V8-Ranger.com

As title, was seven thousandths taper (front cylinder where piston with weak rings was setting rest of cylinders have cross hatching still) border line for boring, so looks like she is going 30 over and stroker, Got funding for short block and I'm responsible for the rest of it, and may of found an unexpected bonus income. Looks like she might get a bit beefer than originally thought Need to save money to beef up truck itself though.

Found a place to get an 8.8 with larger drums and just about any gear ratio I want shipped to my door for less than 300 bucks. That will be later project. Wondering if I need some kind of frame brace (thinking like an x with drive shaft loop) made up to stop twist. Also a guy I know is needing money (he is an amazing welder) so thinking of getting Jegster cage and having him put it together for me. Depends on how rest plays out.

And Opinions: Will I be fighting the truck with heavier engine and no Power Steering, I think I should be able to manage it but you guys might have experience.

Tell me more about the 8.8 with the bigger brakes. It's not out of something like a F-150 is it or what? Biggest bolt in Ranger rear has 10" brakes.
Dave

Mine has the 9", I'd be getting the 10 inch drums. Or I can get one from a later year with disc. Its http://www.bayauto.com/ found them on car domain, some guy swaped in a 8.8 from like a 2000 ranger into his 90 and said it was 256 shipped.

OH and also, found an extra 2000 bucks, totally getting AFR heads now

mine is 347 stroker with 6-71 blower, a extra 75 lbs. with manual steering and it is not bad at all. and i am 64 year old

rojam, I noticed your compression ratio is 10.2 in your sig. How much boost do you run with such high compression?

Clearanced block today (WAY easier then I thought) bought stroker kit today, will send block out monday and try to get heads soon.

soul... sounds like you have 10 guys helping you with this project as fast as your going. your truck will even be faster. wish i had the money for afr heads, that would drop about 75 lbs off my total weight. i got roush heads, work really good but heavy. but mine on a scale and total weight with me in it is 3030 lbs. have any of you guys weighed yours and what kind of weight do you get. with a v8 of cource....the old trucker

malcolm...when i first installed blower it was set up at 10% underdriven. blower drive service said that would give me about 9 lbs at 8000 rpm. i am old school and tune by sound, feel, sight, and smell. the stroker wanted a lot of fuel at 10% underdriven, but i really did'nt like it yet. so i reversed the pullies on the blower, they inter change top to bottom. that makes it 10% overdriven, what the boost is now i dont know. but the stroker liked it. had to turn the fuel way down, only 1/4 turn out now on all 4. and my carb open's both front and back at the same time. 4 squriter and 4 idle screw's. total advance is set at 48 degree's. and now it is starting to surge at idle. which sound's really cool. got on the throttle a little heavy once with my friend. we took a vote not to do that again. this thing is wicked fast...the old trucker

rojam your truck sounds bad ass. One hell of a toy for sure. At 3030 lbs you're really light too. I never weighed any of my Rangers unfortunately but my Cobra weighed in at 3700 lbs without me.

rojam18801 wrote:malcolm...when i first installed blower it was set up at 10% underdriven. blower drive service said that would give me about 9 lbs at 8000 rpm. i am old school and tune by sound, feel, sight, and smell. the stroker wanted a lot of fuel at 10% underdriven, but i really did'nt like it yet. so i reversed the pullies on the blower, they inter change top to bottom. that makes it 10% overdriven, what the boost is now i dont know. but the stroker liked it. had to turn the fuel way down, only 1/4 turn out now on all 4. and my carb open's both front and back at the same time. 4 squriter and 4 idle screw's. total advance is set at 48 degree's. and now it is starting to surge at idle. which sound's really cool. got on the throttle a little heavy once with my friend. we took a vote not to do that again. this thing is wicked fast...the old trucker

At 3000 lbs and 800 horse, that thing is badder than a nascar craftsman truck.... And you still have NOS left to push.... lol..... Makes my 450hp ranger feel like im driving 4cyl pinto compaired to yours..lol....

rojam18801 wrote:soul... sounds like you have 10 guys helping you with this project as fast as your going. your truck will even be faster. wish i had the money for afr heads, that would drop about 75 lbs off my total weight. i got roush heads, work really good but heavy. but mine on a scale and total weight with me in it is 3030 lbs. have any of you guys weighed yours and what kind of weight do you get. with a v8 of cource....the old trucker

I wish, I've been a one man wrecking crew with about 1 day a week to work on it. Air tools speed up assemble/dissemble but Its been kicking my butt. I fought the engine (fresh pull with everything still on it) on a two wheel dolly by my self for about 100ft across the yard, talk about being tired lol.

Also I think these are the heads I settled on

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/AFR-1388/

Some note of caution on these heads...they are 58cc chambers. That can be good because they are meant for high compression engines which is needed with more radical cams. Although the smaller chambers are bad if you are running a stroker/351w and a mild street cam as you might end up with more compression than pump gas can handle without good quench.

A guy on this forum is in the process of redoing his 351w because he didn't know to pay close attention to quench when running these heads and a mild cam (at the time, neither did I). After replacing his 65cc E7s, he found he had worse knock than when he was running the cast E7s...mainly because the quench was so bad. He just got the heads off a day ago and measured his quench at .060" with 8.64 Dynamic Compression Ratio (DCR). Both of which are too much for 91 octane pump gas to handle (91 pump gas can't handle much more than 8.5 DCR with decent quench). He found the pistons are in-the-hole .020" so with a standard .040" gasket, that gives a wide .060" quench which is too much to be of any benefit in knock avoidance. His options are to get the quench down in the more acceptable .030-.040" range:

• Deck the block (expensive)
• Replace the pistons with ones that are even with the deck or popup just a tad (also expensive)
• Go back together with a VERY thin .020" shim-gasket (not as reliable)

He's choosing to replace the gasket with a thinner one. The catch is a thinner gasket will run the DCR even higher so that solves one problem, but makes the other worse. The way to fix excessive DCR is to retard cam a few degrees or run a higher duration cam. Retarding the cam can only drop DCR .1-.2 points. He needs a significant drop with the tighter quench, so he's replacing the cam with a far more radical cam than I'd ever recommend for a truck...a TFS Stage 2 cam. That will get the DCR to a safe 8.28, but at some cost. The engine will loose a good 10-15% low RPM torque due to a shorter "effective" stroke. The smaller the effective stroke, the less air that is in the cylinder when the intake valve closes, so the less power the engine can make...but at least it can make it safely. This isn't a big deal if the engine was a torque-monster to start with as it likely is being a 351w. He can afford to loose a little low RPM grunt. The other catch for him is this truck needs to be able to pass California emissions. A TFS Stage 2 cam has a fair amount of overlap. So idle isn't going to be nearly as smooth and may not be able to run Closed Loop. Thus, he may find that the engine doesn't ping (no longer fails NOx), but it has a likely chance of failing on excessive HC with that cam. This is why I advised him not to go any more radical than a TFS Stage 1 cam. But I'll let him worry about that. He seems to believe passing the sniff test is easier than I give it credit. He may be right. We'll see. But anybody running this cam with a carb isn't likely to care about emissions or minimum RPMs for idle.

With flat tops should be 10.3:1 compression, and I will use the xe264 high energy cam, should be good? What do you guys think should be ok on pump gas I hope.