Rough Ranger

[e30gator]

Sajeev or anyone,

Two years ago we bought a house and I needed a truck to move with and figured, why not just buy one and keep it? I did. A 1993 Ford Ranger XLT with a 4-pot and 5 speed. It was the best $850 that I ever spent and I loved having a truck for my frequent Home Depot runs. Even the A/C worked. Fast forward 2 years and 20k miles later, and it was looking and starting to run pretty rough.

For starters, it began running like crap (no power) until it warmed up for at least 20 minutes. Strangely, after it was warm it would "hiccup" and start running fine. Keep in mind that I live in Florida and this is September. I could never figure out what the problem was and even had my trusted independent mechanic check it out to no avail. After two used EGR valves, an idle air control sensor, and a tune-up, it has remained an unsolved mystery. Then the A/C crapped out, it developed an electrical gremlin causing neither turn signal to work, and a tree branch fell and cracked the windshield. It also leaks a copious amount of oil that necessitates me parking it in a place that doesn't ruin my driveway.

Today I was running errands and it just died with no warning. I figured it was either the battery or the starter. I swapped in the brand new battery from my other car and it still barely cranked. The starter is only a few months old and seems good. It's almost as if the engine is frozen, but it had plenty of coolant and oil before it died.

Now what?

I used my only "free" tow from my insurance company to get it to my house and I have two other vehicles, not including my wife's Nissan Quest; an '09 Saturn Aura XR that's still in really good shape, and a project Volvo 240 that also runs great. In other words, I don't really need a third vehicle and am reluctant to put too much money into the Ranger since I was planning on selling soon anyway. Still, I love having a truck on hand and used it often.

I was going to put the money from selling the Ranger towards another truck, but now I figure It's only worth maybe $300 to anyone willing to come and tow it away. I'm not broke, but it's just the principle.

So what should I do? Keep trying to fix it myself until I (maybe) stumble across the actual cause of the problem, pay to have it towed to a shop and cross my fingers that it can be fixed cheaply, or just throw in the towel and get whatever I could as it sits?

Any suggestions?
-Chris

[Sajeev Mehta]

Put a code scanner (or do the paper clip trick: http://dfwmustangs.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7908 ) on it and see if it gets any codes.

Odds are the turn signal problem is the signal stalk itself. Cheap and easy to repair that.

The charging issue can also be the alternator. And you still might have corroded cables, another cheap fix.

I am concerned that you are throwing money at the problems instead of doing more diagnosis. Old vehicles always need a lot of visual inspection for problems you rarely associate with late model iron.

[Sajeev Mehta]

Oh, I wasn't clear about this so let me add this: check both battery cables from end to end. If you see splits, bubbles, chunks of rubber gone, etc you need to buy a new set of cables and install them.