project Fumbler's Gone To America - Ford F*cking Biohazard

[Fumbler]

27 minutes ago, danthecapriman said:

I’m pretty sure the Ranger like yours @Fumbler is basically the same as the original square style ones launched way back in the early 80’s (83ish I think?) very little changed other than body panels and the addition of things like fuel injection and whatever emission control stuff your state had. The twin spark version was about the end of the Lima engine development though I think.

The Lima engine was also fitted in Mustangs and the Thunderbird Turbo coupe so in theory you could  make a few alterations to go faster!😄

 

I believe it's almost the same as the 80s models like you say - twin I beam front suspension, same frame, same defective spring shackles which break (these have been replaced). According to a few sites the Lima engine was replaced by the Duratec sometime around the millennium. As far as emissions rubbish goes, I think only California had anything different to the rest of the country. It's still a low compression engine however, but 112HP is way nicer than the supposed 90 it had a few years prior! It definitely feels very willing, even when it had the original spark plugs installed.

[Fumbler]

This is quite long and rather ramble-y. M'pologies.

The interior of this Ranger is easily the worst one I've dealt with yet. It started with removing the disgusting driver's seat. This wasn't entirely easy, more on that later-

Anyone fancy some embedded treasure?

There were several pennies buried in that black mess. Adhered to the carpet. This is after a few passes with the extractor vac thingy-

That looks a bit better, smells a bit better too! This isn't yet finished however, because I made the mistake of kneeling on that section of carpet the next day and my jeans are now brown from the knees downwards. Bah. The driver's seat was duly installed in the kitchen (a gr9 marital bonding experiment)...

It's supposed to be a grey seat, but instead it was brown. Parts of the seat and the armrest had this weird muddy brown glazing on it. I ended up dismantling the armrest and dumping it into the sink with some washing powder. I should've taken a photo of it, but after 5 minutes of soaking, the water had turned to mud.

Since taking this picture I've gone over it again with a steamer and the vacuum. It looks marginally presentable! At least it no longer smells of farm... Just.

Anyway, onto the next seat, starting with the seatbelt anchor. It went fantastically*

Driver's side bolt threaded in for reference. When undoing the driver's side bolt, I broke one T50 bit getting the bolt broken loose, then I twisted another "impact rated" bit pretty good when getting the bolt the rest of the way out. I then destroyed that bit when I visited the passenger side. I then try another one and promptly snapped it on the first turn. Well shit, I guess it's coming out the hard way then. All in, I ended up having to drill half of it out before the other half would unthread. Of course in doing this, the threads in the body are pretty much ruined. The driver's side bolt threads in okay, but there are no threads left on one whole side of the rivnut thing. This won't do, so it was suggested to me to just drill the nut out to 1/2" ID (the anchor bolts are M12, roughly 0.470" OD) and use a Grade 8 bolt with its own nut and lock washer. Alternatively, I could drill and tap for a 9/16" fine thread bolt. None of the actual seat hardware was as unkind to me but it's all getting replaced. Everything is so rusty.

"Why is everything so rusty?" I wondered. I came to the conclusion there's definitely a leak from somewhere, which would explain the damp carpets and the enhanced Farm Smell™. Fortunately, it rained the following day and I had a feel around. The rear, right below the rear window, was very damp to the touch. I hadn't shampooed that area yet, so I grew suspect of the sliding window. Except, it wasn't the window, because I then decided to check the headlining for giggles, and found it was soaked. Hmm... I guess the third brake light is leaking. It turns out they're notorious for doing this and improved gaskets are a tenner on eBay. I'm not holding my breath, but it would be nice if that was the only problem. The door seals or gutters could also be a problem, but the door jambs were bone dry when I looked. Time will tell I guess.

This is what the headlining looked like-

Since it was now also damp and smelly I decided it ought to go. Step 1: get up early and go to scrapyard with husband. Step 2: Shit, I'm an hour late. Rush to scrapyard because they close before noon. Step 3: liberate headlining.

ITS BLOO. This was surprisingly easy, about 30 minutes all in all. It seriously helps to have another pair of hands. We were worried this would fold up in front of us and everything would be in vain, but fortunately, it was pretty stiff and springy (oh matron!). Along with the headlining I copped the visors, "oh shit!" handle and coat hanger. I'll probably be back to scavenge other panels and fixtures because the interior's in very good condition compared to mine; I'm pretty sure a can of silver paint exploded or something inside my truck's cab because there's silver spatter all over the rear glass, the dome light, the carpets and all the trim. It's seriously tempting to try and replace as much as possible with this blue truck's interior. My interior's going to look all patchwork now, but that's all good with me. 

I finished today by removing the old headlining. This was also pretty easy to do, aside from it shedding foam into my eyes and lungs every time I moved it. It had clearly been damp before because the topside was rather mouldy and the whole thing was pretty floppy. Made it very easy to frisbee into the bin. Ironically enough, the old headlining will end up buried right next door to the scrapyard its replacement came from. It's a small world.

[danthecapriman]

Great progress👍

It’s amazing what some people actually do in cars. How on earth does someone manage to get an interior that filthy!? It looked like a health hazard. 
It’s coming back well though.

[Fumbler]

The armrest/centre console bin was rather broken. I have no clue what happened to it in a previous life but it seems someone smashed their fist against it multiple times and broke the plastic pretty badly. Fortunately, everything was still present and I could set to fixing it.

Some epoxy later and it's all back as one again -

This was followed by screwing this map holder thing back on and then attaching it to the bin and seat.

Not too pleased with its wonkiness but I'm told TADTS and that's just a side effect of having a really tiny mounting point to the seat. Looks way better than it did a few days ago! I also stripped and painted the legs, and dismantled and cleaned the filthy seatbelt buckle.

Much nicer. Next job on the list was cleaning the A pillar trims I removed to delete the headlining.

Ew.

EWW! Nasty horrible filth. On the inside of the trim. I still don't know how that's possible.

[Fumbler]

While pulling my tools out I made the mistake of bumping a trim panel, and a wrapper from a long dead sweet brand fell out

Curiosity got the better or me and I pulled more stuff apar- oh fuck no this carpet's going in the bin

There was a mouse nest in here^

I'm now halfway through trying to get this horrible thing out of the cab, trying not to vomit (the smell is god awful)

[Fumbler]

Update:

This is so heavy with stagnant water, all the underlay is ruined. The smell is still awful, not helped by the 26° weather.

[loserone]

Looks like it would jetwash just fine?

[Fumbler]

9 hours ago, loserone said:

Looks like it would jetwash just fine?

I'm going to try that this evening and we'll see how well it works. If it cleans the smell and the filth out, I've saved $200 (cost of new carpet) which will be nice. Maybe my initial reaction was a bit over the top but I don't know, finding the rubbish was one thing but the mouse debris and nest material wasn't a pleasant find.

[Asimo]

18 hours ago, Fumbler said:

Update:This is so heavy with stagnant water, all the underlay is ruined. The smell is still awful, not helped by the 26° weather.

I removed the stinking, filthy and wet carpets from my (low miles, 7 year old) Ford van as soon as I got it home.

They went in the trash. Plain steel floors are the best deal in a van / truck. 

12 years on and I still don't miss Ford floor coverings.

[Fumbler]

Here's the worst of the floor

Plan here is to peel up the rest of the old soundproofing on this side, take a wire wheel to it and see where it leaves us. It certainly isn't staying this way, that's for sure. 

I then threw a bucket of water all over the cab to see where it's leaking and I took some crap photos 

The third brake light is completely watertight, the rear window seal isn't.

[danthecapriman]

That carpet is absolutely rancid! I’m surprised it didn’t get up and drag itself out of the truck tbh!🤮      
A bloody good power wash and dry should sort it out though.

The floors actually don’t bad considering its age, mileage and the fact it’s been leaking for however long. Are floor patch panels available for these?

[Fumbler]

21 minutes ago, danthecapriman said:

That carpet is absolutely rancid! I’m surprised it didn’t get up and drag itself out of the truck tbh!🤮      
A bloody good power wash and dry should sort it out though.

Agreed, but if you think the topside looks bad, here's underneath!

Yuk! We're going to attempt power washing this in an hour or two. 

21 minutes ago, danthecapriman said:

The floors actually don’t bad considering its age, mileage and the fact it’s been leaking for however long. Are floor patch panels available for these?

Agreed again. The structural condition of the truck is what basically sold me on it. I did some tapping with a hammer to see if I could make any more holes.

I still find it slightly ironic wet carpets is what caused the floor to rust through instead of road salt. Quite a lot of the soundproofing peeled up in my hands revealing water underneath.

As for replacement floor sections, I'm sure they're available, however that's well beyond my abilities unfortunately. I had to leave my bubble gum machine, visor, brushes etc. behind when I moved. If I'm looking at the truck's floor correctly, this isn't a structural area. The section around the cab mount appears sound and the sill cavities are as well. Seeing as floors (and metal in general) are optional in this state, rivets and adhesive may be deployed...

[danthecapriman]

28 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

Agreed, but if you think the topside looks bad, here's underneath!

Yuk! We're going to attempt power washing this in an hour or two. 

Agreed again. The structural condition of the truck is what basically sold me on it. I did some tapping with a hammer to see if I could make any more holes.

I still find it slightly ironic wet carpets is what caused the floor to rust through instead of road salt. Quite a lot of the soundproofing peeled up in my hands revealing water underneath.

As for replacement floor sections, I'm sure they're available, however that's well beyond my abilities unfortunately. I had to leave my bubble gum machine, visor, brushes etc. behind when I moved. If I'm looking at the truck's floor correctly, this isn't a structural area. The section around the cab mount appears sound and the sill cavities are as well. Seeing as floors (and metal in general) are optional in this state, rivets and adhesive may be deployed...

That is absolutely vile! The underlay felt stuff looks like it’s just full of whatever mank that is. I suppose you’ve got nothing to lose power washing it. It might be ok after, but if not it was worth a try.

If that little bit is all the rust you’ve got you should be fine. Rust converter to slow it down then cover it over with something solid and it’ll be fine. 
You could do a ViceGrip special and rivet a license plate over it! 
It’s a good truck though, you can even still see body colour on your underside photo. Apart from that tiny bit of the floor nothing has rusted or bubbled at all.

 

[Fumbler]

6 minutes ago, danthecapriman said:

That is absolutely vile! The underlay felt stuff looks like it’s just full of whatever mank that is. I suppose you’ve got nothing to lose power washing it. It might be ok after, but if not it was worth a try.

Yeah, I may rip that stuff off and replace it with some carpet "underlayment" (Americans harp on about how they contracted loads of English words and yet they say "underlayment" and not "underlay") from the DIY store. From what I can tell, the carpet is embedded in a vinyl sheet and the underlay is glued to the sheet. It's also readily falling off in a few areas.  Amusingly, when researching replacing the carpet with a giant vinyl mat (it was an option), I found a bunch of forum posts saying how the carpet will "breathe" whereas the mat won't, meanwhile I was staring at an OEM carpet which trapped water because of the vinyl backing...

14 minutes ago, danthecapriman said:

If that little bit is all the rust you’ve got you should be fine. Rust converter to slow it down then cover it over with something solid and it’ll be fine. 
You could do a ViceGrip special and rivet a license plate over it! 
It’s a good truck though, you can even still see body colour on your underside photo. Apart from that tiny bit of the floor nothing has rusted or bubbled at all.

I'm going to continue exploring the cab with the hammer and then the wire wheel. I'm not looking forward to that part, but that should tell me what's good and what isn't. Fingers crossed that's the worst part of the floor. Funnily enough, my brother said to use a license plate patch as well! I don't have any spare plates about, but I do have some metal which should work.

While looking underneath it did occur to me how these trucks definitely weren't built to last a lot of time. There are pockets and voids absolutely everywhere, the body grounds are attached with press-on clips and nothing else, the only coating underneath is that weird greeny-grey primer the bodies are dunked in at the factory. Anyway, I'm off to the jetwash now. Wish me luck.

[Fumbler]

Uhhhhhh.... I'm not sure if I really changed anything 😂

The underlay has got to go, it got soaked while washing the carpet and immediately as we folded it back into its transport box, it started dirtying everything with horrible brown water. Meanwhile, all the stains are still present, albeit a bit lighter, and brown water still comes from the driver's footwell portion. The pressure washer was so strong it started bleaching an area of carpet (seen in the middle of the last photo). Once it's dry again the underlay will be ripped off and we'll try cleaning it again.

[Snipes]

Floor looks pretty good for having wet carpet on it. I was watching a youtuber in Virginia tear up the carpet on an old 2.2 Charger he'd dragged out of some hole somewhere - the floor pan peeled up with the carpet like cardboard!

[PhilA]

Jetwash only does so much, and certainly doesn't get rid of mouse smell. General dirt yes but that, no. 

Bin it off until you get the thing watertight anyway. Carpet is nice, but that's bathroom carpet. Just no.

[Fumbler]

21 minutes ago, Sir Snipes said:

Floor looks pretty good for having wet carpet on it. I was a youtuber in W.Virginia tear up the carpet on an old 2.2 Charger he'd dragged out of some hole somewhere - the floor pan peeled up with the carpet like cardboard!

Was that Haters Garage? I think his videos are pretty damn funny.

22 minutes ago, PhilA said:

Jetwash only does so much, and certainly doesn't get rid of mouse smell. General dirt yes but that, no. 

Bin it off until you get the thing watertight anyway. Carpet is nice, but that's bathroom carpet. Just no.

It's starting to look that way. I'm happy I've still tried and $25 at the carwash isn't much money wasted. Annoyingly, I only budgeted for mechanical work (because it needs a lot of it) so a new carpet shall have to wait.

[Snipes]

Yes @Fumbler it is Haters Garage. 

"Bro are those reps? If you're broke bro just say it"

[Fumbler]

I actually fixed something on the truck today. Presenting:

How to re-seal a Ranger rear window in 5 easy steps: a guide nobody asked for.

Step 1: undo the 8 nuts clamping the window frame to the truck. Push out with light pressure on either end. Have someone to help lower it into the bed.

Step 2: take the window into the kitchen because it's too bloody hot outside. Optional step: place the window on a bathmat that you definitely* don't still use as a bathmat

Step 3: take the butyl ribbon and place it on the hot vehicle to soften it up. While this is happening, use white spirit to clean the window aperture and the frame.

Step 4: apply the butyl ribbon to the window frame and reinstall in the truck, ensuring there's no gap between the weather stripping and the body.

Step 5: throw water at the window and cross your fingers.

Aside from the general hotness, this was a surprisingly simple job to do. So far there's been zero drips inside.

[Asimo]

Never heard of bolt-in glass before. There will be quite a few envious of how easy that makes a leak-fix.

[Fumbler]

3 minutes ago, Asimo said:

Never heard of bolt-in glass before. There will be quite a few envious of how easy that makes a leak-fix.

It's fantastic. The other two rear windows are the same bolt-in style as well. Almost the entire interior is like this as well which has made taking it to bits (seatbelt receivers aside) rather easy. I hope reassembly is just as forgiving.

[Schaefft]

If the pile of the carpet is thick enough then that's a prime candidate for a drill brush and wet vac. Finding a better used carpet might be the quicker option though. Good chance to add some additional sound insulation to the floor as well!

[Fumbler]

8 hours ago, Schaefft said:

If the pile of the carpet is thick enough then that's a prime candidate for a drill brush and wet vac. Finding a better used carpet might be the quicker option though. Good chance to add some additional sound insulation to the floor as well!

I think it's bin time for the carpet I'm afraid. I really don't have the space or the resources to try other things on it. This decision was helped by finding a factory vinyl floor liner at the scrapyard yesterday which I'm likely going to go and grab. It'll work for the time being at least. Extra insulation is in the pipeline once the floor is patched up.

[danthecapriman]

Worth a shot with the old carpet. Little to lose really. 
Vinyl floor liner is good in vans and trucks though. Very practical if you get it grubby inside and can just sweep or wash it out. 

If that old carpet hadn’t come up excellent I’d have binned it too. Oil & grease type dirt is one thing I don’t mind but grime, filth and ‘people dirt’ is something I can not stand. It’s absolutely revolting.

This is what we had to wet vac out of our living room carpet after moving into this house late last year. 
How some people live amazes me!

[Fumbler]

OK. May turned out to be a busy month. June is also being a busy month and now it looks like July will also be a busy month. I'm happy though, for the most part. As for the truck, I had to give it two solid weeks of work to get everything fixed (mostly) and back inside. Here we go...

So to recap: the carpet was ruined, the floorpan was being kept constantly wet, the cab smelled of mouse and pondwater, the headlining was soaked and all its fabric was missing. The next step was to peel up the factory soundproofing which, given how wet everything was, didn't take long at all.

 

The next logical step was to take a wire wheel to everything, except I encountered a slight snag-

It turns out that, despite all 4-ish inch angle grinders being able to use the same disks no matter where you are in the world, American grinders use a larger UNC thread on the shafts. So I had to throw the wire wheel I brought from home away and go to the hardware store to buy another one. So, the next day I was able to attack most of the floor before pissing the neighbours off.

Somehow, by some miracle, this is the worst part of the floor. This leads us to a few days later-

...Where I've cut a section out, pissed the neighbours off some more, and primed absolutely everything to make way for a patch. And yes, I'm not welding metal in, instead I'm using rivets and seam sealer as glue. Trust me, this is 10000% better than most people's efforts around here. They'd lay a piece of plywood down and put the carpet back over.

This was when I had just finished riveting the patch panel down. I then went over the seams on the top and bottom with more sealer.

 

I then let everything set up for a couple of days. During this time we then had the worst hail storm in recent memory and a couple local tornadoes. At least two vehicle dealerships are letting their entire outdoor stock go at reduced price owing to the damage caused, and there's still a line of vehicles in all the glass repair shops getting new windscreens. Following this I diverted attention to the front reg plate holder. You see, several states in the US only require rear plates to be displayed and, unfortunately, this truck was from one of them and I live in a two-plate-state. Typically this wouldn't be an issue- I'd just go and buy the correct plate holder that fits the bumper, but no- the F-150 plate holder the entire Internet said would fit just fine, didn't fit in any way at all. I guess I'll make my own!

Ta-daa! Some hardware store brackets, a universal fit plate bracket, loads of 1/4" bolts and some careful* bending produced this. Doesn't it look beautiful? I'm not all that pleased that I had to make this thing, but a genuine '93-'97 Ranger front plate holder is obsolete from Ford and rare as rocking horse shit on eBay. Anyway, it looks good enough for me.

It also surprisingly solid for what it is. It doesn't wobble nearly as much as I was expecting.

 

Anyway, back to the inside. Immediately after doing the front plate, I then sprayed bedliner over the floor and let it cure for a couple of days. The next step was installing some soundproofing pads. I went with stuff from Resonix and I bought 10 square feet of it, which wasn't enough but I digress. I was just going to hop on Amazon and buy some Kilmat stuff or Dynamat for $notmuch, but I instead bought Resonix because it turns out several reviews found the rest didn't do that much at all, hence the cheapness.

The material gets shipped in 1" squares. It's basically a giant butyl pad with a real aloominum metal face on one side, and adhesive on the other. Application really is as simple as peeling the backing, carefully applying the soundproofing and making sure it's well stuck using their complimentary roller. The results on the roof were fantastic and anything which hits it is now reduced to a muffled thud as opposed to a metallic clang.

4 squares were then placed on the floor, one in each footwell basically. The final two squares were then glued to the body panels behind the jump seats in the rear. Is this enough soundproofing on the floor? Definitely not. Next year I'll buy a new carpet and install more.

 

With the soundproofing done I then wrangled the "new" headlining into the truck and got it bolted in with a new dome light-

 

After this was done I then re-installed the rear view mirror. The original location had a chunk of glass ripped out so I glued the button just to the right and slid the mirror over.

 

Now onto the carpet. At this point I was seriously penny pinching because I need the money for mechanical work, so I went to the junkyard again, ripped this rubber mat out of a generation newer Ranger, cleaned it up as best as I could and folded it into the cab-

Nice. This mat doesn't fit all that well because the newer generation models have a driveshaft tunnel which extends through the entire length of the cab, so there's a hump in the middle which does nothing. But hey, it fits good enough for the time being.

And there we have it, with some extra cleaning to the dash and steering wheel, we're finally finished!

 

After this, a >400 mile test drive in a truck I had only driven about 2 miles in. WCPGW? Not much actually! It sits at 70 very happily, even with a load in the back. The engine started cutting out and stumbling about 200 miles in so I plugged in a generic code scanner and I found the MAF sensor was all over the place (The CEL is always on because the catalyst is missing, so I had to go into the live data and see what was going on). $98 (ouch!) and a new MAF sensor later and it's purrin' like a kitten... a 300000 mile kitten with a glasspack for an exhaust mind you, but it runs very smoothly. It even drives smoothly AND it made 28 UK MPG while doing it! I'm well impressed. Is this the end? Absolutely not. Here's a list of mechanical things which need to be looked into very soon:

• Play in both front wheel bearings
• Fuel filler neck leaks whenever I put gazzolin- sorry, petrol, in it
• Handbrake is useless
• Exhaust is terrible
• Cam belt is very old
• Secondary spark plugs and HT leads are from 1997
• Tyres need replacing
• Accessory belt idler and tensioner are growling pretty badly
• Oil is leaking everywhere, especially from the cam cover
• Suspected rear axle seal has blown out on the passenger side
• Fluids in the power steering, differential and gearbox all appear to be original.

There's also a few minor things like the transmission output and rear end pinion seal leaking, but they're not actively dripping and those can be attacked at a later date. I'm currently $5130 into this truck, but I think it's money well spent. I'll be paying a mechanic to do all the above work so I'm fully expecting having to dip into savings to get the truck mechnically sorted, but again, I still think this is money well spent. I'd be paying an equal sum up here to buy a truck in this physical condition alone with an unknown drivetrain. As far as I'm concerned, this truck has proved its worth and I'm looking forward to many, many miles in it.

[Crackers]

Congrats on the move, the marriage and the truck! You've really settled into the Yank lifestyle going straight for a pickup - nice work. Also, Purple, because winner. 

[Fumbler]

13 minutes ago, Crackers said:

Congrats on the move, the marriage and the truck! You've really settled into the Yank lifestyle going straight for a pickup - nice work. Also, Purple, because winner. 

Thank you! I like my purple truck. It's already started hauling junk home!