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Well-Known Member
First, my beloved '97:
Got it just before I turned 17, with a little over 200k miles on the clock. 2.3, 5-speed, 4x2 with factory 4.10 gears. It's slow and lousy in the snow, but I've put more than 60k miles on it in that time, with fewer problems than a lot of vehicles with half the miles would have had.
Supercab XLT, but pretty bare-bones- crank windows, no A/C. Fine by me- it's actually just about perfectly equipped as far as that stuff goes, IMO.
Taken halfway up Cadillac Mountain, in Acadia National Park, in Maine:
Time is not kind to trucks in New England, though...and 2wd is hardly ideal when you live at the top of a steep (10+% for about half a mile) hill in on a dirt road Vermont. With a little bit of a stretch, I was able to get into a brand-new 2009 Ranger in late December. Technically a leftover, but we were able to find one that's pretty close to what I wanted, for a price I could afford.
More or less fully loaded- 4.0, 5-speed 4x4, extended cab XLT with buckets, rear slider, satellite radio, etc. Only the two-door cab, but that's fine by me. Got step bars that'll have to come off as soon as it's warm enough to turn a wrench, and the 3.73 gears probably mean the one clutch I'll end up putting in this truck before it rots out will come a little earlier than it would have if I'd found one with 4.10s like I wanted, but no big deal.
Bone-stock for now; tonneau and bedliner in the very near future. Other mods to come slowly, but not many. It'll do everything I need to as it sits, and I value reliability above all else, so most things will stay as Ford designed them.
The '09 is nice, and certainly the options it's got are more in line with what I want, but if I could have a brand-new '97, with the same equipment as my '09 I'd take it in a heartbeat. For ever detail that changed for the better, I can find five that changed for the worse. Ah, well...it's still a terrific truck.
Got it just before I turned 17, with a little over 200k miles on the clock. 2.3, 5-speed, 4x2 with factory 4.10 gears. It's slow and lousy in the snow, but I've put more than 60k miles on it in that time, with fewer problems than a lot of vehicles with half the miles would have had.
Supercab XLT, but pretty bare-bones- crank windows, no A/C. Fine by me- it's actually just about perfectly equipped as far as that stuff goes, IMO.
Taken halfway up Cadillac Mountain, in Acadia National Park, in Maine:
Time is not kind to trucks in New England, though...and 2wd is hardly ideal when you live at the top of a steep (10+% for about half a mile) hill in on a dirt road Vermont. With a little bit of a stretch, I was able to get into a brand-new 2009 Ranger in late December. Technically a leftover, but we were able to find one that's pretty close to what I wanted, for a price I could afford.
More or less fully loaded- 4.0, 5-speed 4x4, extended cab XLT with buckets, rear slider, satellite radio, etc. Only the two-door cab, but that's fine by me. Got step bars that'll have to come off as soon as it's warm enough to turn a wrench, and the 3.73 gears probably mean the one clutch I'll end up putting in this truck before it rots out will come a little earlier than it would have if I'd found one with 4.10s like I wanted, but no big deal.
Bone-stock for now; tonneau and bedliner in the very near future. Other mods to come slowly, but not many. It'll do everything I need to as it sits, and I value reliability above all else, so most things will stay as Ford designed them.
The '09 is nice, and certainly the options it's got are more in line with what I want, but if I could have a brand-new '97, with the same equipment as my '09 I'd take it in a heartbeat. For ever detail that changed for the better, I can find five that changed for the worse. Ah, well...it's still a terrific truck.
