dyintorace said:My son and I recently bought the 3rd gen I asked you about. Is that FB group a good one to join?
On a day-to-day basis, it's pretty repetitive and lame. But occasionally an interesting topic will come up, and they've been pretty helpful with the few questions I've had.
how are you liking the new car so far?
Lof8 - Andy said:dyintorace said:My son and I recently bought the 3rd gen I asked you about. Is that FB group a good one to join?
On a day-to-day basis, it's pretty repetitive and lame. But occasionally an interesting topic will come up, and they've been pretty helpful with the few questions I've had.
how are you liking the new car so far?
We had a bit of a snafu during the acquisition process, so we haven't actually driven it yet, other than from the trailer to the garage. I hope that's resolved early next week and we'll be able to dig in.
Lof, i'm curious what bilstiens are you running on the ranger. I picked up a cheap ranger because of this thread with the hopes of doing something similar. Plan on doing the cheap lift like you did, and down the line look into longer arms. Who did you have lengthen your arms? I've been looking into DIY'ing some longer arms, but can't seem to find much info on them because all the forums are dead links.
NBraun said:Lof, i'm curious what bilstiens are you running on the ranger. I picked up a cheap ranger because of this thread with the hopes of doing something similar. Plan on doing the cheap lift like you did, and down the line look into longer arms. Who did you have lengthen your arms? I've been looking into DIY'ing some longer arms, but can't seem to find much info on them because all the forums are dead links.
Sweet! I believe they are the 4600 models. The fronts are from a similar year F-150. I had to drill out the lower shock eye slightly to fit over the Ranger mount. I believe the rears are just standard ranger fitment. The arms were lengthened by a prerunner guy out in California. Not long after he built the arms, he got out of the fabrication business as far as i can tell. We're facebook friends - I could ask him if he stil does them if you like. I can tell you that the lengthened arms have added enough leverage that I'm pretty under-damped, even with the F-150 units in place. I really need to tear into the Ranger someday soon and fab some mounts for some heavier-duty shocks and move the mount out closer to the wheel. I also need to add a steering quickener. I've been fairly disappointed in our SCCA rallyx events lately and the Ranger hasn't been getting much love as a result. Lately our events have required about 6 hours round-trip driving, we stand around for several hours, get about 5 or 6 mins of seat time, then drive home. I'm hoping Gambler Hooptie-x makes its way near me.
In reply to Lof8 - Andy :
Thanks for the info! I probably won't be looking into new arms for quite a while, but I appreciate the offer!
NBraun said:In reply to Lof8 - Andy :
Thanks for the info! I probably won't be looking into new arms for quite a while, but I appreciate the offer!
Sounds good. Post a thread when you start playing with the Ranger. I'd like to watch!
I found out about a new shock vendor this week that seems intriguing, and may be of use to the ranger discussion.
http://www.doetsch-shocks.com/
A coworker recommended them to me. I have 2 of their 8000 series shocks coming for the front of my F250. It's just a street truck for hauling my car trailer and such, but my coworker used their shocks on his jeep a while back and was very pleased. It's best just to call them and they seem very knowledgeable and capable of figuring out something for whatever your application is. Also, the shocks are like $45/each, so really very affordable. Mine are due in on Friday, we'll see how they turn out.
In reply to AWSX1686 :
Huh, those look interesting. I may have to give them a try. Please update us with your thoughts on them, I have an F250 that needs shocks as well.
In reply to NBraun :
Will do!
Since mine is 2wd and I'm currently rebuilding the front end essentially I decided to put 2" spacers up front to level it out to match the 4wd trucks height. (2wd sits lower from the factory up front.) No one really sells off the shelf shocks for accommodate a 2" lift like that, these guys had shocks picked out for me in a few minutes.
In reply to AWSX1686 :
I'm interested in your thoughts on them as well!
A couple weekends ago, I entered a minibike race put on by the Gambler 500 Florida crew. It was intended for the Coleman rigid lawnmower engine style bikes. But i was able to bribe them into letting me run my honda ruckus. It was a ton of fun, but the ruckus just didn't have the acceleration to keep pace with most of the other guys. The main event was a 2 hour enduro designed for teams of 4. All of my potential teammates bailed out a few days beforehand, so I decided to roll solo. I made it close to an hour before pulling off. Pretty fun time!
I'd love to get my minibike out to one of those! Looks like a blast!
Just grabbin some groceries in my corona cruiser.
With more free time than usual, I tackled a few projects I'd been putting off for the miata. I installed some flyin miata springs, a roll bar, and did the seat foamectomy to lower the driving position a bit.
A couple of FL rallycrossers spent some time scoping out some good trails/roads within the Ocala National Forest to play on. Last weekend, they invited some of us out to join. It was super fun and sort of like a real rally! No entry fee or timers, just fun ripping up some dirt in the woods! ...and finally ordered a steering quickener for the Ranger. This corona break has me knocking things off the to-do list at a nice pace!
Found a dude on Marketplace selling a staggered set of 6UL wheels 15x9 and 10 (I believe the 10s are discontinued) with brand new BFG Rivals for less than the cost of the tires. Had to snag em. Perfect for the kart.
On Thursday, I drove passed the local Econo paint and saw they were open but had much fewer cars in the lot than usual - no doubt a result of the Corona lockdown. So I drove my clear coat challenged e36 over for an estimate. $380 with a few small ding repairs! Wow. I removed the trim and mirrors and did some minimal prep work myself. I dropped it off Friday morning and picked it up this morning. Spent a couple hours putting it back together, and wow! I'm quite pleased! Color is Audi Nardo Gray.
That paint job looks much better than $380 bucks of DIY painting and no labor too! Looking good!
Love that grey color. Looks awesome with the teal accents.
Your Ranger pickup has me thinking evil thoughts while searching craigslist...
Cleaned up the wheels and pulled off the mis-matched vinyl strip on the windshield.
Seriously? Holy s**t. Looks awesome.
$380 very well spent, that looks awesome!
Dang! The E36 looks great!
I have a few quick questions about your shop build. What is the wall height of your building? What height is the Mezzanine and how much headroom do you have up top? Was the mezzanine height dictated by the stairset you found? seems you could maybe go a little lower and have plenty of height underneath.
I'm planning a shop build and am trying to figure out minimum wall height and still be able to have a mezzanine capable of storing bikes and motorcycles. I'd go with a mega tall building to be safe but I think it would look goofy compared to my house.
In reply to 2002maniac :
The exterior walls are 14' The bottom of the mezzanine floor joists are at 7'6", the joists are about 10" tall. The bottom string of the roof trusses are a little higher than the 14' walls. I can walk around up there with about 2" clearance above my head. I'm about 5'9". I spend a lot more time down below than I do upstairs, so I had ball-parked those heights before I found the stairs for sale - it was mostly just dumb luck that they matched up perfectly. I certainly could have built the mezzanine a bit lower and still been fine, but I wanted the lower work space to feel as spacious as I could. Good luck!
$380? Score!
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