The Ford Ranger Build.

The build, the rig build, car fitout - whatever you want to call it. . . I’ll be honest - I had no idea. None. . .whatsoever. I didn’t know what a GCM was, glazed over the minute somebody asked about what tyre size I was running, didn’t understand the payload limitations of the Ranger, I am so far from a car guy it’s not funny. Ask me about camera’s or lenses and I’ll bore you to death with details - but yeah, when it came to working out how we were going to get around on this lap of Australia - I was a total noob.

So I did what any good noob would do and got onto Google. I started learning some of what I needed to. . .and came across Tripinavan, the Todoing family and a bunch of other youtubers who were putting out informative content. That helped a bit, but it was really only the beginning of my descent into what is now a complete obsession with all things to do with our Ranger. I mean, far out. . .it’s easy to get hooked when you get a taste of it and I’m hoping there’s a solution. . .as it’s certainly not a cheap exercise when you have no idea how to do any of it yourself.

The whole thing was a real process and to be fair, it started with people telling us what we couldn’t do with our existing car - a 2017 Ford Ranger XLT. We had it pretty much stock except for an empty aluminium canopy on the back which allowed me to cram it full of camera gear, or camping gear, depending on what we were doing. No secondary battery system, no fridge, didn’t change the tyres, didn’t do the suspension - it did have seat covers. . .oh and it didn’t have quite the towing capacity that they tell you. . .well, it sort of did, but that’s where we started to get tripped up.

GCM! How those letters started to define our very life during that time. Let me explain in as simple a terms as possible.

Our Ranger could legally tow 3.5 tonnes.

The car itself, fully loaded was allowed to weigh 3.2 Tonnes. (That’s your max GVM or Gross Vehicle Mass.)

So you’d think then, that the combined weight of the car and whatever you’re towing together would be allowed to be 6.7 tonnes, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong. . .and I was too.

Turns out, that combined weight is called your Gross Combined Mass - or GCM - and Ford, god bless their little cotton socks, had rated the GCM of the Ranger at 6 tonnes.

I found this pretty confusing.

So, if I’m towing 3.5T. . .Then the car itself can only weigh. . .wait a sec. . .2.5T? But it already weighs 2.2 tonnes from factory. . .how can I do a few mods, load up with people and still come in under 2.5T so I don’t blow the GCM out? Plot twist. . .you can’t! My stock ranger with the empty canopy already weighed 2.55T - and that was with a full tank of Fuel, Katie and I and no kids!

We needed a higher GCM and with that realisation - we went tumbling down the research rabbit hole into a veritable wonderland of conflicting claims, dealer rejection and RAM 2500 lust before finding a little company called Lovells.

Lovells produce GVM and GCM Upgrades. Short story is, a Lovells Suspension upgrade allowed us to have a GCM of 7 tonne. It’s a coil, shock and leaf spring replacement system designed for heavy load. As a part of this upgrade, Lovells re-rate the axle capacities and as second stage manufacturers, engineer and approve a the new ratings.

One problem. . .We couldn’t do it on our existing car in Queensland. No matter which way we looked at it, and we looked at it from every possible way, there was no way to get it done to our existing Ranger that would be legal in a sense we were willing to accept. Get this, if we deregistered the car in QLD, changed our PPR to NSW and re-registered it down there we could do the upgrade post-registration. But when we came back to QLD and had to re-register it here in QLD, all of those upgrades would account for nothing and we’d be back to a stock rating. The only way to do this in QLD was to buy a new vehicle and have it done pre-registration.

I loved my Ranger, I wanted another one, but at that time, Lovells did not have the approvals required to do the upgrade the PXIII Ranger and there were no new, unregistered PXII’s left in the country, so with no other options in our price range that we were willing to consider, we went and test drove a Mazda BT50. Essentially the same car, but without all the Ranger bells and whistles and whilst you might say it makes no difference, it does. The finishing is just not as good in my opinion, the electronics are not as modern, but what I noticed most - the handling. The Rangers electric steering is actually a joy to handle - so light and smooth and the difference was really noticeable. But we figured saving the $10K was more important and decided to commence a negotiation with the dealer.

It was all going well until we told him we wanted to do a Lovells Upgrade Pre-Registration. A look of consternation crossed his face. . .”Uhhh, ohhh, I don’t know much about that, what is it?” I explained it to him. He said he would need to talk to his Manager. His manager said he needed to speak with Mazda. . .it wasn’t looking good and we ended up leaving the yard that day with no car, no idea and the promise of a callback.

Days went by with no answer. Almost a week later, I called and followed up. . .The salesperson said that basically they didn’t like the idea of the Lovells upgrade and the only way we were going to be able to do what we wanted was to get a 6 wheel conversion and they knew somebody who could help. I didn’t relish the idea of a 6 wheeler, we’d already looked into it, the costs involved and the outcomes. We wanted the Lovells kit. I told him we just wanted to do the Lovell’s upgrade and asked if he would he facilitate the purchase and we would look after the rest. . . He said “If you’re going to do a Lovells upgrade, we will not sell you a car.”

I was gobsmacked.

“Really? You can’t be serious?” I asked.

“No.” He replied, almost sneeringly, “I’m sorry, but we don’t want to do be involved if you’re going to be doing THAT sort of modification.”

He made it sound as if we were asking him to break the law. Like we were complete criminals. I was really upset about the whole thing and rang Lovells. I needed to know if what they were peddling was really kosher. In what parallel dimension does a car dealer refuse your custom?

There was a guy at Lovells I started talking to. His name was Dragan. I was like “Really? As in like Dragon, Dragon?” He assured me it was just like Dragan, Dragan - but they sounded the same to me. Anyways, he filled me in and he was quite surprised. He’d only heard of this happening once before and the person had to go to another dealer and they did the install. I was pretty cheesed though and still a bit put off by the whole thing. I mean here’s a competely legal upgrade, federally approved, and the dealer didn’t want to sell us a car and made us feel completely dodgy.

It turns out that I’d been following a Mazda dealer on insta, Grand Prix Mazda Aspley and I had a chat to the dealer principal there, Luke. He was awesome, super helpful and was more than happy to help us get into a BT50, do us a ripper deal and look after all the pre-reg stuff with Lovells. This was a man who modded his own BT, had all the toys and was just keen as to be a part of it. Such a refreshing experience and we really enjoyed our dealings with him. . .We test drove the BT, and it got hard as we were searching for this particular shade of blue, auto, unregistered and al that. . .he finally found one and get it brought through to the dealer. . .

And that was when I spoke with Dragan again. . .They had just completed the PXIII testing and it was going to be a week before you could upgrade the PXIII Ranger suspension with the Lovells GCM upgrade kit. . .but there was a catch. In the revision under the new testing regime, they had to re-rate both engine variants. The 3.2L 5-Cylinder and the 2.0L Bi-Turbo. Turns out the 2.0L passed with flying colours. But the 3.2. . .it had cooling issues. So as it happened, if we went with the 2.0L BiTurbo, we didn’t need to get an aftermarket intercooler and radiator - saving about $3-4K.,

So we went and purchased a Ford Ranger and ultimately had to leave Luke @ Grand Prix Mazda Aspley hanging. That part, we felt really average about. He’d been so nice, helpful and gone out of his way to get things happening for us and we ended up having to go down another path. I guess I’m bringing it up now because I feel bad about it and also I don’t want to gloss over the crap things we had to do along the way. I wish that could have gone down differently, but we needed to go to the Ford Ranger platform as we really didn’t want to be shelling out an extra $4k on top of the suspension costs for the extra cooling the 3.2L Engine would now need.

Bitter though that part of it was, it was nice to get to stay with a Ranger, I loved my Ranger and was so pleased that I would be sticking with what I knew and enjoyed so much.