Looking to buy a Ranger

Mines a '92 w/190K miles on it and I get about 18. Its extended cab V6, auto and basically I've only had to do the usual maintenance.

I find that very interesting. I do not think my family has ever had a car or truck go that far without some kind of major failure. Since I am on a rather limited budget, the trucks I am looking at will have at least 60-100k miles on them. Its nice to see that they can actually last beyond that.

My 2002 gets 21-22 steady with about 80% of it being stop and go driving on the freeway and the rest around town. I've got an Edge extended cab with A/C, a 5spd and the 4:10 rear end.

I have two. a '99 and an '03. Both V6 5spd manual. The '99 has low gearing and 100K miles on it. It driver just as nice as the new one, and the low gearing is a plus unless you drive long level highway miles. Both get 19 to 23 MPG. Get nice seats if you can, seats are the main confort item in any car.

Got a 93 4.0, 5 speed, 4x4. 20 mpg around town, 100k, no major repairs, still the original battery!

Rangers are pretty solid that way, although I have been advised to avoid 3 litre V6's. Mine is a 91 extended cab with a 2.9 V6 with just under

300k and it's still going strong. I make it a rule to avoid automatic transmissions no matter what make it is; and as far as the rest of the truck is concerned, replacement parts (engines, trannies, diffs) are cheap and easy to get since there are thousands of them out there.

Just as a general statement. Fords get much better gas milage than dodge. My '03 F250 V8 gets about twice the MPG comparied to my '01 dodge V-8. The 250 has the 5.4L gets much better gas milage than my dodge with the 5.2L. And then my girlfriends '90 F150, 5.0L? V-8 with the 4.10 diff (It had the biggest V-8 you could get in a F-150 at that time), gets better gas milage than my '01 Dodge. Go figure that one out.

now lets see how long it takes for the "You don't buy a truck for good fuel economy" post.

I have to agree with you, I get 10-11 in my 99 Dodge Dakota. I have friends with Chevy 1500s that get 15+. Dodge really eats the gas. With prices the way they are, (at least here in CA).

And I am tired of having a loan payment.. I just want to get rid of the "nice" truck, and get something that I can pay cash for. something that doesn't break, and can get some good distance out of the tank.

11 MPG is way too low for today's trucks... (when empty, and not pulling anything)

What is the deal with removing the tailgate for better gas mileage? I have taken mine off and feel that it does make a difference, although, I haven't actually calculated what it is.

I've tested (same route, same speed, same weather conditions) my Ranger with tailgate on and off. No significant difference. Some guys at the wind tunnel where I work did a quickie one day to look at it. If you put the tailgate up you get a large low-pressure region behind the gate and another smaller one behind the cab. With the gate down or off, you get a huge low-pressure region behind the cab. The total drag is pretty close either way. So, putting it up or down apparently just moves the location and size of the low-pressure regions. It may or may not help in some specific conditions -- I didn't test any further than that. For the most part, the thought that it helps your aerodynamics is unsubstantiated horseshit. If you really want to help the aerodynamics of a pickup truck, you need to do something like a teardrop-shaped shell, a tapered fairing on the tailgate, and some ground effects. Harder tires at a higher pressure would be the most cost-effective efficiency improvement, but you pay a price in handling (which ain't too great for a pickup to begin with).

You said you feel something, but that's probably just a change in the sound your truck makes. You also shed some weight when you took it off, so you may feel a little more accelerations, too.

My suggestion? If it's important to you, get a motorcycle or a Geo or something for getting around and leave the truck for when you really need it.

Anyway, take it or leave it, but that's my $.02.

Pete

P.S. If you try and test it out, make sure you keep the conditions the same in both tests. Ambient air temp, tire pressure and temp, fuel tank contents, etc., all have an impact. Let us know your results. I'd be curious to see if your results are consistent with mine. My testing was done well, but it was hardly comprehensive or rigorous.

I've tried the tailgate down, and can say it's worth around 1 mpg. However, I find my truck handles better with the tailgate up. YMMV. I keep it up. However, if gas prices go up again, then down it goes!

Plasyd

-- No information is any better than the assumptions of those who gather it. (paraphrased) Theodore Roszak v1.2a r TW 0/0/r tG 0- 0 DSotM 2 0 44.7%

I've always wondered about how the airflow worked. Thanks for the mental picture. I have in my head a system for slick airflow, but don't have the money to do it, and really don't want to give up the visibility I have.

Anyway, I did test the tailgate up and down, under fairly close conditions, and did find 1 mpg difference. However, that difference is statistically insignificant. As I said in an earlier post, YMMV.

Plasyd

-- No information is any better than the assumptions of those who gather it. (paraphrased) Theodore Roszak v1.2a r TW 0/0/r tG 0- 0 DSotM 2 0 44.7%

I wouldn't be surprised if you found that the 1 mpg difference went in the opposite direction in some circumstances. For what it's worth, I would think (pure conjecture, here) that the greatest difference in drag would be at lower speeds, where total drag is a lot less significant so that it wouldn't help you as much. The idea is that you get less flow separation behind the cab, so more smooth air hitting the tailgate. At high speeds, the flow is already separated pretty bad, so the gate is in junk air to begin with.

Some things that might help aerodynamics without impacting the functionality of the truck:

1. A wing at the back of the cab to attrain the flow. This would take a long time to dial in, and might not give enough benefit. If you have a tonneau (sp?) cover, you could put one at the back end, too. The same idea applies to a shell. It's those big flat areas perpendicular to the free-stream air that are the problem. Seems worth exploring.
2. Some sort of ground-effect skirt in the front. For this, it would be nice to have something that could be retracted at lower speeds. It's another cool idea that I'll probably never have time for. Someone told me one time that underbody drag accounts for something like 30% of the total for a pickup truck (unconfirmed, but makes sense).
3. An inflatable/collapsable teardrop fairing for the back of the tailgate. This would stick out quite a bit, and would probably make the highway patrol upset.
4. Underbody panels to close off cavities. It would take a lot of wind-tunnel testing to find out where these would benefit the most. There would be a side benefit of getting some extra weight in the back, too, which would be nice for small-load conditions.

I do a lot of driving in my Ranger 4x4 (1998, extended cab, 4L, 16" wheels, blah blah) between Los Angeles and June Lake (Sierra Nevada just a stone's throw from the Tioga Pass entrance to Yosemite) in the winter. It kinda sucks to have to live with the inefficiency for that first 200+ miles just so I can have a snow-capable vehicle for the last 40 (where gas costs something stupid like $2.25/gal), but so be it. Anyway, I've thought about this problem a lot. If I could get an additional 5 mpg at freeway speeds, I could save a lot of money and drive with a smaller load on my engine/transmission/differential/etc. Should translate to improved vehicle life as well as lower fuel costs.

Hey, if we could get some venture capital together, I'd think my company would rent me some time in the wind tunnel. We could run smoke and oil and get some real numbers on some ideas. I wish I had the time and space to build a small wind tunnel myself. Maybe a university has a small facility that could be used. An engineering senior project in aerodynamics might be a good way to get it done, but then there are intellectual property issues involved if you wanted to go commercial with the idea. Have to talk to a lawyer about that.

Pete

P.S. For anyone who feels inspired by this discussion, I have no intellectual claim on any of these ideas, but somebody else might. This is stuff that's been thought about by a great many people in the past and has actually been used in a lot of racing, just not with pickup trucks. Check patents before investing money.

conditions,

Makes sense. I do know with the tailgate down at higher speeds, the truck exhibits more side to side jerking than it does with it up. Why that is, I don't know. I do know there is no difference in handling up or down at slow speeds. Although these two points are subjective in the extreme, they still tend to bolster your point about airflow.

I work for a HVAC contractor, and have been told that air flows like water. It's a question of density for the most part.

Plasyd

-- No information is any better than the assumptions of those who gather it. (paraphrased) Theodore Roszak v1.2a r TW 0/0/r tG 0- 0 DSotM 2 0 44.7%

functionality

I'm not surprised. It'd be hard to pinpoint without a wind tunnel, but there are probably some huge vortices shedding off the cab. The walls of the bed may be in the path of the vortices, and any shift in vortex location (e.g. from turning, crosswinds) could make a huge difference in which way the air is pushing on the bed walls. You could see an 180deg shift in local wind direction over a couple of inches. WIth the tailgate up, most of the air in the bed is largely stagnated or at least slow-moving, so you get little vortex impingement on the walls....at least on the inside. This is just an educated guess based on experience with issues like tail buffetting on an experimental F-15 configuration I was involved with about 7 years ago. We were doing some things in the front of the airplane that created some vortices that were hitting the vertical tails and creating havoc at certain sideslip & angle-of-attack condition. The airplane wanted to suddenly roll hard when it reached that condition.

Yup. I work in the aerospace industry (in case you haven't guessed). We use both wind tunnels and water tunnels for aerodynamics studies. We have computer tools that do an OK job looking at separated (i.e. turbulent) flow that can do some predition about vortices, but there's no getting around using tunnels (at least for now).

Reminds me when I was a kid. My father had a pick-up and would drive with us in the back. (yes, I know) The best place to be at high speeds was right behind the cab. Although, I did notice at certain speeds, you could sit facing the cab with your back against the tailgate, and only have enough wind to muss your hair a bit.

Plasyd