NEED DESERT BUDDIES

[Braden Merville]

Hey whats up, im braden merville. Im 19 and have a 96 ranger that ive been building for the past year. The project is slowly coming together but i need some people to go out to shred with. Ive always been in love with pre runners so about a year ago i decided to sell my reliable daily and buy a shitbox ranger for dirt cheap that has now consumed my whole savings. I put so much time into this thing and dont have anybody to cruise with. I live in thousand oaks (ventura county) area and im looking for someone local to hang, build, and shred with. I gotta get this damn ranger in the dirt so if any people or groups are interested in adding another member please let me know.
My phone number is 805-953-9237
Instagram Braden_merville

 

[badlinesgoodtimes]

Hey whats up, im braden merville. Im 19 and have a 96 ranger that ive been building for the past year. The project is slowly coming together but i need some people to go out to shred with. Ive always been in love with pre runners so about a year ago i decided to sell my reliable daily and buy a shitbox ranger for dirt cheap that has now consumed my whole savings. I put so much time into this thing and dont have anybody to cruise with. I live in thousand oaks (ventura county) area and im looking for someone local to hang, build, and shred with. I gotta get this damn ranger in the dirt so if any people or groups are interested in adding another member please let me know.
My phone number is 805-953-9237
Instagram Braden_merville
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Welcome dude ! We’ll be planning some runs on here in the near future. Tons of rad peeps on here chime in on your build if you have questions and also to cruise out to desert with. We putting on a meet at Pedals and Pints in Thousand Oaks Near the mall Nov 12. 7pm Bring the truck and come hang out !

Elliott

 

[theycallmeWALLY]

Thanks for joining sir!

As Elliot said please come out to the Pedals and Pints meet on Nov 12th. Should be a solid turn out!

What is all done to the truck?

 

[the bodj]

Cool! There’s a ton of people from the Simi, Moorpark, TO area coming out of the woodwork. Definitely cruise to the pedals and pints meet!

 

[neb_f159]

Welcome to the most experience hobby next to buying a house lol

 

[AiiRaciing]

Welcome to a lifetime of lighting $100 bills on fire. Now sell the truck and get into hookers and blow, it’s MUCH cheaper

 

[Braden Merville]

IM FINALLY BACK. My last post on here was over 3.5 years ago so I figured it’s finally time for an update on the build. I’m 22 now and have sunk so much more money into this thing throughout the years. I did end up meeting so many amazing people just like I wanted in my first post. The goal now is to update this thread on everything I’ve done to the truck since then and bring it up to current day.

 

[Braden Merville]

In my last update I had just finished putting the front end (V1) on the truck. This was an old Giant Motorsports J beam set up with a basic engine cage and stock steering that was cut and extended. 35 inch tires. I didn’t have anything for the rear end yet so I just threw on some huge spacers to make it look a little less goofy and called it a day, (the truck still looked very stupid being 96in wide in the front and only 72in wide in the back). I ran the truck like this for a while until I saved up enough money to do something with the rear. I did finally get the truck out to the desert too! The set up was not the greatest but I had an absolute blast. The front actually worked pretty good but the stock rear set up worked just about as bad as you’d think. I’ll also throw in a photo of the day I bought it when it was bone stock.

 

[Braden Merville]

After saving up enough money I bought a basic bed cage and some 14 inch shocks to start piecing together the rear. I then got my hands on a ford 9 inch with 4.56 gears and a full spool along side some F31 deavers. One day after work I got the truck up on the lift and yanked the old axle out to throw in the 9 inch. Since this 9 inch came out of a different ranger prerunner it was basically all set up to drop in so this made it super easy. I bolted in the bed cage, cut some holes in the bed for the shocks, mounted a spare tire back there and bam it felt like I had a trophy truck. I had the biggest smile on my face driving the truck home that day. After that I put some fiberglass bedsides on and a few other random cosmetic things to give it the final touches.

 

[Braden Merville]

I finally got the truck back out to the desert again and man that new rear set up made it feel like a whole different truck. It wasn’t anything fancy but anything would be better than the old stock set up I had. I gained some confidence driving it and of course this is when I started to break some things but nothing major. I ended up splitting some of the tubes on the bed cage so I cut out the cracked tubes to replace them and my buddy Tyler helped me beef up the cage a little so it wouldn’t happen again. Also turns out I didn’t cut the holes for the shocks in the bed long enough so they did some self clearancing and showed me where I should’ve cut the first time. I continued to break so many more things but I was having so much damn fun throughout the process, these memories will live with me forever. This was back in 2023 so there’s still quite a bit more before we’re up to how the truck sits now but if you’ve read this far thank you so much for your interest! I’m so thankful for everyone I’ve met throughout the process and grateful to the Badlinesgoodtimes crew for giving us this amazing platform to share this hobby.

P.S. all you guys were right, this is way more expensive than I thought.

 

[badlinesgoodtimes]

so rad... she's come a long way since you first cruised down my street haha Hope to see ya out in the dirt at some point.