Ranger Resurrection

Take a wrecked ranger, add Ian and Jessi and what do you get a tricked out desert demon called Ranger Resurrection

Plus. Down in dirty mud racing action from Pennsylvania right now on Extreme for Montford.

Welcome to Xtreme 4x4.

You know, we read all the emails you guys send in and all the posts you make on the message board. Yeah, like John from Wisconsin asked how to build a four link and a lot of you guys wanna know why we always start with a brand new truck. Well, you ask we deliver, we picked up this range at a local

ring yard.

This is gonna be one of the most bad ass off

planets you've ever seen hill climbs flying through the trails, conquering the hills and most importantly, it's gonna jump with the best of them.

Yeah,

the heart of this beast is a 347 stroke Ford small block built by the boys over at the horsepower shop.

But before we can start any of this, we have to show you our newest tool. This is a frame bench.

What it's going to allow us to do is securely mount the ranger in these fixtures. And measure back to a common point all the time.

This bench will hold on to the ranger securely so we can make measurements from one common point over and over, which will allow us to have a straight square and level chassis. By the time we're done with this truck, it's gonna have a tube chassis, four length suspension, front and rear coil over shocks,

wicked

dyno track axles, custom interior, two fuel cells because one just isn't extreme enough and much more. The first thing we gotta do is get it on the jig.

You know

how close me?

21 you there.

All right. Let's climb.

Now that we've started to get the frame mounted. It's time to get all this old stuff out of here away with the gas tank. No more exhaust away with the leaf springs. This is where the fun stuff starts

once bring

that was cool.

Oh,

before we go any farther.

Let's get these, uh, we bolt this in into our carriers

and then we can level it all over.

All right. Now that we got these leaf springs out, we have a hole that's low enough for us to actually mount the rear mounts.

So what I gotta do is slide this piece up,

pull the frame your way that then

and slide in a bolt.

Now, the nice thing about having a frame bench is if you can see on that piece right there,

your

leg

there,

Jessi,

thanks. You can see on that piece there, there's a measurement marking on that height. If we set this one to the same height, you're gonna end up with this frame perfectly level.

Now, the majority of this frame

is ac channel and by boxing it, it's going to make that C channel a lot stronger.

So I went ahead and made these cardboard templates by tracing it along the frame.

I then cut it out of eight inch plates with a plasma cutter

with a little bit of grinning.

It'll be ready to weld

before we do any welding. We're gonna get rid of the back half of this frame. We're gonna be tubing the back half of this truck. So this just goes in the garbage

after the break. More tear down of project Ranger resurrection

plus no fear full throttle mud racing. When extreme before my four continues.

The Xtreme 4x4 event of the week is brought to you by Warren number one in Winches.

Welcome back to Extreme where we're building that Ford Ranger back there.

That truck is gonna be able to handle just about anything you throw at it, rocks, sand, water, mud, and

speaking of mud. This is where we want to take the ranger out in a few months. Mud bash and smoke, run P A

for those that don't mind getting their truck a little dirty. The buddy run raceway in Pennsylvania is the place to race. This is down home racing. This is what we consider fun in central Pennsylvania

playing like pigs in mud,

sort of like de it's racing but just make it wet.

It's pretty much the same thing, you know, you jump in here and there and through water holes. Pretty much good enough.

They have to deal with more than three very deep water holes, big rocks, mud, water,

ruts, ditches.

And I don't want to say you're hanging on for dear life, but you better be strapped in. It's an extreme ride.

It's so extreme that this track is considered the toughest, three quarters of a mile in mud racing.

The tracks are rough. You know, going 5060 mile an hour around there jumping at 20 or 30 ft,

they're rough.

The number one key I would have to say

is no fear and you've got to hold balls of the wall.

What this whole thing's all about, man to the edge.

That's the best part of the whole deal. You know,

it's not only the trucks that are pushed to the edge.

Two of them holes are three or 4 ft deep. It's just like hitting a brick wall when you go into them.

It wraps your neck around and your shoulders.

Just a good whip flash.

It's fun.

It tears your body out when you get out of bed the next morning. You know, you was in that mud race

and you've got five point harnesses holding you in, but

it's all

matter just hang on and drive it.

That's good advice. But sometimes the one lap, one on one time races are too much for these pigs on wheels to handle.

Who's your daddy?

That's a rush.

That's a rush. First time I ever rolled something over. So I had to roll cage. Hell, we're just backyard welders at my place.

They didn't have to roll it to fall victim to the merciless mud. It's a hell of a ride out there. I know that pretty hard to handle your truck in 2 ft of mud. You know, keep away from people. There's always damage. You can see damage on this one from the hits in the streets. You know, it's not good to go out there and hit people on purpose or anything, but

we always have some accidental damage here and there. You know what I mean?

Anybody can have a fast truck.

It takes a man to drive it around that track to win

on the cusp of clinching the super modern open titles. Tim Polt has one philosophy on winning in the night

when in doubt Florida

and his 81 Bronco is built to handle this big.

That's a

big thing here. You get the horsepower to keep the wheel spinning and you can go pretty much where you want to go. This is a 351. Windsor stroked out to 408,

pushing about 600 horse gear drive timing. It's a screamer to keep the silver bullet screaming. He swears by the predator car.

It gets pounded pretty hard. We're up in the air and I've had this up in the air 16 ft. The carburetor is getting a total pounding the whole time. We're out there.

You can take the carburetor off, turn it upside down, take out some

screws, set the float with a piece of cardboard and put it back together. You're ready to roll

quicker than you can say. Oink the mud and the water can stop an engine. So under the hood, Tim keeps it simple. You just got it out. It's got the necessities in it.

I got three power wires. I got for the windshield wipers for the ignition.

You know, you gotta have your air coming from inside the cab

and that's about it. Even after six years of racing,

his truck continues to be a work in progress. You're always working on him. You go out there and blow a rear end apart.

You know, that's a few hours of work.

I got seven of these things sitting at home just for part. You know,

I spend a lot of time in the garage.

The good thing I have an understanding wife. She brings me supper in the garage.

Tim's long hours paid off as he wrapped up the super mod in open titles with 3rd and 1st place finishes.

The fun is why I do it.

I can't explain how fun it is. If somebody has to go for a ride or drive one of the trucks to understand what it's like to go around this track, 60 mile an hour. You know,

if you can go in the air

just have a blast.

Oh, you know, that's gotta hurt, hitting water's not that soft. You know, those guys don't hold anything back. It's cool cause anybody can compete in that. It looks like there's rookies and pros. I think it's kind of neat. There's a lot of cool stuff there. Did you see the guy at the beginning that said Spike this on the girls? I thought that was cool. I think he did that just for us. Spike.

That's true. Hey, come back after the break, we got more work to do on the Ranger.

Look at that logo.

It's

beau it's beauty.

Got an idea for the show. Drop us a line at Xtreme 4x4, tv.com.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 and Project Ranger Resurrection. Now, this is not a lifted truck to go out on the street. This is a hard core off road race theme build up. And because of that, we set ourselves a couple of guidelines. The first one was we want the rad in the back just like the race trucks. And the second one, we want a lot of wheel travel. Now that's going to require a longer wheelbase. But all we could find at every record.

Y

we went to was a standard cab truck everybody told us whatever is worth fixing is already being rebuilt. But don't worry, we're gonna stretch this cab out. What that's gonna allow us to do is build air intakes to cool that rad. And more importantly, get that back tire back further for that long wheel travel that we need here at extreme. What we can't find we built

to make this truck an extended cab, we went to our local dealer and got brand new panels.

That's the glory of working on a wrecked truck like this. You're not dropping a ton of money just like you would on a brand new truck.

These extended cab panels are not a bolt on replacement piece. You got to fit

grind

trim.

You still got a gap

here.

Yeah,

I think we're on the right track. If we just get that up a little bit more, I

think it'll fit. Let me just mark it. So I know where to take all the paint off, fit again.

Grind some more

until the body line starts to line up. The longer we spend here, the better the end product will look.

Other side's not on yet.

Now, you're probably wondering why in the heck are those two putting that panel on top of the other panel? Well, if we cut out this far while here, we would lose all strength and rigidity in the passenger compartment, but trust me, it would be completely worth it in the end. Now, all I gotta do is tack all this in so we can start on the other side.

Now, I said we're going to put this truck on a diet and we are, we're going to cut the whole front of this frame off. He'd be a fool not to recognize this as a two wheel drive truck. So all this has to go, we're going to replace it with a dyno track axle and a custom floor length that we're going to build later before we can start any of that. We got to cut it off.

All right. Just a little bit more grinding and a little bit more welding. And this thing is well on its way to becoming an extended cab

check back after the break.

As soon as I rip the dash out of this truck, we can start bending up some tube for the roll cage.

For more information on anything you've seen today, check us out online. Xtreme 4x4, tv.com.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4. We finished welding in the body panels, cleaned out the interior. Now it's time for us to start on the roll cage. Now, a roll cage is a topic that can start a lot of debate between people about which type or style is best and by no means are we telling you that you have to do it this way? We're just giving you ideas and options because you could just go out and buy your own roll cage. Prefab. It's true.

And you want to put a roll cage in your truck whenever you're gonna use it to the extent off road that you could obviously roll it over and you need protection for the people inside. Now, a cage is a huge commitment,

but with enough planning a little bit of time, you can fit a cage in almost anything for our truck. We got to the interior to make it easier and we're gonna start with a back hoop, which we're gonna tie together for lateral support with this crossbar. That'll give us a place to mount our seatbelts. Later. We also have a front hoop here with these down windshield bars because we're putting an L

and windshield. So we need that extra strength in the center. We'll tie the front and the back together with door bars. We put this door bar up really high

because A it's stronger and B we're gonna weld the doors closed on the cab to add strength to the body itself. We put the two top bars in. That's pretty common in most cages

and all this stuff in pink is actually stuff outside of the cab

that we'll put in afterwards. These back bars are going to go back down to the rear suspension and these bottom pieces will just loop and link the cage into the frame because if you don't tie the cage into the frame, it's no good at all. It's useless. So all we gotta do is start doing some measuring and then some tube. Let's go.

All right, Florida Roof, we're about 37 inches and the center line on that is about

22 inches

going across the top

from side to side. We're about 45 inches and in the center

about 52 inches.

And we're gonna go ahead and bend up that rear hoop using our tubing bender. But if you don't have a tubing bender, if you put together a little drawing like this and take it to someone who does, they'll be able to bend up that rear hoop for you.

What you never wanna do is directly weld your roll cage tubing to your floor in the event of a rollover, your tubing is gonna poke right through your floor

and that's not good.

So, what I'm doing is I'm making these floor plates,

these mount to your floor on the inside of the cab and your roll cage

and

on the outside of the cab

where you can continue your roll cage onto the frame,

how this is gonna benefit us is we can take the cab off the frame at any given point. Now, if you're not worried about cab off frame, then you can continue your roll cage right through the floor by drilling a hole, having it as one continuous roll cage to the frame

for our cage we're using in and 58 drawn over Mandril tubing. We chose that because it has very few weak points, unlike a piece of welded seam tubing, that will have a weak spot down that entire length for the cage itself. One little trick that I've always done is to install slugs where these plates mount to the floor. Or we're going to insert another piece of tubing into the cage. We'll weld that to one side only. Then when we lower the body down onto the frame, these two pieces of tubing will lock together that will help us with what's called shear load. And that is the cross movement of that cage. Not only will the bolt hold it, but that slug is going to hold that cage in place as well

to prep for the cage. I welded half of the plates to the floor

with a little help from the torch.

I bent it to fit the rest of the floor

and finished welding it in.

I finished bending up our rear hoop and then I bent up that back seat bar mount. We showed you on the chalkboard before I just have to notch this end to fit that. It's ready to go in the truck.

That's a pile of stuff accomplished for part one ranger resurrection. Turning a standard cab into an extended cab is not the easiest thing to do. No. And tune in next week, we're gonna finish up the roll cage inside that truck. Plus we're gonna have a little new toy in the shell, but we're not gonna tell you what it is until you

tune in.