Reliability and new owner advice

[YaBoiNewton]

a standard manual gearbox doesn't give you much safety either in that respect.....you learn the hard way sometimes.

My mustang with a 5-speed kills the power when you're <500 rpm of redline. Kind of surprised a modern, computer controlled auto doesn't have a similar feature.

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[JohnnyO]

Maybe a good preventative practice you have going there...I change my oil the same frequency but the trans will be getting the first flush around 90K...I've done the diffs at 50K...Brakes? The way they look, they appear to be on track to get me past 100K before I need to replace any pads...that give you an indication of how easy I take it with my truck...

Lots of hills where I live. Average is two years out of a set of front brakes and three years out of the rears. I put on about 20k a year. My wife's vehicles do worse because she resolutely refuses to downshift coming down the steep 2 mile hill into our town because "It might hurt the transmission."

 

[YaBoiNewton]

You know, nothing was wrong with my ranger at 49k - I even chirped about how well my alternator was doing - and it's currently at the dealer with a thrown rod awaiting a new engine. Saturday night the truck died at a light, had to jump it to start it back up and it was knocking like crazy.

It's safe to say this doesn't happen to the majority of Rangers, but I'm bummed. I like the truck well enough otherwise that I'll keep driving it once the repairs are completed.

Just an update:
Getting a new long block covered under warranty. Been sitting for four weeks now, but should be resolved soon.
Dealer is refusing to do any investigation themselves as the mechanic will likely only lose money and they're back logged by several weeks. Only work done was a compression test and a "yup, it's knocking!"

If any deep diagnostics are done on this engine, it will likely be handled by Ford engineers long after my repairs are completed and only if they believe there is some systemic issue to address. I'll probably never know what happened here.

 

[Cmar]

Plan on changing out the rear shocks. The OEM ones are not very good. Also consider getting a few extra tie-down rings and stainless bolts from the local hardware store, as the bed will have the empty bolt holes that Ford was too cheap to fill.

I found that a tray for the center console storage area to be handy. You can find them on Amazon.

+1 for the shocks, they were sort of OK for the truck on it's own, but when towing our caravan not so much. I replaced with Monroe heavy duty 4x4 gas ( pretty much identical to ARB OME, Monroe makes OME for ARB in Aus), for a big improvement, and only an hours work, even with the cat helping.

 

[ControlNode]

I lost A/C before 8,000 miles on mine after a trip to Florida. Seals appear to have blown out between the thermostatic pressure valve and the evaporator. Under warranty, but no ETA on when the part (seal kit) will arrive, was told it's on backorder, "galactic backorder" where the SA's words. When it's really hot I can drive the RS, but if I need to tow while it's hot and humid it's going to suck. But aside from the A/C no issues, but I'm still "low miles".

On reliability, as mentioned the T5 has been out for a decade, things I think are the same for many years are the transfer case and axles and much of the suspension. I know for the US they updated the frame some, changed the bed, fenders and tailgate. Sync3 has been out for 6 years and it works good in the RS. the 2.3EB for 6-7 years, 5 years in the RS that has the closest match to the cooling layout in the Ranger 2.3EB and while the RS had the recall it was not an issue with the engine as designed, it was because last minute Ford found a production or design error in the head gasket and to get the car to market they put the wrong 2.3 gaskets in hoping they would hold up long enough for Ford to make the corrections to the RS head gasket and produce it. The transmission is the same as the F150, so it's up to the task of the Ranger. Those are the reasons I went with the Ranger, and the AC issue is just one of those things, I've not heard much about it being common though.

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