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Since I sold my Ranger a couple of years back, there's been a hole in my life. I started to miss having a truck. I knew I wanted something older so I could show my boys (ages 6 & 7) how to turn a wrench. And in the Atlanta metro area if it's 25 years old it no longer needs to pass emissions. I wanted 4x4 to have a bit of fun. Manual transmission since I enjoy driving them, but don't have one. Short bed since I wouldn't be doing any real work. And standard cab since my wife would never ride in it anyway. I also like the square body style, so started to look for something in the 1980-1996 range. Unfortunately a short-bed, standard cab 4x4 with a manual transmission is a bit of a unicorn in the Atlanta area.
What I found was this - a 1994 4x4 with an automatic transmission. Fairly straight body, and decent interior. Newish 33" tires and a body lift. And not one but *two* 5.0 motors. Unfortunately neither were actually in the truck. The previous owner had thrown a rod through the engine pan, bought a crate motor and a bunch of parts from advanced auto, started on pulling the old one out, and the project stalled. For three years.
The good news is that I picked it up cheap. Like for less than the price of the motor cheap.
But I'm missing a bunch of things as well. The bolts were all tossed in a couple of piles, so I have no idea what I have or what I'm missing. I only found three fuel injectors, and no rail so far.
And that's as far as I've gotten.
No real hurry, though. I figure I'll take (at least) a couple of months to pull things together.
It’s been a *very* slow project as life gets in the way, figuring out what goes where, borrowing a lift, and organizing a few friends to help, but I finally got the motor dropped in and bolted up to the transmission.
How's the truck coming? Two steps forward and one step back. And it's teaching me oh so much. This photo is a good example of the process. If you look very closely you'll see a broken bolt inside of the power steering spindle. The power steering pulley is a press fit over the spindle on the power steering pump. I broke the bolt as I was trying to press the pulley onto the spindle. I broke the bolt because if was taking a huge amount of force, so I resorted to more powerful tools. What I should have done was stop and reset. I think a better approach will be to polish the inside of the pulley a bit, use a little grease, and heat the metal part of the pulley so that it will expand slightly. Now I get to uninstall the pump, hopefully extract the broken bolt, pull the pulley back off, then do all of that. If I can't extract the broken bolt I'll wind up spending another $70 or so on a new PS pump.
This photo is also a great example of how I'm approaching this process. I have no idea if the power steering pump in the truck was bad or not, but it was caked with a mix of oil, power steering fluid, and dirt, so I could presume that it wasn't in great shape. And since I'll never have an easier time to replace it then now, I bought a new pump. And since I was in there anyway I bought new PS lines.
The might-as-wells will kill me, and there is a chance that I'll wind up selling the whole damn thing as a non-running pile of newish parts at a huge loss just to be done with it.
So how's the truck coming? It's teaching me lessons in patience and the value of slowing down and doing it right. And I might just be passing some part of those lessons on to my boys.
11-13-2018, 05:23 PM
AR-Trvlr's Folly (1994 SWB 4x4)
