howdy ya'll

[racerx]

hey there! thanks for the introduction and advice. we have been discussing it amongst ourselves all week and we have decided on a direction to pursue for the HP gains. since we want to keep the car nimble (or at least as nimble as possible with a different engine) we are going to try a ford 4.0 liter V6 with the ford T-5 5 speed tranny. factory it is at about 160 HP and in the 220's for foot pounds of tourque. conservatively we think we can get it closer to 200/ 240 in race trim.
after some measurements from a donor ranger, we think we can move the firewall, steering wheel, and seats back about 5 inches and get all of the engine to sit behind the line of the existing engine front face. that should really help to maintain the weight balance of the car. since the fords are a 60 degree V we think we can get it all in width wise and still leave the front suspension, brake cylinder and steering roughly untouched (except that the steering and brakes will move back with the firewall).
since we have to do some serious cutting and replacing of the floors anyway for rust removal, it shouldn't add too much more work to the job (fingers crossed). we plan to mock it up this weekend to see if our math worked. i will get some pics to post up next week!
thanks again all of you for your support so far. you have definitely made navigating these decisions much easier!