Ranger Resurrection Part 4

On Xtreme 4x4 Project Ranger Resurrection looks nothing like it did. When Ian and Jessi unearthed it from the Bone yard today, they'll wrap the roll cage and design the suspension. Plus it doesn't get any more extreme than subzero ice racing from Colorado.

Welcome to Xtreme 4x4. This week we're jumping back on Ranger Resurrection for sure. We turn that wreck Ford into something that you like to call a Baha

Bandit. That's right. We're designing this thing to tackle just about anything mud rock sand. You can even put some spikes in the tires to do some ice racing, which we'll show you in our event later today. But before we get started today, let's get you up to speed.

Remember this was a standard cab ranger. We stretched to accommodate our air scoop intakes.

We designed and built a full roll cage set, our wheel base so we could fab up our extended frame ramp.

We also assembled part of the new drive train which includes a new Venture Gear 4500 tranny

and an MP 271 transfer case

then dropped them in after checking the placement of the shifter

after we fed

up all the mounts for the suspension seats.

We finish it off with some killer window nets. They're still pumped about those window nets.

Well, today we're gonna be talking about frame design and finish all the tubing on the truck. We're gonna mount the fuel cell. We're gonna mount the radiator up in there. We're gonna mount our two spare tire mounts and then hopefully we can get her off the jig

and then once this truck is off the jig, we can go ahead pull out this plastic engine slip in the real drive train in its place. And then we can install all the fiberglass panels on this truck

with the solid ladder frame underneath of the ranger and a full roll cage to protect the driver. We can begin to plan out the rest of the cage by using a scale model.

Now, whenever you're building something from scratch modeling is a great thing to do if you have the skills to know how you can use a computer program like solid works or auto C ad to do 3D modeling for you. But if you don't, a little bit of wood and some hot glue work just as well,

this is a 112 scale. It's gonna be easy to transfer measurements back and forth from the truck to the model.

I ran out of clue

one c measures for the down bars and the inside cross. I can cut the bolster wood pieces to scale.

But before I glue these in watch this frame as I hold the back end down and apply a fixed weight at the front end acting as the torsional load.

The frame actually twists. Now, there's two things that you have to remember when talking about frames, strength and rigidity, you can have a strong frame that's gonna last forever. But without rigidity, it's gonna flex and it's gonna twist, giving the driver unpredictable feedback.

Now, if your frame is strong and rigid,

the driver will be able to feel and more importantly, predict how the truck is going to react every time they drive it

by experimenting with two placement on our model, you'll be able to see how rigidity can virtually eliminate twist. This is exactly how we'll finish the ranger cage

with the model completed. Now, we can take all these designs and apply them to the ranger and we will know that we made the right decision.

The modeling allows us to add strength where it is needed and not just guess where tubes are required. Is that good?

That looks pretty good right there.

Building like this will allow us to have a strong but light chassis

with the chassis taking place. We can begin to put in some of the pieces we need to make this monster run and it's gonna start with this radiator. Now, we knew that this was gonna be a complicated system.

So we called the tech line at

Afco and had them help us design it

and it all starts with this two core aluminum racing radiator. Now, this rear mounted radiator is one of the main reasons as to why we added these extended panels. If you remember, we're going to be adding air scoops to force the air into the radiator and cool it off. So now that we have tubing, we can go ahead and mount it.

The whole point of this truck is to be run hard and fast and not to have any worries when we're out there

to begin that process. We wanna have multiples of everything and we're gonna begin with the spare tires.

We've come up with a design that's gonna basically shelve the tires and then we're gonna strap it in because this is a race truck and we need to access the spares as quickly as possible. Plus having them behind the rear axle, it's gonna give us a huge weight transfer to the rear wheels

and the multiple items aren't going to stop at just the tires.

We got this Summit RC I fuel cell

and we originally planned on running two of these large cells

in the back of this truck. But when we had this set in here and got a look at it,

we noticed that this long run here

could use a little extra triangulation.

So we're going to run another tube

right up in here

and we'll get a smaller reserve cell and we'll drop it down in the frame rails here for backup.

Now, the nice thing about these cells is they're a plastic cell encased in a metal body. So, all we have to do is mount this metal frame to the truck and then we're good to go.

There's still gonna be another bar that goes across here that's gonna help hold on the bedsides when we get to this point. But at least you can start getting an idea of how mean this truck looks with those open country mts and those American racing rims hanging off the back

after the break. These buggies would make mad max proud hardcore ice racing. When Xtreme 4x4 returns,

the Xtreme 4x4 event of the week is brought to you by Fram America's number one oil filter.

You know, there's nothing like sitting down taking a break on something. Every shop should have leather couch and plasma screen TV. And this week we're headed to Colorado where these guys don't put their rigs in storage for the winter. They slap on some bad ass tires and hit 18 inches of ice. Yeah, you gotta check this out.

Winter in the Colorado. Rockies means race time for the hour. Game four wheelers.

This is extreme

throwing on the studs and spikes, they rip up Georgetown Lake.

Just a thrill living on the edge factor and sliding around there and just having fun.

Some people consider it pretty crazy. It's a lot of fun though. Something to do. In the winter. It's extreme. It's different. Where else can you go and race on a lake with what we do with these kind of tires. It's a rush and it's tight, man. The competition's awesome

for two months. They compete in the B

class for a spot. Ice racing's premier event, the Cheater Invitational.

It was kind of like, you know, the granddaddy of them all, they race the top eight men in points and the top eight women in points and they just combine them into one class 16 people and they all race for one traveling trophy. There's no money involved. It's just prestige just to say that you were the best, best. There was the best of the best. It's a real honor to be chosen to race in this event. You got to earn your way in, it gets more and more competitive every year. It gets, it's awesome.

They call them bolts or cheaters. And in the big race, they're running the spike studded tires.

Some people run anywhere from

80 bolts in their tire to up to 100 and 25. Basically, no limitations on, on what you can do. You just can't protrude more than an inch and a half past the trips.

A

lot of people think that you can just go out and buy them at the store. They're all handmade. You have to buy a tire scuff off some of the tread drill holes, sharpen the bolts and put them from the inside and out

and then we run a tube and a liner inside them. A guy wraps up a lot of time in the building

of the tires. I probably have 100 hours in building tires.

It's a lot of time, but necessary to get the grip.

Things happen so quick. Whenever you, uh, turn the wheel it turns with a bolt on, you know. So it's a, it's a, it's such a fast reaction but it's, it get you right there. I mean, it's the adrenaline rush. So

that's why we do it.

The attraction there is just unbelievable and it's just a thrill.

Oh,

yeah. When we start getting sideways, it feels good right here

as defending invitational champ, Mike Palmer knows it takes more than tires to win the big one

to win a race like that. You've really got to uh maintain concentration to keep your focus.

Once you get out of the groove you're done.

He's grooving in his custom built ice buggy. A

first class ice buggy is probably gonna run you about $25,000.

It's basically a 1951 Willie's frame Chevy motor. It's 421 cubes. It's a 400 small block with a three and 78 stroke crank shaft in it. It's got about 602 horsepower and feels good

when the rules changed. Three years ago, Mike made the switch from the leaf springs,

the suspension is pretty important out here. Like I'm sure it is in any racing.

This is a Q A one coil over that I run on it with the hyper coil spring. It's real good. It holds tires on the ice. If you're not on the ice, there's a

time when the track gets really rough in the bolt, that's when you'll see the advantage, it'll, it'll skate through them and,

and the tires will stay planted where the leaf spring guys will be bouncing and lifting tires a lot in

this part of the Rockies wind can gust cost 100 miles an hour. So Mike built a wing.

I feel that anything you can get up there is gonna give you a little down force. Even though we're not hitting real high speeds,

the wind is just, has got to pin us down. Some Palmer kept it pinned in the Invitational and dominated the two at a time for race elimination.

Got pretty choppy towards the end. But this thing, it really glues down good when it gets choppy. And I think that's what gives me a

pretty good advantage over a few of the guys. You're kind of restricted when you're running the course. But when you can go out and do what works,

it feels good.

Do you know that two time champ, Mike Palmer isn't just an ice racer. He's a rock crawler too, right? Yeah. But I think he pulls the bolts out of his tires for that one. Speaking of bolts, make sure you check back with us after the break, we're gonna be bolting in our kick ass drive train back into the ranger.

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

safe is rolling

and action.

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to extreme. Now that we got the ranger off the jig and on the hoist, we can begin to assemble and install our drive train. It all begins with this 347 stroked Ford small block that was built by the boys over at the horsepower shop.

And we're gonna link that small block to a new bench

4500 transmission

using a center for fly wheel and dual friction clutch assembly inside a Lakewood scatter shield. Then we're going to split that power using a new process 271 transfer case.

We're banking on this being an indestructible combination

and with the motor mounts and the trans cross member made,

we can marry this whole thing to our chassis.

Come down.

Let's go

with the drive train in place. We can start to think about things like ride height. But before we do that, we need to slip on some body panels. We chose Perry's Fab and fiber because they have some of the best looking six inch bedside flares we could find for the rear. Now for the front end, we chose their conversion kit

that'll fit on our older body style, but make the front end have the newer 98 and up headlight and grill assemblies. Plus not to mention they have the monstrous six inch flare up front. Now, these panels normally just bolt right on, but in our case, we're gonna have to make some custom mounts.

The first step is to temporarily mock these into position so we can set the right height.

This is where it all starts coming together. People, you can really get an idea of the aggressive stance of that truck with those six inch flared fenders. But it's not about how it looks. It's about how it works. And we want this truck to have a lot of wheel travel with a somewhat low center of gravity. And by using the hoist, we can lift it up and down to be able to determine the balance between the two.

You're gone.

Gone.

Well,

there,

yeah, maybe a little bit higher

there.

Let's all try that

with the tires in their positions. It's time to get down to business and ordering some axles.

Dyno truck has sent us a list of required measurements needed for the axles that wind up under this truck. And the first measurement is the position of the transfer case in between the two frame rails.

Distance between the frame rails is 29 inches and the center of the output shaft is 14.5.

The next measurement is the location of the front transfer case output and whether it is offset to the driver or passenger side, followed by measuring wheel mounting surface to wheel mounting surface,

the distance from the ground to the center of the wheel hub,

the distance from the transfer case output shaft to the rear of the axle center line

and lastly measure the distance the transfer case output is from the ground.

Now keep in mind if you're replacing an existing axle, you're also gonna have to measure for all your suspension attachment points. But since we're building a custom suspension for this truck, we're gonna order ours with bear tubes. And after the break, we're gonna show you the whole entire suspension design process,

the whole entirety of it, the whole entirety. That's a lot

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

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 with the ranger taking shape. We can sit down and have a good discussion about suspension design. When it comes to custom design suspensions, it's gonna take a lot of research and a lot of designing. And the easiest way for us to show you is by using this model, we've added all the extra pieces, so it matches exactly what we have on the hoist behind us minus body panels. Of course, by using this model, we can show you all the decisions that we had to go through before we could pick the suspension. That's right.

And the first one would be a basic leaf spring suspension. It's going to locate your axle, latitude

and longitude,

but it's not going to give you a lot of flex. So that's going to lead you to a link type suspension. And the easiest one is a parallel four

length that will locate the axle on the back of the truck, but it can twist from side to side unless you had a pan I bar to locate that axle. But that can limit wheel travel. Now,

if you triangulate your upper two links, it's going to still locate your axle and it's going to eliminate your pan hard bar. The only downfall is is your shocks have to be mounted on top of the axle, which is going to limit your wheel travel to the length of the shock. But if you take that same suspension and move that coal over shock up the lower link, you will add wheel travel to the rear suspension, but that lower link is not designed

to handle that kind of load. So we're going to build

one of these

two radius arms for the lower legs. These will be made at a half inch wall drawn over mandril tubing, inch and a half diameter. We gusted it for strength, but most importantly, we will make a lower coil over mount halfway down the bar

and that will give us a lot of wheel travel.

I'm going to have to build a jig that's going to be able to make these exactly the same on both sides,

we will mount the rear of the radius arm equal distance from the axle center line.

So in essence, the link will be coming from the center of the tube.

This will intersect the frame 54 inches ahead of that axle.

And we will try to keep this lower radius arm at approximately 10 degrees.

We will use 25% of the tire size to determine the vertical separation of the upper and lower link mounts at the.

It's a good idea to build your upper links close to 70% of your lower L

length.

And with our lower lens being 54 inches, our uppers will be 37

the upper lens

will be triangulated from the center of the axle to the frame.

A good angle to try to shoot for is 40 degrees

less than this will lessen the upper

LS ability to locate the rear axle,

multiple mounting points for the upper lengths of the frame will allow us to fine tune this suspension

make

those adjustable points easier for those upper links. We're going to be using these trick little pieces that we got from. A and a manufacturing,

the arms are going to be made from this half inch wall DM tubing

that we got from industrial tube and steel. One

will be tapped with the right hand thread and the other will be tapped with a left hand thread So as soon as we slap in the super tough Q A one rod ends, we'll be able to adjust those links by spinning it one way and move the axle back and the other way and move the axle forward.

Now we're almost out of time, but we couldn't let you go without slipping this grill into place just to get another idea how awesome this truck looks. Plus we're gonna have to cut some tubes out of that engine bay. Now that the motors in there to line everything back up.

Well, next time when we do this ranger, we'll have the four corner weight and shock selection, axle installation, wiring plumbing.

Oh,

closer to getting it done.

Get her done. Did I say get her done? I said get her done.