New to the site, just bought my second ranger (first was a 94 that I haven’t had for a long time). This one is a 2000 XLT Supercab with the 3.0L Flexfuel engine. I bought it used last week with 198k miles on it for $1750. The person that I bought it from told me there was an issue while driving it and I am trying to figure out if its something I can/should fix or not to worry about it. I purchased the vehicle simply to haul brush/leaves or the occasional trip to home depot, so I do not plan to drive it more than once every week or two maybe once a month I dunno.
The issue I am trying to solve is this:
While driving with the pedal in just enough to maintain cruising speed (or with cruise control on) it will start shimmying real bad, the whole truck. It quits when you let off the gas and when you give it gas again its fine for a while, but eventually will do it again. Time between instances can be as short as immediately when you give it gas again or it won’t do it again for the rest of the current trip. I also feel like it has very little power, for example, I was driving home for Christmas the other day and on the highway with the cruise control set at 70.375 mph it would drop to passing gear for EVERY hill, regardless of how steep the hill was. When I first got it on the highway last week I felt like it wouldn’t reach 65 without using passing gear and certainly does not feel like it is capable of accelerating up a hill without dropping gears…this may be expected for a 150 hp truck, but I certainly hope not.
Things I’ve replaced in an attempt to fix this that did not work:
PCV valve
spark plugs
plug wires
fuel filter
Engine Oil (it was time anyway)
EGR valve (I created an exhaust leak in this process and am currently awaiting a new tube/hoses)
Things that don’t appear to need replaced, but I need to verify (they had every receipt from maintenance in the glove box!)
Air filter (spotless, looks like it was recently replaced)
MAF (looks clean, maybe replaced recently)
I’m at a loss as to what else I can try or what is causing this issue. I will say that I think I kinked the egr tube when removing the valve, its making a sound that sounds like an exhaust leak and started throwing a P1401 code. I have a slight hope that replacing the tube/hoses might still fix the issue if that is what it was since I broke that when replacing the valve, but I don’t think that’s the issue. Any ideas?