I have been contemplating a transverse leaf rear end on my Ranger and was wondering what thoughts or advice you guys had. How should I go about it? What should I do or not do? Any considerations? Would I be able to do this with the Ford 8.8 independent rear axle from an explorer? Should I go Dana 44 instead? Thoughts please.

I have not seen or heard of anyone doing a transverse leaf setup nor an IRS conversion to a Ranger (yet anyway); I'm not really sure what the point would be. However, what some people do like doing as far as rear axle mods is to get the rear axle off of a 95-01 Explorer and install it in the Ranger. This because, these have disc brakes OEM and people typically are seeing a posi and better gearing. This is especially true if the Ranger has lousy gearing such as 3.23 or such. The work to install is not overly difficult either, however, it will require that the old perches be swapped for new ones on the new axle (my understanding is that they can be bought new) and FWIW, I believe the Explorer axle is ~ 1" wider. You won't notice this but you will want to want to know about it when installing the perches. You have another option that is largely will be a bolt in, and that is to use the axle out of a LevelII. These have a Torsen carrier, 4.10's and larger axles.

Back to the IRS, some people take the axle cover from the IRS axle and trim it, and use it on their existing 8.8. Example below. If you do this and if you have ABS, you will have to address the clearance issue between the tone ring inside the axle and the new cover. A grinder and some time should take care of it.