Saved my Ranger from the Junk Yard

[I am Brian]

Greetings. As my username says, I am Brian. I'm a project manager/developer for a serious gaming company. When I was younger, I went to a trade school to become a mechanic. I didn't like working on cars for strangers and switched to business, eventually getting an MBA. I bought my first Ranger in 1990, a plain 1986 standard cab with a short bed and blue vinyl bench seat. This truck had zero options. It was a 2.0L 4-speed manual with manual steering and manual brakes. It could barely break 70 on a steep incline and died in the mountains in NM. I replaced it with a new 1993 XLT 2.3L 5-speed manual standard cab long bed. It was much nicer and I really enjoyed it. I got away from trucks for a long time because I didn't need one. Now that I'm a homeowner, I definitely have the need again so I've been casually watching Craigslist, FB marketplace, and the rest.

I found my 1995 Ranger XLT 2.3L manual standard cab short bed with 173k miles in February. It was posted for sale or it was going to the junkyard. I went to check it out and it was misfiring like crazy, completely baked from the Florida sun, and had a lot of "deferred maintenance." On the plus side, it was one owner and it was dirt cheap. Nostalgia made me do it even though I knew it was probably a bad idea (I have trouble with impulse control). It scanned with P0301, confirming what I already knew. It had zero compression on cylinder one that didn't go up with the leak-down test. The rest were around 190. I peeled off the valve cover to start investigating and found the rocker arm had fallen off the cylinder 1 exhaust valve. There was no debris, no damage to the arm, and it wasn't touching the cam. On a whim, I popped the rocker arm back on and it runs like a champ for several hundred miles now. Problem fixed for the price of the valve cover gasket. I don't know how long it'll last but I'm prepared to do the work if it fails.

Since then I've been fixing minor issues, taking some age out of the appearance, and planning. It's going to be a third vehicle for us so nothing fancy. I'm going to keep the survivor look but fix some things like the scorched and surface rusted roof. The tires are 13 years old and, since it's been hard to find 14" tires at a decent price, I picked up some 15x7s from a junkyard. I'm in the process of stripping, repairing, and clear coating them before mounting new tires that I have yet to buy. I've ripped out the god-awful home brew security system that was in it (the original owner is an engineer), swapped the cluster to add a tach, replaced every coolant and vacuum hose, and flushed the mud from the cooling system. I'm going to take on the A/C this weekend.

I've found some great information here and look forward to participating and getting to know you.

 

[dvdswan]

Welcome to the site. You forgot to finish your user name. It should be, "Hi, I'm Brian... and I have an addiction to Ford Rangers." Great story.

 

[Curious Hound]

 

[RobbieD]

Welcome. Great story, and great first post. I think you'll like it here.

 

[wildbill23c]

Welcome to the forum. Not a bad looking Ranger. My Bronco 2 has some pretty thin paint on the roof, not as bad as the cab of your Ranger but its quite noticeable. I took some red spray paint and covered up the worst parts of it to keep the rust at bay, I'd love to repaint it, but never seem to have the time and the gumption to prep it to repaint it. My 87 Ranger needs repainted as well, not nearly as bad a couple of spots I've noticed the clearcoat coming off so I'd like to get it repainted before the paint starts getting damaged and start having rust issues.

Well hopefully that bit of a rocker arm issue is all the trouble you'll have. I love the original 80's and 90's Rangers. I've never been in one newer than a 99. I'm sure the 2000-2011 models were pretty good considering all the updates they had by then. When I worked for a garage door shop my 1st service truck was a 98 Ford Ranger with the 2.3L 4 cylinder 5 speed. Wasn't a speed daemon by any means, but it got the job done. 389k on that poor truck and the syncros in the transmission were done LOL. My next one was a 99 Ranger supercab with the 3L V6, wasn't too bad either, slightly more power, but not much if I recall it had around 400k on it was well. The shop went out of business shortly after I quit due to getting a full time job with the Army. Our shop truck though was a really fun truck. It was a 99 Dodge Dakota 2WD, it was debadged and looked like a bare basic truck except it had power windows and locks and upgraded stereo, but being a shop truck I just figured it was the 3.9L V6 mainly due to it having the 5 speed manual transmission....boy was I wrong. I found out after doing a burn out in the middle of the shop one morning and the owner coming down shaking his head and laughing, that it had the 5.9L 360 V8 in it....man was that truck fun....sucked in the snow but fun to drive....Still love my Rangers though....seem to always have one and my first vehicle was an 84 Ford Ranger, so I kind of grew up with them LOL.

 

[Saddle Tramp]

Howdy. Welcome to the site.

 

[Uncle Gump]

About the only way that rocker pops off is if the valve stuck or it was over revved. It sure could have turned out way worse.

For the rusted roof... opposed to a paint job... maybe get creative like our other member @Rick W did.

Welcome to TRS...

 

[Rick W]

For the rusted roof... opposed to a paint job... maybe

HEY HEY HEY!!! Whadda ya mean “as opposed to a paint job.” I’ve got $2-3 in Rustoleum on that roof, had to wait on a $12 stencil and went through a dollar store brush and 50-80 cents of masking tape doing it!!

Welcome to the site...

Paint the roof right and watch your Ps and Qs, and you might get one of these.