The Ultimate Off-Road Adventure: A Journey with the Modified Stock Ranger

As we stood at the edge of the trail, our hearts racing with excitement, I couldn't help but feel a sense of trepidation. The modified stock ranger, once a humble workhorse, had been transformed into a beast of off-road capability. With its extra ground clearance, wider contact patch, and gnarly lug pattern on the tire, this machine was ready to take on anything the trail could throw at it.

With a final check of the suspension, I took hold of the steering wheel and we were off. The V6 engine roared to life as we put the pedal to the metal, hurtling down the straight section with a speed that belied our surroundings. The terrain was loose and unforgiving, but this ranger was built for it, its tires gripping the ground with a tenacity that left us both breathless.

As we approached the first turn, I could feel my heart racing in anticipation. This was going to be a test of brakes like no other. And what a test it proved to be - our tires shot through the loose material like nothing could stop them, and the suspension performed with a smoothness that defied all expectations.

Next up was the puddle. A seemingly innocuous obstacle turned out to be a testing ground for our modified ranger's mettle. With its max speed achieved, we launched ourselves into the unknown, water flying in all directions as we splashed through the depths. It was a moment of pure joy - and utter chaos.

But it wasn't just about having fun; we were also pushing our vehicle to its limits. The puddle had left us momentarily stuck, but our ranger's tires had worked their magic once again, propelling us back into motion with ease. We made our way through the muddy terrain, emerging on the other side in a cloud of dust and debris.

As we caught our breath and took stock of our surroundings, I couldn't help but feel a sense of awe at what we'd achieved. The modified stock ranger had truly been transformed, its capabilities exceeding even my wildest expectations. We were now tackling jumps that would have been considered impossible just days before, our confidence growing with every passing moment.

Our journey was far from over, however - we still had to put all our little tests together and get one big lap time. With a shared glance between us, we set off on the final leg of our adventure, ready to face whatever challenges lay ahead.

With a nod to Nolan as we took off, I felt a surge of adrenaline coursing through my veins. We were flying down the straight section now, the speed and power of this modified ranger leaving me breathless. The only negative was how much bigger the puddles had gotten - but I knew our tires would float us right across it.

"Ready?" Nolan called out, his voice steady despite the gravity of what we were about to attempt. "3, 2, 1... go!"

With a burst of speed that left me gasping, we launched ourselves into the unknown. Our tires floated effortlessly over the water, and we emerged on the other side in triumph.

And then came the final challenge - JY. A jump so daunting it seemed impossible to conquer, yet our ranger was up for it. We soared through the air, my stomach dropping with a mix of excitement and fear, only to land safely back on solid ground.

As we took stock of our surroundings, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride at what we'd achieved. And as for the time? Well, let's just say we shattered expectations - a full minute faster than anyone could have imagined.

The modified stock ranger was more than just a vehicle; it was an extension of ourselves, a reflection of our unbridled enthusiasm and love of off-roading. And with its capabilities now well-documented, one thing was certain: this machine would never be the same again.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enall right you got it Max Speed we bought this Ford Ranger for $500 and soon we'll be racing through the deserts of Mexico in the Nora 500 but before we do that we need to make some major upgrades in order to survive yeah in the last video we upgraded the suspension as you may be able to see and as much as we would love to take the truck to the desert right now and see how good that new suspension is and we probably need the truck to be able to stop yeah so to do that we bought this willwood front and rear brake kit along with some other braking accessories for a grand total of $5,000 we're also upgrading our wheels and tires and plan to add some more power at some point so to handle all that extra Force we have to upgrade our front hubs and Knuckles as well as our rear end once we get our new brakes installed we'll take it back to California City to test them alongside our new wheels and tires and the suspension that we installed last week so what do you say let's in all this stuff so we can head to the desert let's do it okay quick plan of attack we'll need to prepare our nude axles and hubs then we'll put the calipers and rotors on the rear axle then go to the front we need to put a brake proportioning valve somewhere in the engine bay and Plum the lines from that valve to the calipers that we installed we're going to be putting a lot of force on these things so we're going to try to make sure they don't break so we've got some beefy components here axles hubs Knuckles the whole thing so we got Dean and Dean knows how to do this stuff so he's going to help us finish up in the time that we have left we got to get cracking we got this camberg racing rear end a lot of the time you have to buy your brakes axles differential and housing all separate but cambering actually sells these as complete packages which takes a lot of the work off our hands we're getting this axle all checked out make sure our axle lengths are correct I have these axles sitting around at my place so hopefully they're the same thing the odds of the axles fitting are about 98 99% as long as can use a tape measure right we should be good so what we got here is a 10-in Evan Weller third member and this third member it runs what it's called a school both axles will spin at the same time there is no slip it's just all power to the ground all the time on the money we've got knuckles for the ranger because they're big they're strong they're beefy they're from a four-wheel drive truck so they're built for heavy duty stuff this is not a perfect bolt-in solution though this line right here we got to cut all this stuff off so it works with the kit that we have got a cutting wheel going to give that a shot and uh just Lop all that stuff off that didn't work so uh while modifying these Knuckles here I did go a little overboard with the cutting wheel uh cut in just past you know um it happens when you're cutting 90° two ways you know I don't know yeah dude not to you I guess CU job's the master I would never say that I want to fill this up it's not structural at all so I it's not like a safety concern it's just more of Cosmetics I want to fill this in with some wire some welds and then sand it off make it look nice before we go ahead and paint it hell yeah it looks like but I'm gonna you know wait you're already done yeah I fill it in it does not look good Joby but uh you know a grinder and paint makes me the welder I ain't right heard that buddy heard that this just in today's sponsor onx off-road is letting you try the app for free that's right free for 7 Days get access to thousands of trails with insanely detailed information like current conditions open close dates elevation difficulty and more you can even plan or build routes in 3D and share them with your buddies we love using onx at Dona and if you love it too you can upgrade to an elite membership unlocking a bunch of features like public and private land data and exclusive discounts from top brands like Fox waren method and more plus for a limited time onx is giving you a free beanie when you purchase an elite membership a free trial a free beanie who doesn't love free download the onx off-road app right now to start your free 7-Day trial today and click the link below to claim your free beanie with an elite membership that's it for today's breaking news now back to the ranger all right it's time to slap this stuff together and see if we've got the clearance we need to have brakes oh yeah clears I believe this needs to go on the back of that red anodized piece hopefully we don't have to take it off to do that so here we go clears The Hub it doesn't go over oh oh oh is it like a little puzzle oh that was going to suck that didn't go that was going to really suck job all those years playing Uncharted really paid off that was some Adventure puzzle this is a pretty big freaking rotor pretty massive willwood four piston uh caler as well I mean the clamping force on these wheels is going to be awesome and we need a lot of braking power since we're putting 37in tires on this thing that's a lot of rotational Mass the wheels and tires together weigh 120 lb and you know when you're going let's say 100 m an hour that has a lot of momentum going around in the circle so you need to clamp down as hard as you can and I think these wheel Woods are going to help us get a done just a little bit little dab will do you just at flying some anti- Seas on the back of the brake pads here just to keep the system from binding up and squeaking making noise better braking operation that is something you should really be doing uh on your daily driver for sure and will only make the Baja Blaster that much better to drive so satisfying it's notched out so just stays right there willwood rules dud well noie what do we think how's it coming all right well the rear brakes are done they're not plummed up or anything yeah sure yeah but the cool stuff's done the cool stuff is done the biggest change that we are getting with this willwood system is that we're going from a drum Brak system that came on the truck stock to a disc brake system a pretty beefy one at that job disc brakes are pretty much better than drums in every respect some recent Vehicles still come with drums on the rear that's a proven system they're cheap to manufacture but you can't beat a not to mention the Ste that comes along with it that's right buddy looks great dude thanks and it be clear our upgraded brakes will disperse heat better be more responsive and more reliable however they won't directly help us stop faster that's more of a feature of our new tires we got tires 37 in tall and we got some raceline rhinos it's forged so it's going to be super strong and it's a bead loock to physically grab onto the tire and keep it on the wheel without blowing the beads off so we can run super low pressures and get out of any tricky situations they're going to be huge they're going to be heavy they're going to look great we just have to put them together which means about a th000 bolts need to go into these wheels so I've got many hands boys them things are dirty dude give me them clean wheels 1080 that's my guy look at that oh my god dude the difference wow wow wow wow you versus the guy she tells you not to worry about am I right all right I mean this truck was pretty fun to wheel in a stock form it was like pretty capable now just seeing like the sheer size difference gives you a really good idea of like how capable the truck's going to be when it's not only fully completed but even just with the suspension system that we have on there and these tires it's going to be able to take much bigger bumps and also with these really big blocky tires here I think that River wash is going to be uh pretty fun now let's continue with the build all right so we've got a proportioning valve here from willwood this is a pretty nifty bit of Kit and it's pretty simple the way it works is it's got two inlets one for the front axle one for the rear axle for your brake power coming out of the master cylinder this knob here modulates how much brake fluid can get through to the rear axle and by changing that amount you affect the bias overall if you dial out braking in the rear well you've got more front bias if you dial up braking in the rear you got less front bias so it's pretty simple just got to make a couple lines get a couple fittings on here and then we'll be dialed in okay I'm starting to wonder if this is the right fitting just trying to thread in this fitting for one of the front output lines from the proportioning valve and for the life of me I can't get it started I thought that I was pretty sure this is the right fitting but starting to think might be wrong theme of the video the theme of the video and all the videos and our lives thus far we've got cool brakes but I can't find the hardware with which to install them so I'm going to keep looking and uh yeah maybe have to go buy some more bolts so we have our our cables here uh we've got a few of them Adam is currently at the king of hammers he's the one who ordered all these and devised the braking system uh but he did not leave us a drawing or any sort of schematics or a heads up or you know like hey here's a here's what I was thinking I think we can figure it out I think we can do it it's only breaks on a race car it's fine so we're replacing our original hard lines from the factory with these longer braided lines they're more durable uh and they're longer which we need because now we have a lot more suspension travel so our brakes are going to be further away from the truck than they used to be we need some extra line to make that work so that's what these are going to do they'll give us plenty of clearance plenty of travel and they're very tough so even if they do rub on something which we're going to try to avoid they won't immediately blow apart so it's also going to be more resistant to bulging which the stock stock rubber lines would have been especially as they get older and degrade when you put a bunch of pressure on the brake pedal you can bulge those lines and then your pressure is going into the line rather than into your brakes and slowing you down we won't have that problem with these no matter how hard we're pushing on the pedal all the pressure is going straight to the caliper to slow this thing down W he saves the day again with some fittings and lines cuz as usual we missing a bunch of stuff but now we're back in business right no more trips to the hardware store right guys all right the brakes are officially on the truck jooby we got bleed them and then head to the desert for some dessert hey it's me from the future now before we hit the desert I wanted to show you a new shirt that we made specifically for the Baja blaster you can see it's got the ranger on there ripping through the desert and there's even a little frog trying not to get run over it's available in washed black and natural and we even made a long sleeve version for those chilly Desert Nights and what's more we're also releasing a new sticker and a new brown logo hat get it all now at donut media.com and give it the beans and we're back at the cctt DD what does that stand for California City Trophy Truck donut drum perfect we have four different scenarios set up to test all of our upgrades we have a straight line speed test a braking and cornering test a loose wash traction test and finally a whoop section that means jumps to see how much the weight has affected the acceleration and power of our truck we're starting off with our 0 to 60 test we've set up the same half mile course here last time we hadit 34.9 seconds so we got a stopwatch here we're going to see what Justin can do now what do you think slow I think H yeah all right Justin as long as you feel like we're not about to explode uh you're good to go we're checking it out I felt the vibration and we're getting a little bit of smoke so let me just diagnose smoke oh sick okay well let us know I guess he's got a vibration and a little bit of smoke and he said he thinks it's the drive shaft that drive shaft is perilously close to the gas tank which is one of the few things we really don't want to rip open or have smoke yeah okay it should just be something off the exhaust we're good to go okay on go 3 2 1 go he's already up the speed looks like he's hauling look at that oh my God this feels horrible but it feels faster somehow 30 seconds 30.7 8 seconds so the extra grip from the tires overcame the added wait and got us across the line almost 5 Seconds faster incredible it's pretty cool something's making noise I think that's the drive shaft that was the scariest scariest 30 seconds of my life really the carrier is absolutely gone our drive shaft support is completely gone that carries the drive shaft just kind of gives us some support in the middle keeps it from doing a bunch of this and it's not happy with the things are at and uh uh it has left the chat which isn't great you going to go grab the part I'll go we'll go get it yet here we are got two of them not sure which one we need one of them was a lot more expensive than the other stupendous yes one should work y for now this is neither one of these is long for this world I think so this drive shaft is a stock drive shaft and obviously our rear axle differential all that is not stock and we've got a lot more travel so we need a longer drive shaft but we really only need the stock drive shaft to get us through today we just want to get through this testing so while I do think that even a new support bearing is not going to solve our problems it will hopefully get us through today that's all I want trials and tribulations on the trails sounds good it looks smooth way to go Zach after that very fun Fiasco we're back on the road the drive shaft is held in place currently currently I don't know what that beeping is up next we've got our braking and cornering test our new grippier tires should let us stop faster and our new brakes and proportioning valve should let us do it with more control if you remember last time we had a really hard time stopping the truck no grip no grip no grip so let's see how well this thing performs okay here we go ready yeah I'm ready hey it took that BMP real nice all right let's see how it stops see breaking now oh wow it slows so good oh yeah dude it stopped way shorter than it did on stock tires that was excellent Joe yeah that felt amazing oh man this is so much better oh yeah got all the brakes in the world no problem at all slowing down yeah I mean it just bites and Dives and as it Dives so much you get even more weight on the front more grip that was we could have gone through how' it feel oh it's so much better it actually slows down now brakes work slowed us down mission accomplished but now we got to put these tires to the test I think it's going to be a little hairy job why what do you mean let's go to the river bed it's time for our third test attraction test the objective is to make it down the creek bed around the cone and back without sinking into the wash last time we made it pretty far but as soon as we had to slow down for the turn we started sinking and we had to pull it out with another truck so hopefully that doesn't happen all right little traction test rivered here we go here we go ready I'm ready all right just stay on these routs just stay on these routs yeah just keep it down skiing baby yeah just jumping around a bit so are my boobs all right here they come I hear that V6 screaming give her a shot breaks are working hard he's turning oh my goodness no yes yes yes yes yes W on it can't be stopped yeah all right so our tires clearly have enough grip for this loose material here I mean look dude look at this chewed it up stock Ranger we got stuck right about here tires sunk in the rear end got stuck right here but with that extra ground clearance that wider contact patch and those really gnarly lugs on the tire shoot through this like nothing it was easy brakes success Tire success now test I've been waiting for all day the suspension let's go to the whoops okay Bel on bash hat on let me tighten the sucker up dude don't kill me to go just don't kill me me we good to go ready yeah oh God oh God God yeah noan yeah noan we're off track but it was worth it yeah what a machine oh that was great everybody's okay everybody's still checking themselves everybody's miss the track there buddy yeah sometimes when you're getting too much air okay dude that looked awesome how' it feel Justin way better way better I can't imagine doing that in the stock Stu it was pretty jarring as is Jesus dude it's actually very smooth I'm able to form thoughts oh God maybe not that was so much fun oh my God that's cool as hell we're just getting started that's a tiny jump compared to what this thing's going to be able to do offroading is the best like why do anything else you know just go out in nature and have fun and drive fast like ah I mean yeah granted we're $20,000 in the ho um and uh we don't even have safety equipment yet uh harnesses seats a hood fenders ah there's still a lot to do okay obviously the braks are way better obviously the tires are way better and obviously the suspension is way better but now I think it's time to take all of our little tests put them all together and get one big lap time let's do it dude what' you do last time 522 522 you think we're getting into the fours yeah oh yeah oh yeah I'll the only negative for us is how much bigger the puddles got yeah but I think we're going to float right across it are you ready Nolan 3 two 1 go and we're off all right all right on the straight section it feels a little slow I'll give you that yeah it's going to need more power I'll give you that y it's going to be scarier oh yeah okay first turn coming in oh it's got all the brakes in the world it it doesn't make sense to be able to break that well got to keep on it you got it foot down we're good we're good we're good we're good foot down baby to the floor okay here we go that's a TR yeah baby yeah baby sick yeah wow now what do you have to do now we got to do the puddle Joy oh the puddle all right you got it max speed we're not good oo that was a huge Splash oh no we're moving yeah that's cuz these tires float baby my so wet okay here we go hey check this out JY and we are across the line wow that was hilarious how was that mud hole oh pretty deep sounds like you went quiet for a second yeah I wasn't sure we were going to get through but we did all right what do you think your time was man I I hope like in the 440s I'm going to say 4:36 ooh you're both wrong you're actually faster 432 almost a full minute yeah it's almost like all you got to do is completely reinvent the suspension spend a bunch of money on brakes and tires and then you'll get better at stuff absolutely the ranger is the best car we ever own all right let's not go jinxing it all right it's time to go address the power issue back to the shop boys all right