Thread: Who Knows About Ford Rangers ?

Originally Posted by No.3

Yep, that agrees with my experience manual vs auto. Not sure why the auto is 1.5L/100Km thirstier, most are closer than that everything else being equal. Also, your 8.7L figure is what I'm getting out of mine, all driving types average. The best economy I got out of mine was before the aftermarket shocks and front struts were installed and after the high load rear springs went in which lifted the arse and dumped the nose. Theory was it turned the thing into a wedge, got the air out from under it and reduced the drag by a fair whack. That got me into high 6's/low 7's per 100km but the thing was a widowmaker a crash looking for a place to occur so not recommended.

A lack of sufficient castor on front suspension made the steering a bit ’vague’?

Originally Posted by Finnwolf

A lack of sufficient castor on front suspension made the steering a bit ’vague’?

Yep in a nutshell. F**king dangerous, on the long open East Coast gravel roads the front end would just wash off to one side with no steering input to start the wash off and it wouldn't respond to steering inputs unless you were in 4wd and had your foot fully up it to pull the front back into line. Quite unnerving to be honest, it felt like you were crawling everywhere at 30-40k's just for safety... Chopped the inner edge of the front boots in about 5,000Km... Ended up fitting a 10mm spacer ring under the foam struts lower spring mount with gave the factory springs enough of a preload adjustment to lift the front end about 20mm which got us back into the range where the aligner could adjust the angles back into specification.