Wise Blood
First appeared in 4x4 magazine, october 2017
‘No man with a good car needs to be justified,’ said the man in the hat in cult movie Wise Blood. And this blood red Ford Ranger is here to tell you that neither Paul Brown, nor any of the customers who throw in their lot with his company, are going to need any justifying at all.
A couple of issues ago, we featured Andy Smith’s highly prepped Ford Ranger, which is in the process of being turned into a full-house expedition truck by PB Customs. The company is gaining a strong reputation among the sort of vehicle builders who like to manage a project rather than do the spannering themselves – and its own Ranger, which you see on these pages, is becoming an ever mode impressive calling card for what the guys there can do.
The vehicle is a pre-facelift T6 Limited with the must-have five-cylinder 3.2 TDCi engine. With about 200bhp in standard form, this unit is one of the main reasons for the Ranger’s fast-growing popularity towards
the upper end of the modding game; you can tune it for plenty more, too, though the truck’s owner, PB Customs’ main man Paul Brown, has left well alone.
That’s not to say he hasn’t already made an improvement under the bonnet, though. Not that it was the fun kind. Rangers of this one’s generation with the 3.2-litre diesel have an issue whereby the oil pump can fail to prime after the sump has been drained, with predictably dire consequences. The fix is to replace the pump with a different unit, as used on later models – not the most pleasing thing to have to spend your money on, but a whole lot better than having to spend much more on a new engine.
Doing that would be enough to wipe out most vehicle builders’ entire modifications budget. In fact, it would probably be enough to wipe out most vehicle builders’ entire project budget, truck and all. Much better to spend it on cool kit from the likes of ARB and Old Man Emu.
That’s the kind of stuff Paul fits to his customers’ cars. He’s a firm believer in the spend it once, spend it right approach to vehicle building, and would prefer to invest in a top-brand product than save a few quid in the sort term then live with the fear of having to do it all again this time next year. That could be a seen as a legacy of the places where he worked while learning his trade – he started out at Devon 4x4 and had a year at Nene Overland before setting out on his own, and neither of those are companies you tend to associate with doing stuff on the cheap.
Paul spent his days building bespoke challenge trucks in his Devon years, and concentrated on special vehicle builds at Nene, so he definitely knows about this sort of thing. His own history as a 4x4 owner started, as they so often do, with a Suzuki SJ410, and at present he owns a Defender 110 which he’s in the process of converting into a pop-top overlander.
These things take time, of course, especially when you’ve got customers’ builds constantly
muscling in on the queue. A nice problem to have, but one which
means that having owned the Ranger for about six months, what you see here is not so much the finished article as merely how far he’s managed to get. His to-do list includes fitted an ARB Air-Locker in the rear, for example, and mounting up a Warn Zeon 10S on a Rhino winch bumper – all outstanding kit, but it’ll be a lot more outstanding when it’s no longer sat on the shelf waiting to be bolted up.
Things he has managed to fit so far include an ARB Summit rear bumper, Safari Snorkel raised air intake, Old Man Emu suspension lift and Rigidek load cover. There’s a full set of Rival protection plates under the vehicle, too, as well as various Wilderness Lighting LED arrays and four 33x12.50R18 Radar R7 mud-terrains on 18 x 9” Boost alloys from Method Race Wheels.
And that’s just for starters. As well as the aforementioned winch, bumper and locking diff, Paul has long-term plans to develop the Ranger into a full overland machine. Quite how he’ll manage to drive both it and his 110 around the world at the same time is something we can’t figure out, but we don’t suppose it matters because in the immortal words of Brad Dourif in Wise Blood, and indeed of that Ministry T-shirt you used to wear, No Man With A Good Car Needs To Be Justified.
There’s certainly no danger of him being accused of rushing it, at any rate. Apart from the inevitably slow pace that comes from putting your customers’ needs first (this one’s for you if you’ve ever sent your vehicle to a company then found yourself wondering why it’s still there months later while they’re flashing their latest new show motor around the place), Paul didn’t just leap on to the Ranger and start pulling it apart. No, PB Customs is a Dintrol agent – and if you’ve got a vehicle whose chassis needs bringing back from the edge, or preventing from straying close to it in the first place, it’s the place to go.
Dinitrol is good stuff, but that counts for little if the person applying it is a monkey. Or a cowboy. Or a monkey working for a cowboy. Over-spray grotting up your shock absorbers and inner-facing tyre walls? It happens.
Paul is the man Dinitrol sends its own customers to because he takes the time to prepare vehicles’ chassis properly and mask off the bits where the chemicals aren’t meant to
go, and that was the first thing he did to his Ranger after getting it home. It may only have had two owners before him, but who knows what it might have been through – and besides, why wouldn’t you do something that’ll press
the pause button on chassis rust for a decade
or more?
When you’re prepping a truck for the sort of off-road use that puts your life in its hands, that’s more relevant than ever. But it’s also just a very good example of how we should all treat our vehicles – like treasure that should be kept immaculate for as long as possible. Maintaining it like you love it means you can drive it like you hate it, and all that.
Which is getting off the point a little. But the fact is, for many of PB Customs’ punters their vehicle is a very significant investment – and they want to spend that money wisely. This blood red Ranger is here to tell you that Paul is a very wise man to spend it with.
