids. so i rebuilt the timing assembly, resealed the whole engine and put in a melling high volume oil pump to hopefully get a little extended life out of the 75 timing chains that are in the engine lol. oh and i painted the fuck out of it too.


also my tweaker side got the best of me and i tried my hand at making a custom harness for it so that i can run all the wires through the valley and on the engine cage tubes. i think it came out decent!

 

[marcytech]

been enjoying it ever since. heres some of my favorite photos

 

[the bodj]

I've always loved this build! Great job, Marcy

 

[marcytech]

I've always loved this build! Great job, Marcy

Thanks dude!

Next up for the truck is kind of a scary one. I’ve grown to hate the cage that’s in it. As some of you know I have a baby due pretty much any day now so getting a 3rd seat in the truck is priority but I’m not sure it’ll fit because of how the cage is built. Nothing was really tried to be tucked tight or anything. At minimum I want to cut the door bars out and more the seats forward to clear the be pillar and hopefully closer to the doors.
What will probably end up happening is cutting the b and c pillars out. Building the c pillar outside the cab and tucking the b pillar way tighter to the sheet metal.lol

Oh also I want to build a new exhaust from the headers back with a c pipe and two of these bad boys that I picked up from cookcraft

 

[marcytech]

Decided to finally give the shocks on my truck some love. Took em to Kevin at dialed shock prep for the full kit. Going with cerakoted bodies, re anodizing the aluminum bits and also adding a bump zone to my front 3.0 coil overs by moving the resi port down on to the shock body. I’m super excited to see how they all turn out!


Also scored huge on some old school f350 spindles and cone hubs from Travis. The steering arms measured identical to mine so I knew they had to be a match. I took em over to SI and he confirmed that they were either built at planks shop back in the day or at newline suuuuuper pumped on that! He’s gonna church up the knuckles and snouts for me while I send the hubs to get re anodized in the classic cone blue and orange combo.
These snouts are MUCH bigger than the f150 ones I have on now so it’s gonna be a nice upgrade even though I’ve yet to have an issue with the f150 stuff.


Here’s some pics of my turd at full bump for your amusement. The 35s push the tops of the bedsides up lol

 

[theycallmeWALLY]

Dang... your going to make your truck even cleaner?

 

[marcytech]

Dang... you’re going to make your truck even cleaner?

Trying to keep up with you and your nice ass truck!!

 

[dwphoto]

cool low rider thread!

 

[Cleandezert]

love this truck so much. So clean and simple and seems like you are always having fun in it. Makes me miss my ranger, although mine wasnt near this cool.

 

[marcytech]

cool low rider thread!

Guilty as charged I gotta whore it out on ig so it helps pay for its own upgrades hahahahaha

 

[marcytech]

love this truck so much. So clean and simple and seems like you are always having fun in it. Makes me miss my ranger, although mine wasnt near this cool.

Thanks dude. After having a truck like my crew cab which was my daily driver while being linked and caged it quickly became more of a stress than a toy so with this one The goal was to always keep it simple and as fun as possible. Smiles per mile kind of thing!!

 

[charlie brown]

nice review of where it started and where it is at now. always well taken care of and good prep. makes for fun times..