I have the truck pan. If you sit the engine too far down in the chassis it will hit the I beam. A muscle car oil pan will work to set in down farther and give more clearance as the sump does not come as far forward. if you set in down farther in the chassis you will run into steering shaft issue with any manifold without changing rag joint to ujoint. I'm using LS3 manifolds from 2010 Camaro with the rear flanges cut an re welded to move them in. I have almost 3 inches clearance between front of oil pan and crossmember to give you an idea how high the engine sits. the top of the intake hits the wiper linkage access cover without a little messaging. The evap solenoid and the intake cover boss on the front will hit the hood without removal. I also cut out the center brace on hood to give more clearance but probably wasn't necessary. In my video it gives a better idea how high the engine sits when looking at bottom of oil pan to crossmember relationship. I also have 2" daystar leveling kit on front which moves the I beam away from oil pan. the engine also sits 6 degrees down to match the diffs driveline angle. notice I also cut the stock trans crossmember and moved it to the inside of the frame rail to match the engine sitting higher.

 

yea lookin at your video, the I think 90 and 94 the ibeams must have been mor forward. I was using a truck pan and it hit. and I have to come forward at least 4 inches. so my plan of attack is to get a ls2 vette pan due to the fact the sump is only 5inches deep, then space mounts out and my pan will basically be sitting above the I beams. then I was lookin at your ishaft.. mine only has 1 rag joint and its at the gear,other than that its a straight shaft to the column bolt so I wont have that in the way. im gonna get some Camaro exhaust manifolds this week so thatll help out some.

 

I currently have a different shaft with a u joint on top and rag joint on bottom. after the mounts settled in clearance got a little too close. ujoint on top open it up quite a bit. An fbody pan looks to be the closest to the 2.3 oil pan that came in the truck. I had the engine in and out probably 8 times to get the clearance for everything. It was a PIA. First time I had set the engine in the pan hit and exhaust wouldn't clear the steering at all with the engine sitting low like I really wanted. Building headers and swapping pans wasn't in my budget as my wife said no more money was to be spent and to get that truck running. She was tired of me driving her car. LOL. I ordered Patriot 2.5 inch exhaust flanges and welded them on the LS3 manifolds. When you cut them back, you will notice manifold becomes an odd shaped oval 2.5x2.0 inches depending on how far you move the flanges in. I used a MIG welder and had to fill the gap. So far I have about 12k miles on the swap and the manifolds are fine.

 

so today I was looking at my mount brackets that bolt on the block, I bought dirty dingo s10 2wd mount brackt kit,soo I was looking at them and thought well how can I space them from the block to give alittle more height, well I noticed that the passenger side mount was upside down..... thought to myself, hmmm fingers are pointed up, flipped the mount rightside up and guess what, the fingers point down at like a 45 degree angle know which will bring my motor height in the crossmember...guess I didn't pay attention mounting them to the block cause I was soo excited to put the engine in :0(

 

Are you running the stock ranger dash? Im swapping out a 5.0 for ls and wanted to keep stock dash. What did you have to do to mate the harness to ford deal? Thanks

 

I used the Ford sensors on the 5.3. I trimmed out everything I didn't need on the 2 square plugs for the Ford engine harness leaving water temp, oil pressure and reverse lights. I had to jump the low oil sensor out to use the ford starter solenoid. I also used the ford alternator which you know is separate from the engine harness. I didn't have a tach on my cluster so I running a CHEAP Sunpro tach. Hope this helps. Autozone has the wirng harness for the engine on its website. the fuel pump relay on ford the pcm provides the ground where gm provides the 12v, so the wires will need changed in the power distribution block. Check engine light wiring is the same as GM. to get the temp sensor to work with being in a tee off the heater hose out let, I had to run a ground to the tee. Hope this helps.

 

whenever you get the chance, im sure I speak for us all , but id really love to see the under carriage and how everything sits. video is great but hard to really see. if you could take some pictures for us wed love it

 

i forgot to ask you. can you send a pic of the powersteering braket that you made and where the pump sits, im going to do the same thing and just run my factory powersteering pump.

 

I am getting ready to swap a LM4 into a 95 b2300, what rad are you running and what hoses did you use? Also what fan and where are you running? Thanks!

 

The rad is a Speedway motors dual pass 22x19, the hoses are a section of the Silverado hose. the fan is a 16" Spal fan as a puller.

 

is that 3" depth on that radiator?

Thanks for the reply

 

Roughly. http://www.speedwaymotors.com/Speedw...evy,23864.html
When I purchased mine it was 109.99 on sale in the garage sale section

 

thanks

 

anymore updates or videos?

 

I've since swapped in a 2001 8.8 3:55 posi, not because the 7.5 broke. Just tired of having a one legger. I didn't post an update because it was a direct bolt in. I've also changed out the 33s and steel wheels for some Boss 18" wheels with 245/60/18s. I did get a LS2 cam the other day for 20 bucks and ordered the LS2 timing cover and gear. So a cam swap is in the future. Other than that I have just been enjoying it.

 

You can't receive messages for some reason... Maybe I'm not the first who wants to talk to you about your build and enough people annoyed you for you to disable PMs lol. But I have a '97 Mazda B2300 I want to drop a 4.8/5.3 in and there isn't a whole lot of info on the web about how exactly to swap these trucks and whats all needed... If you'd be willing to help me out I'd appreciate it, just send me a PM.

 

im doing the same style swap on my 2000 xlt and im having trouble finding anyone who can make me a hose for my powersteering.

 

Cut the Ford end off and put flare and steel nut on it. do the same for section of gm hose section that joins the pump. then use union to join Ford and GM hoses together.

 

The 2.5L in my 1999 Mazda truck is dying a slow death. I wish there was a company that made some bolt in mounts for the Ranger swap...sigh...

Andrew

 

2.5L 4R55E and mine is dying as well. Got a bad exhaust valve or two. Bottom end rattles right along with the top end. I'm thinking I will do a slightly tuned up 1.9 or 2.0 TDI with a M50R HD manual swap from a newer 3.0L or 4.0L Ranger/Mazda.