1947 ford ranger...

So, between other things a stripped the ranger down over the next few weeks. It took a while as I was doing it between other things, and it had to be sorted into ‘keep’, ‘sell’, and ‘scrap’.
I also needed to extract the wiring loom fully intact as I went.









Success!


More success!


Weigh-in time....

There was a little bit of rust in the frontmost bed mount uprights, a common spot on these, so I fixed that whilst there wasn’t anything in the way and before it spread to the chassis rials.






I made some new body mount rubbers-


Cab wood blocks needed remaking-


I had two options with mounting the cab. Spacers under the cab mounts (about 3”) so the prop cleared the floor and the tunnel didn’t need cutting, or cut for a prop tunnel, trim the tunnel area and bolt the cab directly to the chassis on the stock wooden blocks.

Obviously the latter happened!


This made it a lot lower. Remember the chassis and running gear is stock height-




This effectively moved the motor up and filled the bay out nicely.



mocked up the steering and stuff to see what space I had. One glittery chistmas present on top of the column there too.

*welcome to intermission*

(Internet points if you get that reference 😉)

During the intermission we will talk about why a ranger.
The reasons are many.

1. Wheelbase.
A stock ‘47 ford half ton wheelbase is 114”. A ranger is 118”. A little Longer is ok, it visually lowers the truck. Shorter is bad, it makes things look dumpy. An extra 4” was deemed acceptable and is easily lost in the bedsides and running boards.
Funnily enough it makes the bed exactly 7’ long.

2. Other chassis dimensions.
Track width on a ranger is a couple of inches narrower than a 47. This is ok, ‘cos out back some spacers easily sort things, and on the front it’s beneficial as it actually improves turning circle when lowered as the tyres are further away from the arch lips so don’t catch.
All other chassis based extremities (front overhang, rear overhang etc.) all fit within the footprint of the 47 ford body so are all hidden.

3. Spec.
The ranger chassis has a LSD, leaf spring rear, independent torsion bar front suspension, power steering, power brakes, front discs, 5 speed gearbox and a reasonable 2.5L turbodiesel motor that puts out 145hp and 245ft/lbs of torque. It’s geared nicely, 80mpg in 5th is about 3k rpm if I remember rightly. It’s obviously separate chassis construction, and the chassis has a nice few inches of sweep at each end in exactly the right places, doing the same job as a stepped or notched chassis on an early truck, with none of the associated registration issues.
You could deliberately go out to modify an original 47 ford chassis with modern parts to update it, or make a new Custom one entirely from scratch, and it would end up looking almost identical to this one.

4. Lineage.
The chassis in all rangers and Mazda bt-50s up to 2011 is basically a mildly updated Mazda b2000 chassis. They have improved power plants, power steering was added, the ARBs is a little thicker, and the gearing is taller to go with the increased power output. Otherwise, they’re largely identical. I have half a 1984 b2000 chassis kicking round and even the front brakes are the same.
This is great for upgrades as the b2000 is basically THE Minitruck.
Lowering and air ride are well travelled routes on these chassis.

5. Identity.
As this is purely a rebody, so retains the full 12 points on the scale system, I keep the ranger identity. They just cross out ‘ranger’ where it says ‘model’ to recognise the visual change. So ill be left with a v5 that just says make= ford and body style= pickup, which I think is pretty nifty.

6. LHD-ability.
Ford/Mazda don’t make two different chasis for lhd/rhd markets. All the holes are there for either setup. Just buy the lhd bits and bolt em on. I wanted it lhd so you can’t tell the truck has been chassis swapped.

7. PCD.
Rangers are 6x139.7mm PCD. In real money that’s 6x5.5”, a PCD those pesky japs stole off the ‘muricans (mostly Chevrolet) back in the ‘60s. This means that I can give it traditional looks by literally bolting a set of 60s Chevy rims straight on, which hides the origins of the chassis very easily.

There’s probably more I’ve forgotten but I’ll come back and add them if i remember anything else.

And there concludes tea for two 😉

8. You're a Donny traveller so the cost of running a V8 would outweigh the scrap value of how many manhole covers and cats you can nick.

Great project, how common are the '47 fords? I can't see them being 10 a penny!

They’re obviously all imports, but there’s quite a few around. Although they do seem to fetch less than later f1 and f100 trucks. (The ‘F’ designation didn’t actually exist until the new F1 came out in ‘48).
This cab design ran 40-47, with this grille/bonnet/wings design being 42-47. The earlier 40/41 design is a little more compact so may not cover the front chassis/steering box though.

I paid £3600 for the original truck in 2015. Bear in mind the running-ish flathead was worth at least half of that, the rest of the truck was pretty cheap.

They're all into late Transit Customs on red now, with gloves on multiple engine changes cos the injectors fail and melt stuff.

A most excellent write up Dez with some proper planning and execution! Love it indeed

This is a (leaky) rhd steering box.


This is a non-leaky lhd steering box, sourced in Germany by the ever-helpful RR Dutch correspondent berendd


It just bolts straight up to the chassis, once the inner wing is trimmed a bit.


Unfortunately as it was off a truck a couple of years older, the spline size for the pitman arm was different. Not a problem, a call to those helpful people at Milner 4x4 soon got me the right part for not too much money. I also got a lhd idler arm which I already knew was different.



It wasn’t quite plain sailing though as the tapers for the pitman arm and the idler arm are different sizes so if you swap them rhd to lhd they don’t fit. but the centre drag link can’t be flipped over as it is asymmetrically shaped to clear the sump. So I used the taper reamer I happened to have to bore one side out.


The other side was more difficult as you can’t ream a hole smaller, so I bought some VW bumpsteer bushes, drilled it out and pressed one in. Job jobbed.