Well here it is 5 or 6 months later finally done. What a pain in the a$$ to work on. I have swapped out probably 40 ish engines over the years but this one is bar none the biggest pain in the but to work on.
Everything is a squeeze. Almost nothing is easy to get to. To top it all off Murphy was really messing with me on this one.
I had purchased a 2600 mile engine from the bone yard so I just dropped it in there without changing anything. Well first screw up was that since the engine was from a much newer truck it did not have the same motor mounts ... very close ... close enough to look the same by eye... but after wrestling it around and getting it in there I realized that it was about 1/2 inch forward of the old mounts... pulled it back out and swapped the mounts ...
Next PITA... every other car with an automatic that I have ever worked on had a 1/2 inch or so slide back for the torque converter to allow you to get it out of the way while bolting the trans to the engine... not this POS you have to align the torque converter bolts to the flywheel while dropping it in the car ARGH!
Now for when Murphy REALLY came into play... I got it all in there everything bolted up go to start the truck ... nothing... wont even try... hmmmm.... ok so I check my wiring on the starter (looks good) , neutral safety switch (looks good) Sh*t what can it be... So I go buy a manual for the thing and start through the diagnosis route ... hmmm all the volatages are wrong almost everywhere... OOPS!!! the harness has to be swapped out which means all the front engine accessories have to come back out so radiator shroud everything back out
So the truck proceeds to sit for several months b/c I hate undoing work... but last weekend I pulled all that apart and today I put it back together with the old harness and voila it fired first touch of the key. So the moral of the story I guess is always use your old harness and mounts, never work on a ford ranger with a 4.0 v6 and I guess thats it ... end of rant...
