1991 ranger brake problem

It's fine now, just needed an operator headspace adjustment.

You say you re-torqued the nut behind the wheel?

You say you re-torqued the nut behind the wheel? Bob La Londe

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The good part is while looking for the problem I checked conditions and cleaned up and sprayed overlooked corrosion. Both of my vehicles are becoming old enough to attract the attention of car buffs. Both have drivetrains reputed to last 300,000 miles but New England road salt rust usually kills well before that.

PB Blaster unstuck the light alloy master cylinder from the steel vacuum booster. The factory shop manual gives plans to machine a gauge to check or set booster pushrod protrusion, if you have a machine shop handy. I do but instead of milling the gauge I used a parallel. That isn't the only special tool they expect you to make. I snagged the engine tool kit at an auction.

A neighbor is restoring a 71 Chevy from worse condition than my truck.

I'll tell you after my last truck buying experience I would be very tempted to buy an old truck and restore it if I had the time. I think the 1982 Bronco might be my last such project. I'd be tempted to do something with the '42 Willys, but I'll probably let it go to somebody with a passion for it.

Interestingly the 42 Willys has virtually no rust, while the Bronco needs some body work.

I picked up a pair of front fenders for my '96 Ranger longbed. Likely paint them and put them on next summer. I need to do a bit of rust repair above the windsheild and repaint the roof as well. About 392000 on the clock. 4 liter 5 speed XL 3.55 posi

I'll tell you after my last truck buying experience I would be very tempted to buy an old truck and restore it if I had the time. I think the 1982 Bronco might be my last such project. I'd be tempted to do something with the '42 Willys, but I'll probably let it go to somebody with a passion for it.

Interestingly the 42 Willys has virtually no rust, while the Bronco needs some body work.

Bob La Londe

----------------------------- I'm less restoring than trying to catch and fix problems early. Test driving new vehicles tends to make me feel I'd be trading down for practicality, though up for style and gadgetry that I don't care about, and too much to break.

The Ranger has a 7 foot bed on an otherwise fairly short and quite nimble chassis, the 2000 CRV has a Land Rover joint venture body design, for me its engineers' practicality compensates for the clunky styling. That first generation included a folding table as the floor of the hatch area. A wash basin / kitchen sink lines the empty tire well under it and there's a rear outlet for a powered cooler. The seats fold down into beds. The two part hatch allows loading the back as full as a trunk without spilling when opened.

My head hits the door frame entering the lower, sleeker new ones and the smaller tinted windows make changing lanes difficult. Plus I have the old ones' factory shop manuals which I can't get for new models. I can strip the interiors out of the old ones in a few minutes (the Ford this AM) for repairs, rewiring or washing the carpets, compared to a long tedious process I read for adding the factory trailer wiring kit to a new car. I see why that option is so expensive.

I picked up a pair of front fenders for my '96 Ranger longbed. Likely paint them and put them on next summer. I need to do a bit of rust repair above the windsheild and repaint the roof as well. About 392000 on the clock. 4 liter 5 speed XL 3.55 posi

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Clearly you take good care of it. Mine has only 158,000 miles on it so it's worth saving. Repair costs average under $100 a year.

toobad that willys is so far away!!

toobad that willys is so far away!!

-------------------------------------- The M151 Jeeps we had in Germany were not good on the roads there. They couldn't keep up on the Autobahn and the winding back roads that BMWs were built for tempted drivers to exceed their cornering limits. My VW could easily handle the unpaved forest fire trails where we set up field exercise sites.

When my dad first got that old Willys ready to go for a first off road adventure we headed off across the sand dunes. I thought it was going just fine, but he said he didn't feel like it was performing properly. When we got back to the store and pulled around to the back to the shop he hopped out to take a look. Then he realized he hadn't engaged the hubs. LOL.

Probably, its biggest real world use for us was tracking people lost in the desert. Now I can track (to a limited extent) looking at the window of my truck, but I've always been better able to track on the ground. Back then I hadn't really learned to track. Not well anyway. We'd put that old GPV in first gear and hop out. As long as the terrain wasn't extremely off camber or a crazy grade it would easily keep going in the direction it was last pointed. We could spread out, cut sign, walk back to the Jeep for lunch or a drink of water, or to change course as needed. Seems like a little thing but it made a several hour to all day rescue tolerable.

The short wheel base and front and rear end clearance was fantastic for crossing all but the worst washouts, and it would climb some pretty incredible grades just idling along with somebody at the wheel. Sand was not even an issue.

High speed cornering? Um-no. Lots of high clearance vehicles struggle with that. Even some you might not think. Flat out on the Autobahn? You are kidding right? How much do you expect out of a flat head four? Were you guys raiding the clinic and feeding it nitrous? Even then... Um-no. LOL

FYI: That old '42 had a top speed in the high 50s. Maybe low 60s (but I doubt it), but its got a torque ratio at idle that's insane. Its a utility vehicle. By today's standards just a basic 4x4 side by side with a bed to haul some stuff.

P.S. I should say I can track in the desert. Not so much in the woods. It depends.

Dad had a '57 Jeep pickup , he swapped out the original flathead six for a Tornado 230 overhead cam six . Weren't much for top end but it sure could climb ! Used to really piss of the guys with their hopped up big tire hot rod Chevy's and Fords . Dad would set the throttle at about

Yeah, my dad was in love with that Jeep, but its been parked a long time. I am sure he would rather I fixed it backup again, but original parts are a lot harder to find than they were back in mid 70s, and the junk man my dad bought some of those early GOV parts from died a few years ago too. His son has been liquidating everything and just wants the land cleared. Any old GPV parts are long gone, and he's one of those guys that's impossible to get a price from, because every time you agree he changes the price.

I might ask my son if he would like me to save it for him, but my son really has no connection with it.

Now that Bronco... first time my dad refreshed that motor he installed what he called a 1/4 race cam. It loped and would jump like you kicked it with the spurs if you bumped the throttle just a little hard. Next time around he went with a much more sensible RV cam (long duration as opposed to high lift) that developed real world torque. If I bore and stroke it that's my goal. Sure it will develop more horsepower, but in the mid range where its actually useful off the track. LOL. Probably have to get rid of the Holley 650 and go with a throttle body to match the bigger volume.

Dad had a '57 Jeep pickup , he swapped out the original flathead six for a Tornado 230 overhead cam six . Weren't much for top end but it sure could climb ! Used to really piss of the guys with their hopped up big tire hot rod Chevy's and Fords . Dad would set the throttle at about

-- Snag

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When I was of that age for some reason Jeeps weren't common off-road in NH. VW dune buggies and older foreign cars were more popular with those who couldn't afford a Land Rover, pickups with many who could. Dirt bikes were the main choice before trikes and quads appeared, street-legal ones like mine could get themselves to / from distant trails, though I had to go around the most challenging obstacles. My buddy had a Land Rover which proved the adage that the better you have, the further in you get stuck. Usually I could get close enough to help dig out in my Beetle.

In Germany I had a bicycle and an inflatable boat, either of which could carry me plus the other, and fences didn't block me. I could bicycle upstream, float down the river, then bicycle home. The grid of fire trails in forests let me go anywhere cross-country. Shell road maps were almost as detailed as topo maps and showed various ancient ruins to explore.

A Bulgarian designer I have worked with perhaps said it best. "The more off road capable is your truck the further you must walk to find a tractor."

I used to run an ex-military Dodge PowerWagon (1946?) as a tow truck. About 48MPH wide open downhill with a tailwind - slightly faster if you dropped it over a cliff

Around 1954-55, my older brother had a jeep flat bed 2wd truck, worst truck he ever owned - that thing would get stuck going down hill with a half inch of mud on the road. My Saturday job, if the temperatur was below zero F, was to make certain the two heat lamps under the hood were turned on so that it might start for him to go out somewhere that night

A Bulgarian designer I have worked with perhaps said it best. "The more off road capable is your truck the further you must walk to find a tractor."

----------------------------- Well said.

My interest was exploring the back country, not tearing it up, the tread lightly ethic, so unlike my buddy with the Land Rover I didn't have to climb the steepest hills just to prove I could. That was the hold-my-beer episode, letting others feel superior for useless stunts doesn't bother me. Highway performance was important for me, to get to the mountains an hour or more away.

At the time I bought the Ranger a work friend from India used his engineer's paycheck to satisfy his long-time yearning for a Jeep, so we rode around in both. Though I didn't say so I felt that the 4WD Ranger was a much better choice for mainly half hour daily commuting with a little relatively mild exploring. With the 7 foot bed it was excellent for collecting firewood because it could access untouched areas where wider full-sized pickups hadn't. I used the winch to pull logs to the trail but never needed it to extricate the truck. After I had collected all the dead wood the truck could reach I switched to the narrower garden tractor and trailer. By then kids had discovered and torn up the trails such that in spring the low areas became mud pits I needed the winch to pass through.

The Ice Age melt filled in sand and gravel between the rocks and we don't have a bare boulder-strewn Rubicon to challenge us, only power line access roads and old dirt trails a horse and wagon could handle. The trail system here is very extensive but mostly suited to and maintained for snowmobiles which aren't so good on boulders or steep slopes, I found I could climb straight up a steeper grade than they could on properly waxed cross-country skis, and cross a filled-in gully they would sink into. The snowmobilers have built trail bridges across streams that would be too dangerous to cross on ice that running water kept from solidly freezing. Winter snow really opens up the woods to travel by freezing swamps and covering rocks and fallen trees that block trails in summer.

I used to run an ex-military Dodge PowerWagon (1946?) as a tow truck. About 48MPH wide open downhill with a tailwind - slightly faster if you dropped it over a cliff

------------------------------ One of the fastest WW2 military vehicles was a tank, the M18 Hellcat tank destroyer with light thin armor. A nearby museum owns one that they have taken out in MA traffic where it's one of the few vehicles that gets complete respect.

In Germany I occasionally encountered tanks on the roads. Once I veered into the woods to avoid a British convoy. I've helped push an antique cannon down a winding back road. The expression on drivers who suddenly found themselves staring into its muzzle was priceless.

Years ago I would explore Michigans western UP on vacations. My Chevy K10 wouldn't fit down most of the trails anymore because of its width. Trails were being kept open by quad-runners. Mountain bike worked well enough but something motorized would have been nice too. Liked the idea of a Rokon two-wheel drive motorcycle but nearly had heart failure when viewing the price. It's even doubled since I last looked😬 Still think it would work great. Could have carried it on rear of the truck using a hitch mount. Though can't fathom leaving it unattended anywhere with that kinda price tag...