2005 Ford Ranger Buildup - Buy And Build This Truck For $7,000

The 2-inch I.D. Thrush muffler uses a series of perforated bends to dissipate sound into the fiber packing. We clamped it in place and were surprised how quiet the truck was at idle considering how compact the muffler was. We added a chrome tip from the parts store and that was it for the exhaust.

Here are the parts from Spectre that we picked for our Ranger. We knew the basic layout was a 90-degree bend, and we ordered the parts we thought we'd need based on a few measurements. The quality of engineering and of the components themselves really impressed us.

Our Ranger was a perfect candidate for a custom intake. You can see there's not much to it.

The factory airbox was held in place by barbed plastic tabs that were a little difficult to remove. Take your time and work counterclockwise starting with the front of the truck. At least that's what worked for us.

Ford's PCV valve plumbing unclips easily. We removed it along with the rest of the intake. First to go on was the Spectre 90-degree 3-inch polished aluminum elbow.

MAF sensors are calibrated to read the air in a passage with a known cross-section. Spectre's MAF mouting plate came with adapters for both the correct inside diameter and the Ford-specific MAF mounts. This setup was pretty trick.

We made sure that the arrow marked "flow" was pointed towards the engine before we tightened the sensor to the housing.

The straight 3-inch polished aluminum tubing came in a 24-inch section. We marked the length we thought we'd need and cut it with a reciprocating saw and smoothed the edge with a wire wheel before we drilled the PCV port. We were supposed to use a hole saw, but this step bit easily worked its way though the aluminum.

The Spectre oiled-cotton conical filter was mounted to the MAF and the rest of the tubing. The final piece was the -inch oil/water hose that was used to connect the PCV valve to the port we drilled and installed on our intake.