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[lilmorepower]

Ok i figured out the pic thing. Here is a pic of the Ranger i have. I am really looking for advise on ANY header choices for
this. I do have pretty good fab skills, and some tools. It looks to me to be a custom deal. Any advise would be great.

[cgrey8]

Post up the details of what the engine is, transmission, & year Ranger. Obviously, there are mods to the truck so list any of them that would affect clearance issues with a header.

[lilmorepower]

Ok, it still has the ranger frame. Dana 44(high pinion) 9in. rear, with a 205 tc. C6 trans. 1997 model year.

[cgrey8]

And what's the engine and the mods done to it so far? Or are you planning a new engine? Either way, what's the engine you are wanting to know header options for? List engine, displacement, heads, blah blah. Some of those details were in your 1st post, but since you made another post, I deleted the 1st one and forgot the copy that out and put it here.

[lilmorepower]

It currently has a 74 351w all stock with cast exhaust manifolds and it runs good. The power to weight ratio
is great. I am however gatering parts for this engine for future upgrade (alum.heads, cam, intake, headers, stall converter)
I need to figure out the header problem to get the most potential hp. I am planning to do some mud raceing. Thanks in advance to anyone that can help me with this. I have seen some of the crazy cool stuff you guys come up with here, and
was pretty sure someone could figure out, or has already been down this road already.
Wes S.

[cgrey8]

I don't know of any headers that are known to work with a 351w and Rangers. Most people either run the stock manifolds or fab up custom headers from a set of cheap long tubes by basically reusing the flange, collector, and pieces of pipes where possible. If you have welding skill, this is probably the easiest route to go since this will give you exactly what your application needs and you can route the pipes however you want. Although you may need either 2 sets fo headers to give you enough pipe and bends to work with or some header tube stock.

For a mud-bogging machine, I am curious what you are leaning toward for heads, cam, and intake. If the engine is injected and running a roller cam, that opens up some wide potential.

[lilmorepower]

I have a new set of PC heads i bought bare and will assemble with good valves, Comp Cams-springs-locks. I have also
have the cam. Comp Cams XE 284 H. Probably stay with a dual plane intake, as im building more for torque than
rpms. Will need at least a 3000 stall to get it moving on 42'' tires and 430 gears.

[cgrey8]

If you are building for torque, not RPMs, then the XE284 may not be your friend. A better "torque cam" for that duty is going to be in the XE264 to XE274 range. If you go with a larger duration, opt for the wider LSA. The XE264HR12 (112 LSA) or XE274HR14 (114 LSA) are great off the shelf pics for performance street duty. Although I do have to admit complete ignorance when it comes to building a mud-bogging power plant. Much of the performance talk I absorb on the other forums is NOT 4wd related performance talk. So some of what I've picked up may not apply...but here are my thoughts to be considered or ignored as you see fit.

The XE264 is a great street cam, but not exactly recommendable for a strip. It gets awesome torque in the usable street RPM range, idles like stock, but it does begin to nose-dive above 5500. You don't want to run much over 10.25:1 static compression...and that may be pushing it depending on how much care has been taken to maintain quench.

The XE274 holds strong to 6000, but you loose off-idle and sub 2000 RPM torque. Most people go with a slightly higher than stock stall converter with this cam just to get past off-idle and get into the torque range a little quicker on the drop. This cam should handle 10.25-10.75:1 static compression depending on compression chamber characteristics, quench, piston deck height, and head gasket thickness. I believe 87ranger here on the forum ran this cam with his twin turbo 347 stroker setup.

The XE284 is going to be a seriously high RPM cam. It won't kick in good until at least 3000 RPMs. Your thinking on a high stall converter will be appreciated with a cam this big. Hopefully it has at least a 112 LSA, but preferably a 114 LSA. For strip and all-out performance, it's not bad. But I wouldn't want to daily drive an engine with that cam. Fuel economy is going to suck. Unless you are boosting, you'll also want a pretty high compression to run a cam this big...something around 11:1. So hopefully no big combustion chambers and certainly no dished pistons. To get the compression ratio up, you may have to run popups or have the block machined to run the pistons out of the hole a bit. Again, all that changes if you are heavily boosting the engine. Heavily boosted engines (>12 PSI) need room to compress. But boosted engines also don't need this radical of a cam. In fact with the overlap of a cam this big, a boosted engine runs the risk of blowing a significant amount of your air-n-fuel right out the exhaust during the overlap period until you get up high in the RPMs making it seemingly impossible to get big boost pressures until the RPMs are up. Street boosted engines tend to go more conservatively on the cam since less assistance is needed from the cam to get air into the cylinders thanks to the booster. You might run big boost on a cam like this or even a bigger cam if you were planning on 7000+ RPMs. But from everything I've read, Ford Windsor valvetrains are not designed for much over 6000RPMs. Yeah they can be built to do it, but it takes a LOT of money and attention to get them to do it well...stuff like ultra-light valves, ultra-light rockers, light solid lifters, very high spring pressures, STRONG pushrods...and that's just the valvetrain. But I digress...

[lilmorepower]

Thanks for the input. I spent ALOT of time looking at camming profiles. The ''recomended" cam for 4x4 apps is the
Xe 4x4 line of truck cams. I THINK i can get away with a little more agressive profile than the truck cams as mine is alot lighter than the proposed trucks they sell to. The front fenders and bedsides, hood are fiberglass. One of the factors that went into the 284 profile is this cam only needs 9.5:1 compression ratio. Its a gamble but ive taken other gambles
in my 54 years, and more than not they have worked out. I just need to keep the rpms in the power band and i think it will be a good performer. The name of the game in bogging is wheel speed. This cam if i can keep it in the power band should
provide some extra hps for the small block.

[cgrey8]

9.5 sounds a lot on the low side unless you are talking regular octane. For regular, that's probably about right although it still sounds a little low. But as long as you've researched it to determine all this, then go for it. But just to be sure, have you actually calculated your Dynamic Compression Ratio (not static CR) using that cam? For regular octane, you want to be in the 7.4-7.9:1 range. Any lower, and you leave power on the table. Any higher and you risk detonation. If you run premium, you can get into the mid 8s for DCR. If you don't have a DCR calculator, there's a thread around here where this got discussed before and I posted the tool I use. Search the forum and Google for DCR if you aren't familiar with the difference between SCR and DCR.

[ranger50toy]

Most mud trucks around here run the exhaust thru the hood.

[lilmorepower]

I am planning on some flat tops should be around 10:1.

[cgrey8]

With a high stall converter, it doesn't sound like you'll have any trouble keeping the engine in the RPMs it'll be happiest at. I'm sure it'll be a ton of fun. Without a loose converter, I'd be concerned that you wouldn't be able to get the RPMs up there fast enough or hold them there if the wheels bogged in good.

With any performance automatic, you'll want a really good trans fluid cooler. A high stall converter can make a heck of a lot of heat when it's dead-heading against bogged tires. Running without a cooler is a great way to fry a perfectly good transmission. Although if you've been doing serious mud bogging any amount of time, I'm sure you've already planned for that as I'm sure you've seen many smoke-shows where other guys didn't.

So what's in the truck now?