Electrical Gremlin(s)?

[Hoosierman]

I thought I had the issues chased down, alas, I was wrong. I am not the original owner of this '88 2.9, so there is a little bit of hackery going on inside.

About a year ago, I had issues with the low beams coming on. I traced it back to the large rectangular gray plug at the driver side fender well, there was a shoddy wire with exposed wiring that when the wire was shifted or bumped, it would cause the low beams and I believe the wipers to stop working. So I spliced new wire in and that seemed to work until a month ago. I also converted the lights to H4 and added a harness since I was in there already.

But wait! There's more!

Recently, the squeaker broke. The PO out a cheap HF ooga horn in and it petered out completely. So I got some red Hellas and wired them in. They rare work though, and one time they worked only once, after rather, they stopped responding to the horn button.

But wait! There's more!

One time when I was driving home at night, the engine stalled completely and fired right back up. It has never done that again since. Yesterday while the air was on inside the cabin, the blower just suddenly stopped working, and when I messed with the switch, it turned back on and never shut off again the rest of the way to work. And now today, while I was at O Reilly's picking up valve cover gaskets for my '84 Bronco II, the Ranger cranked less than a second and stopped, refusing to start. It refused to start after I tapped the starter, the battery was tested there and everything was a-okay with 12.96 volts. Then I hopped in and it decided to start up again.

But wait! There's more!

Actually no, that's it.

Could these all be traced back to electrical gremlins? Truth be told, I probably should address the 38 year-old electrical system anyway.

I have a bunch of repair manuals that I bought specifically for the '84 Bronco, which I know mostly crosses over into my '88 Ranger. I intend to go through them when I get home later. One thing I'm aware of is that the original grounds and I believe the original battery cables are still being used under the hood and I've been meaning to replace all of the grounds and the major power cables like the starter and relay cables.

I redid all of the grounds and the battery cables on my BII and it was sorely needed. Is there anything else electrical wise you would suggest that I address? I'll check the fuses too, I know have plenty of replacements for them. Thanks!

 

[franklin2]

I have a bunch of repair manuals that I bought specifically for the '84 Bronco, which I know mostly crosses over into my '88 Ranger. I intend to go through them when I get home later.

I think once you get into it you will find it's not true. I have a 84 BII on the road now, that I put a 1986 ranger 2.9 in. There are a lot of wiring differences. I wanted to swap clusters, the 86 ranger had a tach. Not even close. The 86 cluster takes two wiring plugs, the 84 one that plugs in the cluster. And there was no tach wire in the 84, apparently that was not a option in 84. I said forget it.

An important ground that you can check on all these little trucks is the ground from the back of the engine to the firewall.

Your main large ground goes from the battery to the engine block. But the engine, transmission, and even the leaf springs are mounted in rubber. The cab is also mounted in rubber. So the ground from the block to the cab is important, and they usually put it behind a bellhousing bolt. When a trans or engine swap is done, it is sometimes forgotten.

Your 88 also has another important computer ground, it's a smaller wire in the battery area that goes directly to the large battery negative. It has a connector in it and all this likes to corrode since it's in the vicinity of the battery.

 

[Hoosierman]

So, just do what I did to the Bronco II and my two Jeeps, and just make sure that everything is basically grounded, whether it's like factory or not...