Ive been watning to do the explorer swap on my ranger even before i started building my ranger a few years ago, im not sure why i never did it but this week I covinced myself that if i want it done i jsut got to do it.. so i fiqured why not make a thread on the swap cause im sure some people would be interested in seeing it done. Keep in mind the truck has probably only been painted this way for less that four months now
Started with a a realtively stock ranger front end, diamond corners and headlights and a billet grill, only bolt on mods but nothing really too labor intensive
Yesterday went to the junkyard and started getting parts i would need to do this swap, since that would be the cheapest way to get the parts and also give me a oem apperence over buying the not so perfect :thumbdwn: aftermarket parts
picked up a passenger fender form a 99 4 door and a driver fender from 00 sport for $75 for the pair. Both had pretty good damage but it wasnt important becasue the very front of the fenders were stragiht and that would be all i was using anyway
The hardest thing to find was a non dammaged header panel from a 2nd gen explorer. i found many 1st gen front ends and even a couple mountaineer front ends in both styles but only came by one undamgaged header panel from a 01 4 door and it still had a set of good condition headlights so i bought those too. The header panel and headlights came to be $78 i had the grill in my basement that i bought along a time ago when i first wanted to do this swap i think that was $5 at a swap meet
that would be enough for now to do the hard part of the swap and get everything lined up right and looking good.
So today i started the actual swap first thing was diasembling the ranger, removing the header panel, lights, and bumper
now that everything was stripped i cut off just the very front of the ranger fenders where the header panel mounts, and the very front of the explorer fender about 2 inches or so back into the fender. making sure not to take to much out of the fender rangers fender or not leave enough on the explorer fenders. i left the explorer fenders alone for the most part and kept trimming back the ranger fenders until the tips of the explorer fenders met with the very tip of the ranger fender and the lower line of the fenders where they meet the bumper are even..mkaing sure the whole time not to cut our more of the ranger fender then i had explorer fender to fill the hole
trimmed ranger fender with explorer fender overlaped over it to position properly before final cutting could be done. i temporarily held the pieces on wiht a clamp and a screw up top which you can make out in the one pic...the hole form the screw will jsut be welded up in the explorer fender but will be cut out of the ranger fender inthe next step
one of our dogs was a lil to interested in the project
with the fender peices clamped and screwed together i could maunt to the header panel temporarily to check for fit and it bolted right up and aligned fine, with the lower front fender bolts out to allow some play in the front of the fender
everything fit with the header panel well so i closed the hood and ran into the first problem i had. the hood fit fine as far as bottom of hood to top of header gap, but the curve on the ranger hood is much flatter then the curve of the explorer header panel. sorry i was busy trying to fiqure out what to do and forgot to take pics
. but then i looked over at my 97 explorer and fiqured id take some measurements....turns out the ranger and explorer hoods are the same width and the same length at the fenders so they fit the same hole. so i took the hood off my explorer and sat it on the ranger and it fit fine and lined up perfect with the grille curve. the only problem was that the hinge bolts are in deffernt places but i will address that later when i get a used explorer hood since my daily needs a hood and i cant use that one
only other problem i ran into is that the mounting brackets for the header panel on the core support are simmilar but not exactly the same as the ranger ones so i will either modify mine to work or get explorer brackets and modify them to mount to the core support
with that said i removed the fenders formt he truck and got ready for the next step of mating the explorer fenders seamlessly to the ranger fenders.
i left the pieces i cut form the explorer fenders on the ranger fenders and basically grabbed a sharpie and traced those onto the ranger fenders and then cut out the excess ranger fender..ther wasnt much to it....all the contours form both fenders match up pretty well and should be a breeze to body work
i ground everything down and got ready to weld and had no welding gas so you all will have to wait a few days for the rest...
both fenders cut ready to weld
dont be afraid to ask any ?? you may have i know this post lacks in some areas but it should give a good idea about this process and ill have more pics and progress in a few days when i can get back to it
Started with a a realtively stock ranger front end, diamond corners and headlights and a billet grill, only bolt on mods but nothing really too labor intensive
Yesterday went to the junkyard and started getting parts i would need to do this swap, since that would be the cheapest way to get the parts and also give me a oem apperence over buying the not so perfect :thumbdwn: aftermarket parts
picked up a passenger fender form a 99 4 door and a driver fender from 00 sport for $75 for the pair. Both had pretty good damage but it wasnt important becasue the very front of the fenders were stragiht and that would be all i was using anyway
The hardest thing to find was a non dammaged header panel from a 2nd gen explorer. i found many 1st gen front ends and even a couple mountaineer front ends in both styles but only came by one undamgaged header panel from a 01 4 door and it still had a set of good condition headlights so i bought those too. The header panel and headlights came to be $78 i had the grill in my basement that i bought along a time ago when i first wanted to do this swap i think that was $5 at a swap meet
that would be enough for now to do the hard part of the swap and get everything lined up right and looking good.
So today i started the actual swap first thing was diasembling the ranger, removing the header panel, lights, and bumper
now that everything was stripped i cut off just the very front of the ranger fenders where the header panel mounts, and the very front of the explorer fender about 2 inches or so back into the fender. making sure not to take to much out of the fender rangers fender or not leave enough on the explorer fenders. i left the explorer fenders alone for the most part and kept trimming back the ranger fenders until the tips of the explorer fenders met with the very tip of the ranger fender and the lower line of the fenders where they meet the bumper are even..mkaing sure the whole time not to cut our more of the ranger fender then i had explorer fender to fill the hole
trimmed ranger fender with explorer fender overlaped over it to position properly before final cutting could be done. i temporarily held the pieces on wiht a clamp and a screw up top which you can make out in the one pic...the hole form the screw will jsut be welded up in the explorer fender but will be cut out of the ranger fender inthe next step
one of our dogs was a lil to interested in the project
with the fender peices clamped and screwed together i could maunt to the header panel temporarily to check for fit and it bolted right up and aligned fine, with the lower front fender bolts out to allow some play in the front of the fender
everything fit with the header panel well so i closed the hood and ran into the first problem i had
. the hood fit fine as far as bottom of hood to top of header gap, but the curve on the ranger hood is much flatter then the curve of the explorer header panel. sorry i was busy trying to fiqure out what to do and forgot to take pics. but then i looked over at my 97 explorer and fiqured id take some measurements....turns out the ranger and explorer hoods are the same width and the same length at the fenders so they fit the same hole. so i took the hood off my explorer and sat it on the ranger and it fit fine and lined up perfect with the grille curve. the only problem was that the hinge bolts are in deffernt places but i will address that later when i get a used explorer hood since my daily needs a hood and i cant use that one only other problem i ran into is that the mounting brackets for the header panel on the core support are simmilar but not exactly the same as the ranger ones so i will either modify mine to work or get explorer brackets and modify them to mount to the core support
with that said i removed the fenders formt he truck and got ready for the next step of mating the explorer fenders seamlessly to the ranger fenders.
i left the pieces i cut form the explorer fenders on the ranger fenders and basically grabbed a sharpie and traced those onto the ranger fenders and then cut out the excess ranger fender..ther wasnt much to it....all the contours form both fenders match up pretty well and should be a breeze to body work
i ground everything down and got ready to weld and had no welding gas so you all will have to wait a few days for the rest...
both fenders cut ready to weld
dont be afraid to ask any ?? you may have i know this post lacks in some areas but it should give a good idea about this process and ill have more pics and progress in a few days when i can get back to it
