'86 ranger front end on '93 explorer?

[jg09]

I have access to the front clip of a 2wd 1986 ranger (still on the truck, so I can get all the pieces I need) and I was thinking about trying to swap it onto my 1993 Explorer. So far, here's what I'm noticing while looking at these 2 pictures

it seems like the front of the doors and the bottom of the a-pillars could accommodate the same shape and size of fender. The cowl is harder to make a call on, but it looks like the ranger's is slightly shorter between the back of the hood and the windshield. The body lines look like they wouldn't quite match up on the top of the fenders as well.

When the Bronco II went over to the newer style front end in '89, did any of the structure change underneath the body panels? Because if they could run the similar newer style without major changes, I'm thinking I could reverse that step without too much hassle.

Any thoughts on this? I don't want to tear down my explorer if the project won't really work.

 

[Explorin94]

The explorer body is wider than the ranger. Won't work.

 

[koda6966]

From what I've heard it doesn't work. Would be sweet to custom fab something though.

 

[stegomon]

my father is going to fab something up. has the drawings. just going to take a little bit of the gen 1 fender and lay it over the exploder fender and change the hood

 

[dangerranger83]

Anything can work when an idea is put to the right mind.

Sent from my SGH-T499 using Tapatalk 2

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

The cowl is interchangable, the hood is the same as a 2nd gen (same width as a first) and so is the grille and headlights but the fenders are completely different in shape.

You could probably make it work, it would take a lot of doing though (would have to cut and weld parts of the two fenders together to get everything to line up)

 

[jg09]

the explorer/ranger fender grafting is pretty much what i expected. i'd really like to smooth out the body lines on the ranger fenders so that they'd flow more into the explorer body. sounds like a lot of body work to do it, but i'm still tempted to try it