Anyone else drive a Ranger for work?

[GentleRF]

I hear you on fixing the ac. The speedo gear comes first so I can quit playing guess-a-mile.

Rick in East Bremerton

 

[wildbill23c]

I used to work for an overhead garage door installation company. At that time they had 2 Ford Rangers for work trucks. 1 was a 98 4 cylinder 5 speed, the other was a 99 3.0L auto. The 3rd truck was a 99 Dodge Dakota, completely stripped down and debadged, mainly because as I found out later it actually had a 360 with the 5 speed which made for a great little sleeper truck. Anyhow the 98 4 cylinder truck was parked out back when I first started working there, the boss told me if I could get it to run I could drive it as a work truck and drive it back and forth to work. Pulled it out put air in the tires, put in a battery and some gas and it ran great, however the heavy loads that it was always required to haul around finally took its tole on the transmission and at 279,000 something miles on it, and the complete lack of maintenance I was surprised it lasted as long as it did. Now the 99 3.0L was the last truck I drove when I was there, it was kind of used here and there for a parts truck to run to the store, etc. It was a little better than the 4 cylinder, but still when you loaded it down like they seemed to think they should do with a little truck, it still managed to get me around to all of the install jobs. No one wanted to drive them, but for some reason the ford rangers have always been a fun truck to drive, so I kept driving them the whole time I worked there. The 99 3.0L had 319,000 something miles on it when I quit working for them. The last I knew they sold those 2 trucks pretty cheap, and bought 2 new Nissan Frontier 4 cylinder auto, extended cabs. I got to drive one on an install before I quit, and that truck had less power and hauling capacity than the little 4 cylinder ranger did. They thought those frontiers were so cool because they had power windows, locks, a/c etc. I hated them, they didn't have enough power to get out of their own way when empty let alone when loaded down with garage doors.

Everyone wanted to drive the Dodge Dakota, yeah it was cool with the V8, but it had a really horrible ride quality to it.

Ford didn't help themselves by stopping the production on the best selling compact truck that's for sure.