I was curious if anyone could school me on the reliability and off road capability of the ranger. I'm gonna be looking for a daily driver occasional off roader vehicle. $3500 budget and I'd like to stay away from thirsty 4wd. I had a 99 asploader and it needed a trans at 115k... Can't deal w that again
I had an 03 with the 3.0 and an auto. I wouldn't suggest the 3.0, pretty gutless and not overly reliable. Mine was 2wd and set up for mild desert stuff. Was an ok truck all in all but personally wouldn't get another unless it was a 2wd, 4cyl, manual everything, stripper model. My dad had an early 90's one that got close to 30 mpg and he put 200 something thousand on it with hardly any problems. Little commuter that could still haul dirtbikes or plywood, etc.
A couple things about your question have me scratching my head.
You are asking what economic DD you should get, but you are asking PBB, on the gen 4x4?:shaking:
You want an occasional off roader, but you want it to be 2WD, and you are asking this to PBB, in the gen 4x4? :shaking:
Never did I say economic, never did I say 2wd. I said I didn't want a thirsty 4wd, as in I don't want a gas guzzling 4wd which would make sense considering were talking about rangers. And I was wondering if the 5 speed 4wd 6 cyl ranger was any good if the explorer transmission set up ranger wasn't. Oh and what Isuzu?
A couple other problems with your post are that you didn't specify what years you're looking at. There are several generations of Ranger.
You also mention having an explorer and it being a POS. Well I hate to break it to you but the explorer is based on the ranger so it's not gonna be much different.
Pretty much any vehicle would need an axle swap for stomping around places like Johnson Valley... But the engine/trans/t-case too??? (at least provided you can find the intermittent vendor selling/making a dual-t-case kit, or building one for it yourself).
Being it's still gonna be his DD, I suspect wheeling places like JV are not really in the OP's plans at the moment.
Throw a good suspension kit, a pair of lockers and some 35s under it (might want to swap out the stock junk steering linkage while you're at it too) and there's plenty of fun to be had up on Rubicon or the like. I do agree though the Twin-Beam suspensions are also a blast of fun at higher speeds too.
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