1996 Ford Ranger – Shepherd S.

Almost everyday I went past this Ford Ranger, at the time I really had no interest for the vehicles, but I needed a vehicle. So I knocked on the door, no answer came back again a few days later no answer tried one more time and she answered. She explained who owned the ranger so we got in contact with the guy. He explained that he just wanted the thing gone. So he gave it to me to help me get my first Vehicle. When getting the ranger, I was very new into cars and after having the Ranger for a year, I’ve become my own professional. With the deal of the Ranger, I was gonna have to get it out of the spot it had been sitting for almost 10 years. So with my 70 year-old neighbors help, we diagnosed and found that the fuel pump and starter were bad. After replacing both of those the ranger came right to life running like it ran yesterday. So surely I thought this means this Ranger is gonna be flawless. Boy was I wrong, when we pressed the brakes we actually surprisingly got some pressure, but then we went to go look underneath the hood and found brake flood spraying everywhere. Thinking it was just the master cylinder. I replaced it, and to my surprise that didn’t fix it. It just showed me that every single brake line on this vehicle was rotted out. This essentially sums up the next 4 freezing months of my life. Though I did do things in that 4 months to try to forget about the brakes like getting new wheels and tires off a Ford Explorer from the 2000s. Once I finally fixed the brakes, I took it on a test drive to my school. Where I was stopped by a Prius with a driver that was very scared for me. Turns out that the reason I got the Ranger for free was because the previous owner hit a sizable boulder. Took apart my differential and found that the driver side axle was bent. Typically this is the part where people say they put a new differential. But no, this is the part where I tell you that I threw a new axle and new seals in with thicker oil. After all of this, I was finally able to drive the Ranger to the next place is was gonna get work done to it. My neighbor let me borrow his shop for one day, that one day quickly turned into two weeks. This happened because I was just fixing some rotted out leaf spring mounts when I went to go replace the rubber bushings and I found out that I had a uncommon leaf spring set up that was at least a year out. So I ordered myself a set of four leafs and throw them in there. Eventually, I had put 400 miles on the Ranger and it’s been pretty steady since. Just got done buffing and waxing it. A few weeks ago I put a leveling kit on it. Despite the war with the Ranger, I’m just thankful I don’t have to own a vehicle I don’t know anything about.