Ranger Rehab!

2004 Ranger 3.0L Auto 4x2 Edge w/ 94k miles

Hi all, new to the site and Ranger's in general. Sorry in advance for the long post but I need some help rehabbing up a new-to-me Ranger I got. I got this truck for free from my grandma who wanted it gone from her driveway. It was my grandpa's truck before he died. He last drove it in 2014 when it started barely running so he parked it and never drove it again. Obviously he isn't around to ask him what was wrong with it so all I have to go on is what I can see today. All my grandma can say is that it ran really rough and would not move under its own power. I do know my grandpa was pretty lazy about maintenance so there's that. I think my grandma had someone look at it a few years ago and they told her something about burned valves or blown gaskets. They had the truck for a bit, and got it back to the point where it would at least start again. I have no way to verify or follow up with that person. My grandma said she couldn't remember exactly what they said they did to it.

Today I put 5 gal of fresh gas in the tank and put a new battery in it. The truck started right up but ran really rough. I put it in drive and it almost died. I gave it some gas and the motor bogged down and sputtered out. Truck never even budged. Towed to my house.

Started the truck back up, still rough idle. Left it in park, slowly revved it up to about 1500rpm and then it died again. Attempted to restart but cranked for about 10-15 seconds. I had to hold the pedal to the floor and then it eventually fired up. This time it idled rough around 650rpms and any throttle input at all would kill it. My first thought at this point is fuel issues, possibly clogged filter.

Then I checked the fluids. Oil and trans are full. Noticed the coolant tank was bone dry and I could not see any coolant in the radiator.

I started the truck and let it idle while I had my scanner hooked up to the port. I watched the coolant temp climb from 91* to over 225* in less that 2 mins. Shut the truck down and felt the radiator. It was cold. Lower hose was cold. Top hose was cold coming out of the radiator. The top hose coming out of the engine was super hot. Now I'm thinking no/low coolant/bad thermostat or possibly bad head gaskets. Still no codes being thrown.

Any ideas on where to start? I'm good with a wrench and can do all my own work, short of a full engine/trans rebuild. I need some advice on a good general place to start my trouble shoot. I'm thinking refill the cooling system and put a new fuel filter on and see what happens. Maybe check the fuel pump and its fuses. I just don't want to start throwing parts at this thing.

Again sorry for the long first post but hopefully we can get this thing running again. Its a super clean truck inside and out and would make a great DD I'm sure.

Welcome to TRS! I don't know very much about the 3.0, the 4.0 is notorious for lower intake leaks.
Low on coolant is a good indicator of a leak, start with the heater, hoses see if the heater leaks, pull the thermostat, replace it, surely you can afford $7 as the first part you throw at it LOL.
Catalytic converter could be clogged /cracked / blocked from sitting.
And the brakes have a terrible way of locking up when they sit,

Denisefwd93 said:

Welcome to TRS! I don't know very much about the 3.0, the 4.0 is notorious for lower intake leaks.
Low on coolant is a good indicator of a leak, start with the heater, hoses see if the heater leaks, pull the thermostat, replace it, surely you can afford $7 as the first part you throw at it LOL.
Catalytic converter could be clogged /cracked / blocked from sitting.
And the brakes have a terrible way of locking up when they sit,

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I didn't see any leaks while it was running, but if its already dry then I guess it wouldn't leak anything lol.

The brakes seem to be ok, we were able to push it down the drive and the brakes worked to stop it from rolling into my house!.

I'll fill her up tomorrow with some water and see if it holds it in.

Money isn't a problem, I just don't want to waste any of it either!

SheepDog said:

I started the truck and let it idle while I had my scanner hooked up to the port. I watched the coolant temp climb from 91* to over 225* in less that 2 mins. Shut the truck down and felt the radiator. It was cold. Lower hose was cold. Top hose was cold coming out of the radiator. The top hose coming out of the engine was super hot. Now I'm thinking no/low coolant/bad thermostat or possibly bad head gaskets. Still no codes being thrown.

Any ideas on where to start?

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I'm thinking this is where you start...

Classic symptoms of a blown Head Gasket/Cracked Head:

*Mysteriously disappearing coolant with no obvious leaks
*Rough Start
*Rough Idle
*Running then stalling
*Overheating

To top it off you've got a neglected 3.0; they really don't like being left to sit and that cooling system is a real Achilles heel when it's not maintained.

So to either confirm or rule that out here's what you do:

*Check for white smoke or a sweet syrupy smell coming from the exhaust, particularly on startup, that doesn't go away for longer than you think it should
*That really hot upper hose - check it to see if it's swelling with pressure
*Check Oil - Is it white and frothy? Does it smell like coolant/rust?
*Pull spark plugs - Do any of them look steam cleaned compared to the others
*Run a glove test - glove on open radiator, with spark plugs pulled one at a time, crank engine, watch glove, drink beer.
*Run a compression test - Look for any cylinder with markedly lower readings than the others

Based on your symptoms I've got suspicions that it's head gasket related as that explains pretty much all of them.

HOWEVER you might be chasing multiple issues that individually contribute to the whole thing, so in my humble opinion it'd be best to rule out one of the worst case scenarios and root cause that could explain everything right off the bat. In any event, I think it's a good idea to replace that fuel filter.

Don't know why you didn't check the water before you started. But it starts and it runs, so it's probably not a waste of time.

I just tossed in a list of things that could be, not necessarily what may be wrong with this truck.

Denisefwd93 said:

Catalytic converter could be clogged /cracked / blocked from sitting.

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This is what I also suspect. If truck has been running rough/misfiring prior, unburned gasses can clog the catalyst material-

Update.

Was able to ask the guy who worked on it a few years ago about what he did to it. He said he got a bunch of codes related to misfires and determined it was a head gasket on the driver side. So he said he pulled the driver side head, replaced the gasket, and put it all back together. No resurfacing or checking for the valve seat problem.

My impression is that this guy just did a lazy job trying to get some money. He said it wasn't running at all when he got it and was able to get it to the above mentioned rough running stage after changing the gasket. He then said last summer he told my Grandma to start it up, let it idle all day, and see if it would throw anymore codes. So thats what she did. I'm wondering what sorts of damage that caused, especially if it was low on coolant or burning the coolant during that time.

So I decided that since I cant trust anything that guy said and have no idea what damage has been done, I went forward with assuming it has at least been overheated based on my observations. New heads and head gaskets here we go. While I'm in there I'm also going to replace the following:

New heads from Dover w/ gaskets
Water pump
Idler and Tension pulleys and belt
Thermostat
Spark plugs and wires
Cam position sensor assembly
PCV valve
Air filter
Fuel filter
And all gaskets that I come across

So far I've got the new heads and lower intake on the truck. I just finished reinstalling the rocker arms and push rods. Either today or tomorrow I'll finish it up if it doesn't rain. I didn't see any totally obvious signs of a headgasket issue but the driver side did look really dirty compared to the other side. Also, the rearmost coolant and intake passages in both heads were extremely nasty looking with goopy brown/yellow thick wet stuff. As far as the valves, I didn't see any crazy depressed exhaust valves and they looked like they all held water. (I had them upside down and it started raining. I came back outside and all the chambers were full of water.)

One question: The guy also said he replaced the cam position assembly. I have no idea if he did it correctly so I tried to reinstall it how he had it but when I checked online, it doesn't look like its right. I dont have the installation tool and I can't assume he had it installed correctly to begin with. I read several different articles on how to install it but none of them addressed how to install a sensor if the timing is currently unknown. So I set the number one cylinder at top dead center using both the timing marks and physically looking at the piston to make sure its at TDC and then put the little tab on the sensor in the middle of the gap and installed it in that position. Before I get too much further, is that going to be ok? It someone could help me make sure its in the correct position that would be great. Ideally I could find a picture of a truck at TDC and see where its sensor is positioned so I could match that.

This is my first time ever attempting a head gasket job so I've been doing this totally blind haha. I took some pictures of everything but I don't know how to upload them. So far I'm into this truck for about $1000, which isn't too bad considering I got it for free. I'll probably get about $200 of that back because somehow I ended up with duplicate parts on some of my orders. The hardest part of this thing so far was the exhaust manifold bolts.

Frankly with the abused nature of this engine and the fact that 3.0s are a dime a dozen I'd just throw a junk yard engine in there.

adsm08 said:

Frankly with the abused nature of this engine and the fact that 3.0s are a dime a dozen I'd just throw a junk yard engine in there.

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I'm well past that point lol.

And that's the one thing I don't have the proper tools or space to do. Besides, I thought about that and what if I get another motor with its unknown problems as well?

adsm08 said:

Frankly with the abused nature of this engine and the fact that 3.0s are a dime a dozen I'd just throw a junk yard engine in there.

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I second that ^

As long as my rods and crank bearings are good, I'm staying with this one lol.

Although, I'd be mighty pissed if those end up being bad at this point lol.

The oil looked good and full so hopefully they are ok.

Did you ever check the exhaust & cat/s? We just had another non-believer find a bad one.

Well you didn't waste any time tearing into it. but that's what we tend to do; always go for the most expensive most difficult instead of going through all the simple things first.

Good luck!

Denisefwd93 said:

Did you ever check the exhaust & cat/s? We just had another non-believer find a bad one.

Well you didn't waste any time tearing into it. but that's what we tend to do; always go for the most expensive most difficult instead of going through all the simple things first.

Good luck!

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I felt the tailpipe as it was idling and the pressure seemed normal. Wouldn't a bad CAT throw some emissions codes? I'll go that route next if I still have problems. I just felt that given the evidence I saw, warped heads or bad gaskets were a fine place to start. And with it being in the head recall years it was probably a time bomb anyway.

Not always, they make the engine hot the whole exhaust system hot but the engine doesn't actually overheat,. they limit the RPMs after the engine is warmed up and you're on your way to wherever you're going. They rattle, sometimes the element breaks and completely blocks the pipe.

I had a brand new one go bad because it was on my collector car twas only driven less than 500 miles a year.

It's easy enough to check, adsm has some good advice in that area.

Denisefwd93 said:

Not always, they make the engine hot the whole exhaust system hot but the engine doesn't actually overheat,. they limit the RPMs after the engine is warmed up and you're on your way to wherever you're going. They rattle, sometimes the element breaks and completely blocks the pipe.

I had a brand new one go bad because it was on my collector car twas only driven less than 500 miles a year.

It's easy enough to check, adsm has some good advice in that area.

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This one doesn't rattle. The truck is shakes pretty good upon startup and doesn't change at all regardless of temp. The last time it was running it would not go past 600rpms or so and any throttle at all would instantly kill it.

Is the CAT something I can do in the driveway or will it need to be towed to a shop if it indeed does need replaced. I don't have a welder or any exhaust experience in general.