Ford Ranger Problems

This could be caused by something inside the engine bay rattling or vibrating, but could also be linked to the exhaust system or its heat-shielding doing the same thing. When you hit the accelerator up a hill, the engine and driveline (and exhaust) are suddenly put under a lot of stress which can be passed along any mechanical link or fixture, making things flex or vibrate that don’t normally do so when they aren’t subjected to the same stresses and loads.

When the engine is cold, have a feel around the engine bay to find anything loose or poorly mounted that could contribute to such vibrations. It could be as simple as a poorly located clamp of a loose piece of trunking or internal panelling vibrating against another part. Often these noises will be conveyed into the cabin via the fresh air vents, making them sound even louder.

Just be sure not to confuse a rattle with the normal cacophony of noises a modern turbo-diesel produces as part of operating under load.

There’s a fair bit going on in a Ranger’s all-wheel-drive driveline, so you can expect a bit more noise than that generated by a conventional car. It’s not uncommon, either, for one example of a car to be a bit noisier than another of the same make and model and this is all down to what’s called production tolerances where there might be slight differences in two otherwise identical components.

In the case of driveline noises, it’s often said that a noise is more of a concern when it’s heard all the time, not just at a particular speed or frequency. If the noise goes away below 80km/h and is gone by 90km/h, then it could easily be one of these transient noises that doesn’t signify much to worry about. Concern should set it, however, if these noises, their volume and/or their duration start to change or become more frequent. At that point, you can be pretty sure things are changing inside the driveline and that’s usually an early sign of components starting to wear. Keep and ear on things and if the noises change, have them checked out. If you’re still concerned, have a mechanic who knows these vehicles well take a ride in it at the problem speed and have them compare it with other Rangers.

Any time you have that combination of symptoms, the end result is possibly not going to be very good. Rangers of this year and model have experienced problems in the past that include poor fuel or other fuel-system damage causing a piston to develop a hole or crack, and even things like a failed EGR valve (which is water-cooled in this model) draining the radiator and causing the engine to melt down.

You need to have an experienced mechanic take a look at the vehicle before doing anything else, as there’s a high percentage chance that your engine will need to be rebuilt or replaced. You might be lucky and have a simple problem that is cheap and easy to fix, but plenty of Ranger owners will attest to the slimness of that chance.

There was a recall for a batch of manual-transmission Rangers built between 2015 and 2016 which had a poorly installed clip on the gearshift cable on the production line. Your car is from an earlier batch, but it’s not inconceivable that the problem is the same one.

The cable clip in question could allow the cable that operates the gear changes to make contact with the car’s driveshaft. At that point, gear-changing could become difficult or even impossible, which sounds pretty much like your symptoms. Check with a Ford dealer to see if your vehicle was covered by this recall.

It’s very unlikely a workshop would replace a component it fitted two years and 25,000km ago for free. Spare parts and repairs come with warranties, but generally not over that period of time or mileage. In any case, it sounds more like the clutch or flywheel has failed, rather than the master or slave clutch cylinders.

This model Ranger had a dual-mass flywheel designed to make for smoother operation, but the design cold also lead to premature clutch wear. When that happened, difficulty in selecting gears was one of the symptoms. Some owners when faced with this problem, converted their vehicles to a conventional single-mass flywheel to get around the problem in the future.

Some Ford Ranger owners have reported that the hoses that carry coolant to the engine’s EGR valve have failed, allowing coolant to escape. This is one of the more common ways for this engine to lose coolant.

The problem with no warning showing up on the dashboard has more to do with physics. The warning light is triggered by the temperature of the coolant it’s submerged in. If the engine loses enough coolant, the sensor is suddenly not contacting the hot water and it ceases to give a reading or, therefore, trigger a warning. This is not a Ford Ranger thing, but a common problem faced by car owners over many decades.

The symptoms here point to a stuck flasher relay. This is the electrical component that not only powers the indicator lights, but makes them flash (and produces the steady clicking sound you hear when the indicators are on). The contacts in these units can become stuck at which point the lights can become stuck on.

Why does it still happen when the ignition is off? Because the flasher relay is powered up even when the ignition is not. That’s so you can have the emergency hazard-warning lights flashing even though the vehicle is locked and the keys in your pocket. A new flasher relay unit should fix it.