Ranger Resurrection Part 2

If this happens to you without a cage, you're toast

today on Xtreme 4x4. Ian and Jessi finish up the roll cage and Ranger Resurrection plus. Be ready to get hammered and one of the toughest trails in the West.

Welcome to Xtreme 4x4. In part two of our Ranger resurrection, we picked up this Ford Ranger at a junkyard for 500 bucks and plan on turning it into

a

Baha

influenced truck.

I know it's an ambitious project and we were inspired by your emails. You guys wanted hardcore. Well, you don't get any more hardcore than this.

If you remember last time we stripped and cut out the unusable frame pieces, added extended cab side panels in order to lengthen the wheelbase and allow us to build functional scoops for our rear mounted radiator.

We then stripped the interior and planned out our roll cage, then bent up some beefy engine 58 s drawn over mandrel tubing

and tacked our rear hoop in place on the floor places

this week we'll finish up the cage inside the cab, start working on the new frame rails and mock some fiberglass panels into place. But first we got to take the windshield out.

Yeah,

with this rear main hoop in place, I can go ahead and start measuring for the front hoop. I'm gonna start

with the roof bars

and then I can go ahead and start measuring for the down bars.

I'm just gonna take an estimate here.

But

if I cut them extra long, then you can't ever really go wrong.

This is about 4 ft, so I'll cut it at about 57 inches.

Next, I'll hit the bender

notch them to

six

and now they are ready to weld

tig. Welding is an option. And with some steel types, it's an absolute necessity. So if you're building a row cage for a specific sanctioning body, you're gonna wanna consult the rule books for cage requirements.

Two straight from the not.

Thank you.

And with these two pieces, I'm gonna show you the difference between tig welding and mig welding

with the metal prepped.

I can begin to weld

a tig welder uses a tungsten electrode to create an arc that I will add fill rod to. As I weld,

I can control the heat of the weld by using a foot pedal.

A mig welder feeds a filler wire from inside the machine.

This is electrified and causes an arc on the metal.

The drawback to this welder is that the heat is constant.

Now,

as you can see the mid creates a lot of spatter, see those little weld berries in there,

but it's a lot easier and a lot faster to use. Whereas the tig

requires a lot more skill, but it's a lot stronger

welds.

Thank you.

Here you go.

Now, a lot of people get intimidated about the different welding processes. But one thing, teaching high school shop for many years has taught me with a little bit of practice.

Anybody can do it

for this cage. We're going to use the mig welder because it allows us easier access in tight places.

Once the roof bars in place, it's just a process of measure

cut,

not

and so on.

All right, we're ready to put in our windshield down bars because if you remember we're gonna be using Lexan

glass, which requires additional strength in the center here.

So what I'm gonna do is Mark center line on both the dash bar and the roof bar as soon as Ian moves this clamp for me.

Oh, yeah, I can do that.

Then

once Jessi gets those center lines marked, we'll stretch this piece of string in between the two of them. And that will give us reference points for the

Thank you.

Mhm.

Um

With the cage finally taking shape,

I can put the door bars in place and make my way around the cage, welding it in.

Well, we got the whole inside of the roll cage all tacked together and this seemed like a good time to review eight major points when designing and building your own roll cage first, you want to put the seat mounts into the cage, we'll be running two bars across the bottom when we get the seats here at the shop,

at your corners for strength corners give way under pressure. So these will add triangulation.

You want to run a cross bar across the dash

and the back side, one for lateral strength and two and give you a place to tie your seatbelts into later

brace the cage mounts to the frame. Remember, we still have to do that with bolts and slugs.

You're gonna wanna add, grab bars for your passenger. The driver has a steering wheel to hold on to. And if your passenger gets their fingers between the cage bar and the roof and you roll it over, they're gonna lose their fingers.

Build your cage with heavy duty dom tubing, cold rolled, still might seem cheaper, but it's not near as strong.

Keep the cage bars away from the occupants heads. This should seem obvious

and pad your bars for another obvious reason of comfort because it hurts when you roll over.

And that about covers the building of a custom roll cage. As you can see with a little bit of planning some tools and a lot of hard work. You too could have a custom cage like this in your truck and don't forget if this seems like too much work. Get a pre bent cage. It's always another option.

Are you gonna weld this up now.

Yeah, good. I'm going to get a drink. All right.

During the break, Jessi will finish welding in the cage. But up next they call this the hammers for a good reason. Hardcore rock crawling. When Xtreme 4x4 continues

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

I like that. The gun

look good. The cocktail is excellent. It's true. Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4. What we're about to show you right now is appropriately called a tease.

No, not her. That

look what we took delivery on just the other day.

And you know, I wanna tell you what it is, but you're just gonna have to wait and see. I can tell you it is one awesome machine,

an awesome machine that could very well conquer a place. We're about to take you

the southern California desert and some of the most intense trails on earth.

An hour north of Palm Springs sits a collection of trails known as the Hammers.

These trails here. Uh, Jack Hammer, claw, hammer, sledgehammer, wrecking ball Outer Limits.

They're, they're not for the meager

hard core. This is what rock crawling is all about. The Hammer trails are appropriately named, Hammer.

Thank

you.

The whole trail is top.

I've been up to Moab, uh,

been to Rubicon and, uh, I would say that these particular trails are, uh, relentless nonstop. They'd never quit. It's for hardcore four Wheelers that

don't mind coming out and getting some body damage and

aren't afraid to break pretty

gnarly out there.

What keeps it gnarly is the always changing. Southern California terrain. We have earthquakes out here, believe it or not. And they've moved some of these big rocks

and, uh, just recently we had flash floods

and it changed the, uh, trails completely. It's almost like they were

never worked in a trail in the first place.

It's not like he just, oh, I did that,

I guess, you know,

why do it again?

Because it's something different. Every time you come back,

it's

nerve wracking.

You get a little egg shake going on there

since 1991. The Victor Valley four Wheelers have invited drivers to take on the hammers during their annual fun in the desert event. People come out here and they have no idea that it's this intense. They come out here. We don't,

we never seen anything like this in our life, but we don't, we can't do this and they don't come prepared for the right equipment.

Right behind me is the only suburban rock crawler you'll ever see.

First suburban to go through here.

Don't do it

on

you.

It's like dragging an elephant up the hill

weight and size,

big and heavy.

So he kind of got himself stuck.

You don't want to get stuck. Then the right setup is imperative. You can't come out here with an average jeep just to take a jeep and drive out here, you're not gonna go nowhere. You have to have lockers and

a lot of articulation, good suspension.

It doesn't take a lot of horsepower, just gears and lockers and suspension to do this stuff. Charles dennis', 1951 Willies is more than just a pretty four by four when we were starting off in the morning. A couple of people up.

It's too pretty to bring up here. It's gonna come back den it and we go, now you watch, we'll come back unscathed. The body is actually,

is the only thing that stock and that's actually a two wheel drive car that's,

but now this is the body's been dropped on a truck frame and

it's a four wheeler. Now, it's got a new 350 Chevy small block engine in it. It's got a Dana 20 transfer case. Dana 44 front end, Dana 60 rear end Detroit lockers, front and rear. It has be locks, wedge

sm 420 transmission

manual. I like it. Instead of the automatics. The automatics are easier to drive, but it's kind of more fun this way. It has shackle reversal spring over suspension in the front, spring over in the rear.

There's just Rancho shocks.

It's just a nice well built Jeep that works really good

and every, all the components work where it's real reliable. I don't break down

unless I laid on his side, which I've done a couple of times has been a really good jeep on the trail. His truck is a favorite.

I like it.

I like it

nice. It's just that it's different than seeing all the other jeeps out here. You know, it's a different model looking

but you still know it's old. It still got the flat fenders. It's still got all the

squareness to it. I like it for Charles. The accolades are nice

but it's the challenge of the trails that put a smile on his face. Believe it or not. It's a, it's a relaxing hobby. I enjoy it

to do it.

That sure is a pretty willies's. But man, I really like that. Suburban. Nothing beats a rock Coler. You can take 15 of your friends with you and have room for a couple extra coolers. True.

And those trails are hard core. I like how they change all the time. That's pretty neat. That is neat.

Make sure you stay tuned because when we come back, we got that cool little toy, we're gonna show you

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

This is the off road machine you've been hearing about

Rhino

off Road industries, R TV.

Rock terrain.

It's bringing it hard this way.

You

know,

I,

this super cool little toy is built to handle any off road terrain and it has some super cool engineering in it

and

we couldn't help but test it out right away in the parking lot.

You are so far from going over backwards. Ok. I'd stop there

anytime you want to go someplace that has unusual terrain. This is a great vehicle for it. We didn't start out to build a rock crawler. But with the geometry we put in this thing, it turns out to be an excellent, excellent, outstanding rock crawler.

But we wanted to be able to do the desert, do the dunes, do the trails, you know, do a little bit of the mud, the snow wherever we wanted to be.

And we ended up with a platform that's actually very aggressive and very secure in all those environments.

Think they'll be upset that we took it out and roughed it up a little already. I don't think so. They could contain

it.

This is a model XT one off-road buggy from Rhino off road industry, one of five different kinds that they make

and now that it's in the shop, we're gonna give you a closer look at it.

It sports a Honda four cylinder, dual overhead cam engine making 146 horses and 135 ft pounds of torque. It's made into a front wheel drive transaxle.

That little motor makes excellent torque in the bottom of its RPM range. And by mounting it longitudinally in the frame with a transaxle, you don't need a transfer case

brilliant.

Both of these axles are nine inch Fords custom built for this buggy with 411 gears in both the front and rear and a spool in the rear. Specifically for this model,

Rhino hangs their diffs off of his triangulated four link system and a three link system in the rear.

Plus this thing handles. Excellent. Thanks to these super trick sway bars and these race runner sway away air shocks.

The roll cage is modeled after a competition style cage and the chassis is built with triangulation throughout the whole thing. They sent this one with an optional cargo rack

and it's really easy to get in and out of. Thanks to this quick disconnect steering wheel and with a full suspension seat and a five point harness. I can w in this thing all day

and who couldn't with a four speed automatic transmission, a 60 mile per hour top speed, 14 inches of travel, five point racing harness, four wheel disc brakes and an 84 inch wheelbase. And these pro comp tires give this rig excellent grip. This thing rocks.

We've still got some serious off road time plan of our own for that R TV. As soon as we wrap up a few of the projects around here and then we can show you exactly what that little monster can handle.

And the project at hand right now is obviously Ranger Resurrection. If you remember, we've got the cage all tacked together inside the cab. But before we finish welding that up, we wanna work on the wheelbase. Can't have a wheelbase without wheels and tires

for this truck we chose American racing's a TX series. It's their hardcore off road line. These are the Mojave 20 by tens. A bigger diameter is great because it doesn't limit you in brake and axle options.

They're made from forged aluminum for super strength

and have been coated with Teflon for easy clean up because well,

nothing sticks to Teflon

for tires. We went to toy for a set of 37 by 13 5 open country MTs.

The nice thing about these tires, they offer a quiet ride

and yet still have that aggressive attack tread. Now, this exact tire is already being used by multiple score racing teams. And the best thing is, is Toyo was one of the first manufacturers to offer a serious off road tire for rims as big as 24 inches

with this frame bench. All we have to do is set our wheels in place and then we can actually adjust for our wheelbase.

Keep going, keep going, stop. Right. That's perfect.

All right. Looks mean that's gonna be one hell of a machine. I like it

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

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 in our craziest build up ever. We went ahead and set up this wheel base so we can find clearance for our frame side mounts just so we can tie in the entire roll cage. So as soon as I'm done with these bad boys, we can go ahead and finish the whole roll cage.

And if you remember, we're resurrecting this truck from a trashed ranger.

So that requires an entire new front end and we're going fiberglass. So all this steel has to go

before I tie in the roll cage.

I'll cut a gusset out of eight inch plate,

welding it to the side mounts will make this a much stronger piece.

Next, I'll weld on the mountain pla

drill the mountain holes

and a hole for the sl

this technique will strengthen our cage mounts rather than just welding the two tubes together. So when Ian rolls the truck over the cage is gonna wanna shift what the slug is gonna do is prevent that from happening.

And of course, an added bonus,

we can disconnect the body from the frame whenever we need to.

Well, do you feel safe?

Feel a lot safer than the last guy who was driving this thing? Yeah, I bet you he wish you had a cage like this. This thing is tough. I think it's pretty unbreakable

and that's about it. Roll cage 101. As you can see, it's not that hard to design and build your own cage. All you need to do is plan ahead and take your time

next time on Xtreme 4x4, we're gonna start an off road, build up on a budget. We've all been there before. We'll see you next week.