The folks behind the Donut Media YouTube channel purchased a rather beat-up, high-mileage Ford Ranger back in early February, and over the ensuing months, have been hard at work transforming it into a proper desert racer. Ultimately, that process cost them a whopping $100,000 in total, with the Donut team putting a proverbial bow on it just this past July with high hopes of actually competing in and finishing some grueling events. Things seemed to go fairly well during the truck’s shakedown runs, but it all went south once the terrain got rugged.
In fact, the high-dollar Ford Ranger wound up breaking some parts, exposing several other weaknesses along the way that need to be rectified before the pickup can actually hang with the big dogs in terms of performance – not just price. Thus, Donut enlisted some professional help in the form of Michael Cox Racing to complete this process. Right off the bat, Cox notes that there are problems wit the truck’s power steering, radiator, cooling system, and a need to figure out how to deal with the gas tank, which was damaged during testing as well.
Luckily, those problem areas can be fixed with a little elbow grease – and more money – not to mention a little cutting and hammering. After all that work was completed, Donut headed back out to its desert testing grounds, and luckily, it seems as if the Ford Ranger is pretty much ready to roll now, roughly a month before it’s set to make its competitive debut.
When it comes to individual components, this Ford Ranger build already consisted of $15,000 worth of suspension upgrades, $5,000 in beefy brakes, an $18,000 interior, a $50,000 engine, and an $8k body kit. Now that the hard work is done and everything seems mostly sorted, it’s time to take this pricey build out to Mexico for the NORRA 500, where it will be subjected to 500 miles of some of the most grueling conditions on earth – and with any luck, it’ll live up to the hype, as well as its lofty price tag.
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