ALH into 95 Ranger 4x4

Solved!!!!!!!!

The cat seemed to be the issue. Just figured this out. Will give a bigger update later. I'm off to go cut the Cat off for the short term to be able to drive it. Plates should be arriving soon too!!!

Edit: I did not hollow out the cat because it was getting dark and I needed to get the exhaust back on the truck so I did the quicker thing.

That would make sense, a corked up cat will make any engine struggle, NA or turbo. The N75 would call for more and more boost but the turbo would struggle to get there as drive pressure for the turbine would approach the cat backpressure and exhaust flow speed would drop to a minimum. I had an old Bronco II with the 2.9 I picked up for cheap. The cat was so plugged up it was gutless and would melt valve cover gaskets, built a cheap dual exhaust and the little thing would haul.

Well I cut the cat off thinking I could order a new one pretty easy and replace it. But it turns out that VW has discontinued the CARB cats for these cars. I also can't get a non-carb cat because they can't be shipped to CA. So, trying to do the right thing for the environment is becoming very difficult. I'd prefer to put a cat on the truck, but it may just end up getting a straight pipe if I can't get one. I'm skeptical about putting a used one on, because I don't know how long it would last before I had to find another one. Any one have any input on the average life of one of these cats?

Man the truck runs great now! You can hear the turbo spool up with such a short exhaust. It's fun, but too loud to keep that way. I want to try and keep the truck as quite as possible for comfort. Its a little slow in first, but once the turbo spools its got pretty decent power. Nothing some injectors and tune can't fix!

Does Cali inspection care if it's an OEM carb cat or can a 150 buck carb compliant Amazon cat be installed in it's place?

CA doesn't allow any aftermarket Cats to be certified for diesels. Only the OEM cat is legal. The rest of the 48 states cats have a different cert that isn't valid in CA or NY.
I learned this week that VW has discontinued the CA cat, which was $2k before they ran out. I went on ebay and got the only one thats all thats available. I'm hoping I'll be smog exempt when the time comes to register the truck in CA again since it's 95 truck ( pre-97 is smog exempt for CA Diesels). But I still want to have a cat in place both for me, but also in case they inspect atleast there will be one installed. I don't think anyone will check part numbers though, just confirm one is there.

I've got the best kind of update. I've been driving the truck! When I filled up for the first time, I had about 200 miles on the odometer from doing little test drives and such. I'm now about 1/3 into a full tank and have done about 150 miles. So it's looking really good for 30-40 MPG.

I was driving the truck home from work earlier this week and was hammering into the throttle to see how it would do, and I blew the hose off the turbo. I haven't had a chance to mess with it and see if the clamp wasn't tight enough or what. Wanted to post up an update on here since it's been a while.

The truck is no where near done, and I still have a small list of things to tiddy up. With that said, I can drive it now, so I am. I am also expecting to find some issues in the next couple hundred miles that need to be addressed before I go abuse it on the rocks or take it on some longer road trips. So far though it's feeling really good. I'm anxious to get some more miles on it so I can feel comfortable putting bigger injectors on it. Definitely lacks power in 4th and 5th gear, which is basically the same as it was with the stock motor.

Only way to go is up!

Good to hear it's running and driving, and you're racking up some miles. My Ranger is still in pieces.

Hey Alberta, you'll get there. It took me 10 years of on and off work on the truck to get to this point. Patience and persistence!

Well I went and got the cruise control stalk "merged" with the ranger column. And when I went to test it I found that I have some wires that aren't connected correctly. The ECU doesn't see the switches in the stalk and also shows the clutch constantly "pushed in". Hopefully I'll have some time in the evenings this week to dive in an do some troubleshooting and makes some fixes. Here's how the "merging" turned out. I used a metal filled epoxy. I couldn't angle the stalk any closer to the driver, so this is what it is. And in some ways its good because this is where I instinctually go for a shifter, so it's far enough away that I won't accidentally hit it and knock it off.



I'm also to the end of the first tank, so I'll have some initial mileage numbers for you guys here soon too,

Looks like you're about there. I bought a manual 2003 ranger 4x4 4.0 that was rolled over and am contemplating a bhw conversion as soon as I find a good ranger body. Looks like adapter plates are available so I can use the ranger 5 speed. Certainly don't want to hijack your great thread and will post my own build thread but had a throttle question: Did you use as a later ranger pedal with dbw so you could easily wire the alh which like the bhw requires a throttle position sensor? Or did you adapt a throttle position sensor so you could keep your 95 ranger pedal/cable? PM me as I've done a mercedes om606 swap in my 97 F150 and was able to keep the throttle and cruise cables original by using the 99 mercedes donor tps.

50harleyrider said:

Looks like you're about there. I bought a manual 2003 ranger 4x4 4.0 that was rolled over and am contemplating a bhw conversion as soon as I find a good ranger body. Looks like adapter plates are available so I can use the ranger 5 speed. Certainly don't want to hijack your great thread and will post my own build thread but had a throttle question: Did you use as a later ranger pedal with dbw so you could easily wire the alh which like the bhw requires a throttle position sensor? Or did you adapt a throttle position sensor so you could keep your 95 ranger pedal/cable? PM me as I've done a mercedes om606 swap in my 97 F150 and was able to keep the throttle and cruise cables original by using the 99 mercedes donor tps.

Click to expand...

hey 50harleyrider,

If you go through this thread somewhere, you should see a post where I built a bracket to mount the VW throttle pedal assembly.
I’ve also seen a converter box that you take the throttle cable off the engine and mount in this box. That way you can keep the original throttle pedal.
Hope this helps and I look forward to seeing your build thread come up!