I went to my junkyard today in search of a 3.0 for my 1991 2wd ranger. The guy I talked to said that he had a 92 3.0 taurus engine that could be swapped out for it, but that i'd have to replace the upper and lower intake, exhaust manifolds, oil pan, and flywheel. then i went to price some of this at the parts store, where another guy said that the two are interchangeable, and i could just use my old intake, exhaust, and flywheel. both engines have the same vin code... so who is right here, and has anybody else done this? is there another (more powerful) engine that will hook up to the existing tranny without having to replace too many other components?

 

To me they both are saying the same thing, use the Taruas long block and the rest from your engine.

The 3.0 has a different bolt pattern so I think a 4.0 or 5.0 would require some more work.

 

I put about 85,000 miles on a '96 Taurus 3.0L in my last ('91) Ranger. I don't even remember having to change the flywheel. Just keep your oil pan, exhaust, manifolds, motor mounts, and accessory brackets. Hang onto the intake too just in case. I think the lower manifold is the same and the upper is different, but it's been a few years and I'm not positive. You may want to change the head gaskets while they're easy to get to, the Taurus has slightly different ones. There's a great site all about the 3.0 Vulcan here: http://rogueperformance.com/WelcometoFredland.html

 

rebturtle -

on that website you linked, it says it doesn't recommend putting the taurus 3.0 into the ranger because it has a reverse flow coolant pump instead of the normal pump on the front-mounted ranger 3.0. just wondering if you ran into any problems with this?

 

It's really just the head gasket & water pump that are different. Honestly, I hadn't even learned about that until about 4 months ago. Everything else should be the same. I think there's a possibility that the Tauruses used roller lifters, or something slightly different which gave them a tad more power, but I can't remember where I heard that. Mine always ran a Ranger water pump, and is still running awsome today with the original Taurus head gaskets (one of the guys I work with bought it as his new daily driver). It has around 160K miles on the motor with no rebuilds, and has never had cooling issues even though I tend to drive my trucks much harder than the average driver. If people still raced for pink slips, I'd have an import car sales lot!

 

so i can just pull the water pump off my old engine and use it? that's great, considering i just replaced the thing 4 months ago

 

Basically yes, that's all I did.

 

then if using the ranger waterpump, if you were to change headgaskets can you use the ranger ones in a taurus motor for a ranger?

 

so you are saying to make the taurus motor basicialy almost identicial to the ranger you have to change the head gaskets to ranger ones and use the ranger waterpump, correct?

 

That is my understanding. I never changed the gaskets myself, but it certainly wouldn't hurt anything. The rest of the engine bolts back together just like it should. All of the holes are pre-tapped for every appliccable bracket & mount. The blocks are identical.