[Not mine. This is the fancy XLT with two-tone paint]
Sometimes we buy cars with our heads, and sometimes we buy cars with our hearts. Every time I have let my heart do the deciding it turns out poorly. One day, I just decided I wanted a truck. I didn’t have any particular reason for wanting one – I had nothing to haul and nothing to tow. I just wanted a truck. I went down to the skid row of car dealers in town and traded in the Chevrolet Sprint for a 1984 Ford Ranger XL Longbed. It didn’t turn out well.
The minimalist in me always liked pickups, especially small ones. There’s a box up front for the engine, a place to sit, and a place for stuff. That’s all, nothing else.
My truck was a bit oddly equipped. Because it was a longbed, I was spared from the weak 2.0 found in base-model shortbed Rangers. Instead, I got the 2.3, basically the Pinto engine. My truck had power steering, but unassisted brakes. Cloth bench seat, but rubber floors.
It also had the notoriously bad paint that lots of cars had in the early 80s had. It came off my truck in sheets. I paid a buddy probably more money than I ought to have, to paint it in his garage. It came back to me full of overspray and runs.
Then the head gasket blew. I had never replaced a head gasket before, but I sure had read a lot of books. Let’s just say I learned a lot about how not to replace a head gasket. For one thing, if the book says to re-torque the head bolts after so many miles, well, not doing that is a bad idea.
Looking back, the Ranger was a good learning experience, but I bought it bad because I bought it with my heart. That’s the lesson I really should have learned, but it took a few more dumb choices before that tidbit of information took hold in my brain. I sold the Ranger a few years later for about what I had into it, so it wasn’t all bad, I guess.
While I had it down for the head gasket job, I bought a beater to get me around. Stay tuned for that story next week…
Ha Ha……
The Stranger Ranger………
Had a similarly basic ’93 Ranger. 2.3 engine, stick shift, vinyl bench seat with rubber floor covering. Steering and brakes were the opposite, though – had power brakes and unassisted steering (which was loads of fun parallel parking, which I did frequently as an urban dweller). Bought it new, drove it 7 years and 75000 miles with zero issues, including a few cross-country trips. It was so underpowered that driving up a mountain once loaded with camping gear it literally would not go faster than 25 mph, but it made it.
Unassisted brakes & steering cost less than a gym membership. I got a good workout with my ’81 Escort this way. Now even the cheapest, smallest cars come with std. parasitic accessories like these.
We are a strange people, demanding & paying for boosted/computerized everything, expecting plates full of food in restaurants, then finding out we need more physical exercise.
Spot on, Neil!
Then there was the engineer in my department that got rid of his little hatchback for an F150, then complained about fuel economy. derp derp derp
In the 70’s and 80’s I worked in a door factory lifting doors 8 hrs a day. People used to ask me if I worked out, I would reply my employer pays me good money($30hr in today’s money)to end up looking like this. They always would get a puzzled look on their face.Today I eat probably 1\5 of what I used to eat and I weigh 45 lbs more. And I never drove a car or truck with power anything until the late 80’s.
Underpowered is an understatement! I drove two Rangers when I delivered automotive paint to body shops back in college, both 2.3 5-speeds. One day, I was driving down the freeway into maybe a 20 mile per hour headwind, and the older of the two (a ’91 maybe?) wouldn’t go faster than 55, and if I dropped down into fourth, it would go 65. Those things were slugs.
The company I worked for was religious about changing oil, but I remember than the antifreeze was filthy, and they wouldn’t even think about paying for a flush.
Evan, nice title, but now I unfortunately have “The Stranger” stuck in my head. Ugh! Earworm!
Ranger Danger? 😉
Once rented a ’83 or ’84 Ranger from a local Ford dealer to pick up some appliances for a house I was renting. The truck was fairly new and I enjoyed the 250 mile round trip to my home town and back.
Fast forward to the early 2000s and my father in law had to turn his ’87 Dodge Dakota loose because he could no longer manage driving a 5-speed. The replacement was a ’94 Ranger with a 4.0 liter V6, automatic and a 6 foot bed. Other than being a little thirsty, it was a pretty good truck and an excellent spare vehicle for our family. My only complaint was that it’s shorter, narrower bed was less versatile than the Dakota with it’s 8 footer.
Power steering, 2.3 liter. Luxury!
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/coal-1988-ford-ranger-the-wee-truck/
Between my father, brother, and myself we had a total of 6 different Rangers. Except for the last one, a refrigerator white, Sport, regular cab 4×4, that my Dad bought to replace a V8 Dakota, extracab 4×4…..all were XLTs.
Mine was a 94 regular cab with a 2.3, manual transmission and A/C. It ran fairly well, inspite of the lackluster dealer servicing until about 85,000. At that point, my years of “speed shifting” caught up with the truck and the clutch “packed it in”.
Actually, IMHO, these Rangers are THE small pickup if you want tough, dependable, and reasonably priced.
Had a friend who rolled his rwd shortbox ranger in icy highway in upstate NY. when I decided to pull the trigger in a little truck, I knew it had to be 4wd for me to consider it a four season ride. we drove a new 1989 ext cab Mazda B2600i off the lot. engine was a 1-off design of their G6. not the previously Mazda-borrowed mitsu. 89 had a cam spun(?)distributor, in 90 and beyond, these engines did not. so there was some worry about availability if we had trouble. for me it turned out way fine. drive the truck for 17 years- till the frame rotted away at the rear ladder over the axle. in that time. no engine issues other than some magical piece called the ignitor. It lived in the distributor $200 for a little potted semiconductor piece. no ignitor. no start. and as a 1 year part, no used availability. other than that, it needed a spark plug wire when i developed a burn through that caused a maddening intermittent rough run condition- till i figured that out. the rest of the thing was idiot simple. and dead reliable. if some mfg made this size truck in 4wd. I would buy again in a heartbeat.
My brother bought a new Ranger pickup in the early eighties and drove it for 13-14 years. His was the 2.3 liter/four speed combination with manual steering and brakes, the only option I remember was an AM radio. I borrowed the wee beast several times when I needed to move something that wouldn’t fit in my car. The Ranger pretty much defined basic transportation; in my mind it was like driving a Model A that had been (minimally) updated for the eighties. To give the truck its due it was reliable and willing, if not exciting to drive. The one time I drove it more than just a few miles around town I thought that I was going to need to be extracted from the cab, the seat in the Ranger was very uncomfortable for any kind of long distance travel.
The paint issues were because Ford had moved to water based paint, but the industry did not have the formulation completely figured out yet. My F150 had the same problem. I had friends who worked at a Ford dealer who told me that there was a secret recall on the paint, and original owners with their trucks could ask for a repaint. This was before the Internet, so the problems were not disseminated widely and the recalls were secret. I got a whole new paint job on the truck, one of those serious ones where they remove the bed and carefully paint all the door jambs and things. I was told the prep work was fairly involved because the old paint had to be completely removed before the new paint was put on. It was free. When I traded the truck in at the same dealer for a new one some time later, there was a fight over which employee got to buy it and take it home. They knew that for an early ’80s Ford truck, it had been made into a good one. As Ford reimbursed the dealer for the work, the dealer was happy to take on the work for a steady customer.
The early (1983-85) Rangers can be had with the 2.8L “Cologne” V6 with a carb. The same one used in Mustang II’s back in the 1970s. The V6 went to 2.9L and fuel injection in 1986, boosting horsepower to 140.
Ah the Ford Ranger. A very tough versatile little truck. I had a nice “work Truck” white 2010 for about a month and a half. I bought it from carmax for $14,000 back in 2013 with 28,045 miles on it. a month and a half, it was at Carmax for a repair. I dropped it off on a Friday and on Monday morning I got a call from Carmax asking me to come back down to the store. It turns out the truck was left on a newly installed lift over the weekend fully raised and the lift was not installed correctly and it fell over causing the truck to fall off the lift. The car was totaled and Carmax offered me $16,000 for it so there would be no issues.
I was happy to pocket extra bucks but it took 2 years to find another small truck. In the end I bought a 2011 Chevy Colorado in “work truck” white.
The truck was meant to be a dump/Home Depot/hauling crap in the bed truck but it is now my daily driver and it is actually more comfy then my Deville
The Colorado regular cab cured the 3 biggest issues I had with my Ranger, the narrow footwell, no reall leg room and the fact that with the seat all the way back, if I turned my head to the right or left my cheek was up against the rear window. my Colorado cured all of that because the cab is more roomy. The dealer I bought my Colorado at had a Ranger for sale also but I took the Colorado
Here is a pic of my colo next to the Ranger