The turbo engines are good swap candidates. They have forged pistons and some other parts that helped make the engines more robust. They did come with lower compression but that can be fixed by just having the head milled. The Ford 2.0L and the 2.3L heads can be milled quite a bit. In the case of the 2.0L over 0.100 inches! The 2.3L not so much but more then enough to get a turbo engine compression up from 8:1 to something like 9:1 or a bit more if used with a carb or FI but no turbo. You will need to get an adjustable cam gear to get the carm timing back to stock. Milling the head changes the cam timing. Not a big deal.

Another thing to do is to swap in a roller cam and lifters if the engine you get does not have one. You just have to find a Ranger 2.3L with the roller cam and pull it and the rockers, swap out the older style slider cam and your good to go. The roller cam has a bit more lift and less friction so it produces a bit more power.