jbollasina
New Member
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2020
- Messages
- 11
- Reaction score
- 2
- Points
- 3
- Location
- St. Louis MO
- Vehicle Year
- 2002
- Make / Model
- Ford Ranger
- Transmission
- Automatic
Was recently driving my truck at highway speeds when noticed surging so I pulled off to make sure everything was ok, after sitting for a few minutes I started it and it smoked like a blown head gasket. After idling for a long time smoke went away and I tried to drive gently back to where I came from and when I started going up a gentle incline the smoke came back. Parked it in a gas station parking lot and came back the next day with a trailer to tow it the 25 miles home. It smoked heavily while loading onto the trailer but no smoke when I pulled it off at my destination. I have finally gotten around to do some diagnosing starting with radiator check. There was no observed bubbling or disruption in the coolant at the top of the radiator cap. Proceeded to pull all plugs and do a compression test on each cylinder, averaged around 180 psi for all cylinders, lowest being 178 and highest being 185. This coming weekend I am going to pull my intake manifold and check my thermostat housing and intake gaskets. I am posting to ask if anyone has had similar symptoms on this motor, also wondering if 180psi seems normal, it seems high for a motor with 177k miles on it. Any help at all would be appreciated it. My radiator has been completely full every time I have checked since this happened and my reservoir has not gone down a noticeable amount. Oil color and consistency on the dipstick is normal. Other notes are that I changed my driver side pcv not long ago and did cam chain tensioners about 1500 miles ago when I first got the truck. It leaks oil but I always keep an eye on all my oil levels. It sounds smooth at idle with no abnormal rattling, knocks or ticks. The truck has had a light miss at low idle since I bought it, I thought pcv would fix that but it did not. New spark plugs and wires at same time as the tensioners too.