We Put a $50,000 Engine in our $500 Ranger

All right, let's see. Holy. We bought this Ford Ranger for $500 and we're gonna drive it 500 miles in the deserts of Mexico in the Nora 500. To have any chance at finishing the race and not dying, we've had to upgrade our Ranger a little bit. So far we've upgraded the brakes, the wheels and tires and the suspension costing us just over $22,000. But the truck is still pretty slow and doesn't push through loose sand quite as fast as we'd like. Which means we need more power. Which means we need a new engine. Which means we bought this LSX crate engine for $15,000. Did I mention that this truck is 28 years old? Just wanna make sure we don't forget that. But 15 grand only gets us this LSX crate engine. We also had to buy a ton of supporting components to make it work. We bought cooling, fueling, electrical components, a fuel cell, a new transmission and a bunch of other ingredients to make sure that we get the most out of this new engine. All together, including the engine, we spent $50,000 on parts just right here. That's not the stuff back there. Yeah. There's no way we make money on this video. There's no way. Yeah, so head on over to donutmedia.com. I think Chewy's ready to go. What about you guys? Yeah, let's do it. We got a lot to do boys. First things first, gotta get the old engine out. I always forget about that. I don't know how. Jimmy! Hey. Whack it. Ooh. Oh, Jesus Christ. Cross brace out. The stock four liter V6 that's currently in the Ranger makes a blistering 152 horsepower. It's not gonna be quite enough. So with the LSX that we're throwing in this thing, our goal is to hit 500 horsepower at the rear wheels. Oh, 500 horsepower. That's gonna be super, super easy. And you're putting it in something that's how old? Applying for AARP as we speak. Radiator. Officially out. Yeah. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. So to get the engine and transmission out of this truck is gonna be a little bit tricky, partly because this truck is so much taller than it used to be, that it's gonna be hard to get our crane to pick up the engine and transmission and clear the core support. So what I'm thinking is we cut the core support out and that'll give us plenty of room to just pull the engine transmission right out the front. Super easy. Plenty of room to put the new stuff in and then we can bolt this back in and weld it back up where we cut it. Voila. Now look at all this room we have. This thing's gonna come out easy peasy. Right, guys? All right, students, let's talk about what it's gonna take to get 500 horsepower into our Baja Blaster. Well, it's gonna take an engine swap. So that broken down into steps is only five steps. Seems pretty easy, doesn't it? Step one, remove the stock engine. That's what we're working on right now. We can also be dressing the LSX, putting some of the bits and bobs that we have for it on it that'll be easier to install outside of the vehicle than they will be inside of the vehicle. Step two is installing the LSX, which should be fairly easy. We just gotta hoist it in there, drop it on the mounts, bolt it in place. The big step and the majority of the work come at step three. Just gotta wrangle the five elements. The cooling system. The drivetrain takes power down to the ground. The earth. The intake and exhaust. Air. The fueling system. Fire. And all those things combined? Captain Planet. Or the hot chick from Fifth Sense? Sixth Sense? Fifth Element? Or the Avatar dude? Then on to step four, fire it up. Hopefully. Assuming step four goes well, we can move to step five, which is taking this thing to a dyno, getting it tuned, and seeing how many horsepower we can get through those 37 inch tires. Don't you dare. Okay. You gonna pump it up? Yeah. Yeah, baby. Oh yeah, no problem. There she is. Here we go. She's free. You know what? This is a valiant engine. It was. It drank a lot of water. And it didn't die. So great job, little 4-0. You did everything you could. Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. Dun dun dun dun. Thanks to Nissan for sponsoring today's video. Dang it. The ice dragon's now enraged and his roar causes you to freeze in terror. Oh, come on. All right, rogue. Your move. I roll out of the shadows revealing my aggressive new styling and flash my headlights to get the ice dragon's attention. You do what now? Wait, I thought you were playing as a rogue. I am. A 2024 Nissan Rogue. Can you do that? Can he do that? Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. I turn the drive mode dial to sport mode and launch all 201 hrsprs straight at the ice dragon. Think again. Ice dragon casts blizzard breath covering the ground in slippery ice. Are you guys serious right now? I see the ice and I laugh knowing that I have intelligent all-wheel drive and not just sport mode, but five total drive modes. You wouldn't dare. I crank the dial to snow mode and drive across the ice with ease. Hey, Google. Find me the fastest way out of here. Hey, you can't do that. Oh yeah? I got Google built in. Finding you the fastest route now. Whoa, whoa. What about us? I swing open my doors revealing a black semi-aniline leather interior and room for five people. I jump in the Nissan Rogue. We jump in the Nissan Rogue. Not so fast. The ice dragon slams its hulking body in front of the exit preparing for its final strike. Hey, Google. Play the ice dragon's favorite song. I'm a big, scary ice dragon. Take your adventures to the next level with the 2024 Nissan Rogue. To learn more, click the link below. All right, Jerry. Yeah. I already did it. That's so much less satisfying. I know. Those guys are prettying up the engine bay to get it ready for the LSX. We're gonna get the LSX ready for the engine bay. So I'm about to mate the transmission in the engine which means installing this flex plate then slamming our brand new transmission on the back of this thing and then we'll put them in the truck as a unit. This is an automatic transmission. This is a 4L80E from Gear Star out of Akron, Ohio. Oh, that's a hometown of yours. That is a hometown of mine. It's super beefed up so it's gonna be able to take plenty of abuse that we're gonna give to it via this LSX and hopefully there'll be over 500 horsepower coursing through this transmission. A little more tilt. A little more tilt, yeah. A little more right there. Go in, go in, go in. Holy crap. Yeah, automatics are pretty easy. There's no splines. If you can't tell how easy that was, editor, could you please insert some of our struggles with past transmissions? Okay, okay. Oh God almighty. So you might be wondering why we went with an automatic transmission over a manual transmission. Yeah, I wanna know that. Well, think about it, okay? A lot of times these trucks are built to do long races. You don't wanna be shifting that whole time and many of these things have so much power it's not like you have a hard time kicking the tail end out if you want to. An automatic is gonna be pretty reliable. We're not gonna burn any clutches out, doing anything stupid and it will be a little bit more comfortable. That said, we are gonna have like a ratchet style shifter so we can choose what gear it's in. Yeah, baby. And we won't have to clutch. So it's gonna be a pretty choice. They built this for us custom. They took into account what rear end we have in the truck so this thing is geared to work with that. Flawlessly, we'll have top speed of, they said 385 miles an hour. Yeah. We're coming for you, Elon. I would like some beef jerky, please. Oh, okay. Okay. Now that the boys have the engine mounts bolted up to the truck, I've got the rest of the engine mounts right here and these are about ready to go onto the engine. The only thing is, there's a handful of ways they could go on and I don't got no instructions. So we're gonna take some measurements and try to get it right the first try, but we might not. Unfortunately, we have the starter blocking us in the location that we want. So we gotta move the motor mount a little bit forward. That's gonna push the engine further back which is gonna make contact with the firewall. So we have to start beating or cutting the firewall to make room to fit this engine. That's right. But overall, while it is gonna take more work, it's gonna be better. The engine further back puts it more towards the center of the truck which is gonna balance the truck even better. Cue cutting and sparks. Beat stick. Okay, stabilizers. Stabilizing. Now drop it a little. Hey now. Hold on, hold, hold, hold, hold. Brake line is pinched between the block and the frame. There we go. Right here. Okay, all right. So we're getting real close. Yeah, okay. So your engine mount is like touching, I think. We didn't quite get it in but we found out where we're having clearance issues. So we're gonna pull it about halfway back out just till we have room, make some clearance, give it another shot. But we were closer than I thought on the first try. With the old beat stick. Pump it up. Pump. Pump on it. Do the pump right now. Okay, lovely. Lovely. Oh, I love what I'm seeing. Yeah, boys. Love what I'm seeing. Go, get it in, get it in, get it in. There she is. There she goes. Good move. Good job, boys. Thank you guys so much for watching. See us next time. I'm just kidding. We still got a lot to do. Big one getting crossed off there. Oh yeah. Now it's time for the real work. Step three is most of the stuff. So I think we're gonna start with intake and exhaust because those are the things that are least likely to fit with the engine and the truck situation. So we're gonna start with the headers and see what we find. Probably gonna go right in. How bad does it look? Dude, it doesn't look possible. No way it's going through that, no. You'd have to feed it up from the bottom. It looks pretty good though. Yeah, it looks good, don't it? That's pretty close. Yeah. There's absolutely no chance of our headers clearing in between the cab and the frame. We need to cut some clearances. We need to bang stuff out. Oh, wait. Hold on, hold on. We've been trying to make the headers fit in the traditional way, which is to say down and out the back. But as you might remember in our video where we tore down this LSX, the LSX actually has extra head studs. No other LS has that, but the LSX. Those head studs are interfering with our headers. And it's not like we're gonna compromise or remove those head studs. They're there for a reason and we're gonna keep them. Oh, I know how we do it. Other way around. So they're facing out, out forward. Oh, forward. Oh, wow. Now that's not a bad idea, Jimmy. I'm actually for this right now. Does it actually work? Does the pattern line up? Yeah, the pattern's equal. So you can do that. Bro, that's great. Get out of here. For real? I think it can be cool. We just want to make sure that we're not choking ourselves out with exhaust fumes in the cab of the truck. You know, we're gonna be in this thing for a long time consecutively. You know, we don't want to die. But I think this could be cool. We tried so hard to do this well. Yeah, even the best laid plans, boys. Another bold decision that will literally be the only thing people talk about. Bold? Remember those guys put the headers forward with a bunch of freaking idiots? Just give me moral support. You got this. You're gonna do great. Just keep going. Don't give up. Are you sure? Just go. Come on, do it. Do it. Come on. You got it. It's all done. That looks pretty good. Does it? That looks pretty good. With our forward facing header situation, we do gain a lot of clearance in some critical areas, but we lose some up here. We are interfering with the alternator. The alternator is a very delicate piece of electrical equipment, and we would like to not melt it with this exhaust. We're gonna try to make some more clearance so that we can have room to heat wrap the headers and hopefully the alternator as well, so that both things not only can fit where they go, but work for the rest of time. Okay. I thought sunglasses were gonna be enough. That was not the case. Good job, boys. You're looking good. From the front, this thing looks like a monster, like an animal of sorts. It looks like Dr. Loveless's spider from Wild Wild West. Remember that movie? Oh, you're doing, dude, you got the deep cuts. Okay. We've got a to-do list for ourselves today. We just got done with the headers by choosing to run them backwards. So now we're onto another few big items. Getting the intake into the cabin. So Justin and Nolan are gonna be working on that. We need to make a transmission brace, so I'm gonna be working on that while Adam works on mounting the fuel cell. So we got a lot more to add to this list, but this is a really good starting point. I think we're gonna have a very progress-filled day. We're trying to pull this interior apart, and right under the seat, there's an entire ecosystem of mold. I don't know about you, but I don't wanna bring that in. I found some Pokemon. You found Pokemon cards? Why does every car of ours have cards? We got Pikachu. Oh, of course we got Pikachu, yeah. We're keeping this in the truck. Nice. I'm too weak to go outside. So we've removed the entire interior. We are gonna be running the intake from the engine bay into the cab, so that we're sucking in the freshest air possible, keeping the engine nice and happy, not sucking in a bunch of dust and dirt. And it's also gonna sound really cool. Wild, dude. That's excellent. This is so weird, but I love it. I just shot that right at Zach. Yeah, I would get it nailed. Fuel cage will be here. We'll have a spout over here to be able to refuel. Yeah, does it look good or what? Yeah, it does. Sweet. So we got a fuel cell from Radium over here, and this system, basically everything for the fueling, being the fuel rails, pressure regulator, the surge tank, the tank is right around 6K. Yowza! So we kinda went crazy on the catalog, but we wanna make sure it's reliable. Yeah, and when we're out in the desert, I'm sure we'll be thankful that we have it. This is a 22-gallon tank? 22-gallon tank. And what's cool about fuel cells is they're supposed to be able to retain all their fuel. If you're tipped upside down, they're heavily dent-resistant so that fuel doesn't go everywhere. And we've got a fuel surge tank inside of this guy, so that helps with fuel starvation. Nothing says race car like a big fuel cell. Yeah, and Radium makes some nice stuff. A really unconventional way of doing that. Nice. Next up, I'll be mocking up our engine oil cooler and our transmission cooler. This is gonna help us cool all our fluids down and hold more capacity. Now, our factory Ranger did not have this. That's also because this was just a cruiser. We're gonna be blasting through the Baja Desert. We're gonna be at 5,000 RPM, 6,000 RPM. So with a larger cooler capacity, it'll just be more reliable. Another positive thing about putting it back here is it frees up room in the front and throws weight to the back so that when we do send this thing off a jump, it'll be as level as possible. Oh, steering box out. Time to get the new one in. Oh, baby. Here we go. Replace steering box in. Quick and easy job. Are you done with the trans race, Joby? No! Next thing I have to do is start working on the radiator. And this thing is huge. Look at this sucker. It weighs a good 25, 30 pounds, probably. We have some clearance issues, obviously, with our front support here. So a lot of cuts, but eventually we'll get it in there. And really, this is super important. We're gonna be out in the desert. It's gonna be hot as crap. Yeah, one of the most important parts. Our cooling system. If we wanna make it 500 miles, we can't be overheating. Right. Overheating is akin to death. Yeah. All right, it's a brand new day, but we need to figure out who's gonna do the wiring. We gotta do the avatar, the ECU, the controller of it all. And that's honestly my least favorite work. Yeah, I don't, I'm not a fan. You got anybody? You know anybody? Dude, I heard of a guy. You did? Yeah. Who is it? Hey, I heard you guys needed some wiring help. Just who we needed. Yes, dude. We've got the one and only Aaron Parker here to help us out with the wiring. That is his specialty, and I couldn't think of a better person for the job. What am I doing? Wiring that. Everything. Yeah, you just gotta make it all work and stuff. Looks like I got my work cut out for me. So my plan today is basically to attack what I like to call the foundation of this truck, which is your battery charging system and the starter, installing our switch system, and then asking the guys how they want the truck to function, and when they hit a button, does the fuel pump come on or does the ECU control it? It's all up to them, whatever they want. I can get it done. First things first, check out the truck. Adam did a great job putting me on the right path, and he got all this sweet Link gear. Comes with a plug-in ECU and a wiring loom that actually is plug-and-play and requires very minimal in order for us to fit this unorthodox engine into our truck. So it's pretty cool because, again, I don't have to mess with any of the inputs or outputs. It plugs directly in, and the only thing I'm gonna need to do is extend a couple sensors because, again, our engine is not in the normal orientation that this application demands. Link's plug-in loom, 1,200 bucks. ECU, 1,700 bucks. Seems like a lot, but for a stand-alone ECU and plug-and-play harness, that's like a no-brainer. Thanks, Link. So in order for Aaron to get all the new wiring in, all the old wiring has to come out. Nolan, Nolan. Huh? Hey, did you just go through right there? I did. It actually went through the bellhousing as well. No, it didn't. Dude, I could see it. I could see it nicked it. I did hit the bellhousing. Straight through the floor and hit the bellhousing, er, yeah. Son of a bitch. I was trying to drill out the spot weld. Went through the floor, so. It's fine, nothing Job can't weld up. That's my bad. Don't know my own strength, man. Nolan has cut a beautiful hole in the firewall, which gives us access to our throttle body. We can see our engine. We want to seal the firewall up to that tube so that no air is flying through here. What we were hoping was that the engine would sit far enough forward that the only thing that would intersect the firewall is actually the intake tube itself. But it sits so far back that where it intersects the firewall is around this kind of complex surface of the throttle body. So what we're going to do is effectively build the firewall out a little bit further. So it lands around here. So it will just intersect the tube. It's going to take a little bit of fabrication to make that firewall, but it shouldn't be too hard. Off to the bandsaw. I got to cut this out. We'll bend it into shape. Weld it up. Okay. We need to cover up some gap and make it fit. So it's a lot of, you know, put it on. Okay, now that's hitting. We'll go trim that. And then so on and so forth, but it's coming along. Oh yeah. Let's weld that sucker in. Hello. That's pretty sweet, Joby. Nice job. Yeah. Very cool. That's going to be loud in the cabin. So it's a far evac system. Yeah. Oh. A far evac. You could fart as much as you want. That's right. And it will just eat them up. The methane, the gas, the methane gas will actually help. Yeah. It's like nitrous, but. But nitrous. Nolan, we need more juice. Funneling beans. Just reified beans. You were giving Nolan the beans? Give it the beans. Hey, it's me. And 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. There's even a little frog I'm 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. Get it all now at donutmedia.com and give it the beans. I'm getting the fueling system together here. We're actually using an LS7 sports car manifold as opposed to a taller truck manifold. So that's pretty cool. We got these really trick fuel rails here from Radium. The machining on this is so awesome. I love Radium parts here. And these Deatschwerks injectors here, they're rated at a maximum of 1,000 cubic centimeters per minute of fuel delivery. Amazing. And to put that in perspective, the stock injectors that were in the V6 on our truck only delivered 200 CCs. So huge difference. This system is gonna ensure that our engine is getting all the fuel it needs at all times. Looking lovely. Fuel rails and injectors are on. They're in the intake manifold and the intake manifold is about ready to punch into the cab. Yeah, that's pretty big. Yeah. Chewie! Come here, bud. Come right here. Oh, thank you. This is so safe. We got this thing pretty heavily tacked in, pretty tight to all the sheet metal of the truck. So now it's time to actually make the hole for the intake, confirm that it's in the right place. Hey, thanks man. Everybody seems to love my hole. Today I'm gonna be working on the battery and the foundation, getting the battery master kill installed and running the cable up to the starter and alternator. I went ahead and placed this one battery here. We don't have the second battery yet. We could be running this truck with just one battery, but in the middle of the desert, two's better. If one battery dies, there's a higher chance of you making it out of there. Brought all this stuff from the shop. Basically, motorsports grade, off-road, heavy duty wiring materials. Truck is only gonna be as proficient as the material used. And I think that's really important. Last thing we want is for the truck to break down somewhere out there and then point their finger at me because the wiring failed. Here we go. The smallest and easiest install, but I'll take a W when I can. That's right. Ah, a radiator. Look at that, starting to look like a truck again. Fact is we're in small stuff. The little bits and pieces that take a bunch of time. This is where the fun begins. What we have here is basically the foundation of the truck. I laid it all out in front and I'm gonna be testing it to make sure that everything's installed correctly because unlike a digital setup, this one is fixed. Meaning once it's installed, that's it. There's no changing things with some programming or whatever. So this'll save me some time in the future when everything's installed. Hopefully I connected everything correctly. If I hit this switch and the LED comes on, you'll hear a nice little click from the master ignition switch and we have power. Yeah, nice. All right, let's make it look pretty. All right, so I'm gonna be busy with the shifter here. We're gonna go from a column shifter setup to a floor shifter here with our new automatic transmission. This guy right here is from B&M, it's called their Pro-Gate. These things are pretty serious gates. There's really no way that you're gonna accidentally shift out of gear or anything like that. The shifter here is like spring-loaded, pretty cool. A lot of off-road racers use a shifter like this if they're running an automatic transmission. It's possible that the momentum that the shifter had going over whoops could have shifted it out of gear. With this, there's no chance of that happening. So I'm gonna hop in there, mark our spots where the shifter's gonna sit. I gotta make sure it's in an ergonomic position and easy to access. We don't have seats yet. We have no seats in the building. What we do have though is this box, which I think will be an approximation of where a seat would be at maybe. Just driving my little car. I'm trying to just find a good place to mount this guy right here. I feel like I need something for this to go on. This seems like a good spot for it to be. A little elevated piece right here would be the best way to go. Okay, so it'll look like this probably. Flat, flat, over, bop, bop. Perfect, thanks. Thanks, Dad. Yes, son, I love you. This piece of metal is way stronger than it needs to be for the job, but it's what we had laying around. So I just bent it up, and we will attach it to the tunnel here. Oh my God. And attach the shifter to the top, and then attach the shifter to the transmission, and then we'll be shifting. Ready? All right, it's in park, so go reverse. Neutral. And then the other ones. The shifter is hard-mounted in the cab, and it's actuating the shifter arm down here. So shifter is done. I hope it works. That looks awesome. Plumb fuel lines. We got the radiator done. Finish the power steering pump. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh my goodness. Making slow progress, but we're getting there. No, God, please, no. There we go, oh. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Shifter, done. Intake. Spark plugs. Done. Switch panel plugged in, ready to go. The avatar has awakened. Oil going in. I'm feeling just so proud of everybody who's worked on this thing so far. I mean, this has really been a company-wide effort. So many people have put their hands on this truck. It's been really cool. And I think everyone's just itching to hear this thing fire up. We finished pouring gas in it. We're going to pressurize the system, see if there's any leaks anywhere else, and then go from there. Aaron, hit it, bud. Oh, we got a leak back here. Leak back here, leak back here. Good. A lot of fuel. That looks like a shitty fitting. I've had like a leak. That was a... I've never had multiple leaks. That was bad. Ready to go? Ready. No sparky. I don't hear it. Power to the coils. Power to the injectors, but they're not firing. Why aren't they firing? It didn't turn over, unfortunately. Don't really know what the problem is, but boys at Link should be able to remote in, kind of help us out. What's up, dude? Hey, buddy. What's going on? You happen to be bored? What is trigger offset? Zero. Okay, that should... Yeah, that should fire it up. Off, on, off, on. Great, verified. All right, so it turns out we were getting signal to all the coil packs. Initially, we thought there was no signal. What was weird is that nothing was firing. Maybe one, two are bad, right? But the odds of having eight totally defunct coils is super unlikely. I swapped out the coil to another brand new one we had, and that did work. So we've got spark. Now we just need to change every single coil pack. I think it's more likely that there's something minutely different from the proper coil pack than what we got, because the odds of all eight of them being bad is like insanely low. That's what I'm hoping for. All right, let's see. Holy. Yes! That looked like a demon. It's been fired, dude. That was crazy. Oh, it's getting there. Our dyno numbers are officially in. Adam has written our peak horsepower on the back of this whiteboard, and Stock, this truck made 152 whopping horsepower. So let's see what it makes with our new LSX. Drum roll, please. Flip that arm. Flip that. Okay, not bad. Pretty good. So that's slightly shy of our goal of 500, but that's over 500 at the crank. Oh, easily. Our torque numbers are 550. Oh, nice. All right, awesome. I call that a super win. Yeah, this thing is gonna be wicked fun. Oh my God, that sounds awesome. Dude, that sounds so good. Doesn't it sound? Yeah, dude. Holy crap. Unfortunately, we can't drive this thing just yet. Even though we've spent $75,000 on our $500 truck, it still doesn't have seats. So we've spent $18,000 on roll cage material, seats, bunch of interior stuff to make this thing both safe and race ready. So we're gonna install all of these parts and then take our Baja Plaster back out to the desert to test our 453 horsepower LSX. Make sure you like and subscribe so you don't miss a thing. Bye. Bye-bye.