6 days ago
This Old John Deere-Powered Ford Ranger Service Truck Will Outlast Us All
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If any automotive icon has earned its rep, it's the Ford Ranger. Go ahead and laugh, but few other trucks have been so overworked and yet so impossible to kill as the tiny, mighty Blue Oval. There's a reason so many trade pros and farmers still choose old Rangers in 2025. The one you're looking at here is an exceptional example, and while there's a lot to ogle at on the exterior with the paint-matched service bed and everything inside it, I'm most interested in the John Deere engine under the hood.
Brad Jones uses this truck as a service rig on his farm in upstate New York, but it didn't start out that way. He initially built it as a fuel-efficient commuter in 2016 when he was driving about 100 miles a day. It's a 1990 Ranger that started life as a two-wheel drive short bed with the 2.3-liter four-cylinder. Jones bought it off Craigslist for $400 with a bad fuel pump that he never bothered to fix because he 'always had a soft spot for any Deere engine.'
Jones decided any four-cylinder model would do, so he landed on a 4039T out of an industrial air compressor. That works out to 3.9 liters or 239 cubic inches, and a turbo helps it make 120 horsepower in factory form. The engine had 8,800 hours on it when he bought it, but he told me, 'I didn't care. They run forever.'
The first big trial was mating the 4039T to a roadworthy transmission. It wore an SAE 3 bell housing and flywheel, but after some shopping around, Jones found an adapter from Phoenix Casting and Machining that enabled him to hook up to an M5R2 five-speed out of an early '90s F-150. He initially went with a 2.73 gear ratio in the stock 7.5-inch rear-end for better fuel economy, and he was able to manage 30-32 miles per gallon with that setup. Not too shabby.
While the engine itself is mostly stock, Jones has done a little work to wake it up. The injection pump is maxed out so there's enough fuel to match the air from the upgraded T3/T4 hybrid turbo. Getting it to fit under the hood required some ingenuity, but a custom-made manifold that mounts the turbo on the side does the trick just fine. The exact power figures are unknown, but Jones estimates it's somewhere around 150 hp now.
Once he switched to farming in 2019 and cut his daily commute way down, Jones changed his Ranger accordingly. He found an all-aluminum Reading service bed on Facebook Marketplace—a rare find in its own right—so the build's new look started there. Because the utility box is a long bed, some frame extension was in order. He fabricated it all, reversed the rear leaf springs to set the axle in the right spot, and most everything lined up well. It's easy to undersell how involved this project has been through every iteration, though it only got bigger from here.
'I couldn't have a two-wheel drive service truck, so that's where I installed a front Dana 30 straight axle out of a 1996 Jeep Wrangler with custom long travel control arms and coil springs,' Jones said. 'The rear is now an 8.8 with 4.10 gears.'
A new 4×4 transmission came next, and a two-speed transfer case was sourced from a 1999 F-150. Lots of little fab jobs here and there have been required, but now, Jones has a go-anywhere service rig that still does well on fuel. Even with a six-inch lift and 33-inch mudders, he says it still gets 20 mpg or so.
'Overall, the truck performs well. It does everything I ask of it,' Jones concluded.
And if you ask me, it looks great doing it.
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