Ford Ranger T6 Common Problems

Whilst most things made by Ford have the mechanical finesse of a three day old burrito, the Ranger seems to have stepped up to the plate. Finally it seems Ford has made a decent car. What’s even more amazing is that this little truck was designed and engineered in Australia.

Traditionally, Australia has fallen short when it came to car engineering on the global markets. Producing rusty four door taxis didn’t really appeal to the finest engineering Munich had to offer. It’s a pleasant change to see an Aussie made car, be made to an international standard that is better than the musical careers of the band Aqua.

In 2015 the Ranger got a facelift and for the better we believe.

We trolled the interwebs and found a collection of people who felt they had what it took to be considered a Ford ranger expert. Granted most of these blokes are accessing the web from their  homemade dungeon made in their grandmothers basement, have no credentials and have not showered in twelve days. The kind of place where virgins gather and talk about Call of Duty and drink Red Bull. The point, these sources are not always credible.

On one such web platform we found a poll that surveyed 368 owners of Ford Rangers between 2013 and 2016. Of those 368, 240 of them had not experienced any issues with their vehicles outside of the expected wear and tear and routine maintenance of a vehicle. Sixty of those owners had experienced minor issues (things that did not stop the vehicle driving) and 68 had major mechanical failures. Whilst this number still seems high its actually a fairly good ratio for new car manufactures.

So what are the things to watch out for? Anyone who owns one of these already knows about the issues draining oil out of the sump. Allow the oil to run out of this car for more than ten minutes and the oil pump wont get oil pressure when you finish your service. It’s not a huge drama if this does happen but it takes a huge mount of oil and will make a mess if you have to fix this fault.

If this happens to you here is how to fix it. (Note: this is based off research we have done, we have never had to do this and take no responsibility for engines you may damage following this advice found on grey nomad chat forums)

2 options.

1. Fill engine with 15 ltrs of oil in total, with filter removed & leave overnight to self prime. Fit oil filter & drain out excess oil, start. (do not start it with 15lt of oil in it)
2. Have oil filter removed, pressurise sump through PCV valve with air until oil comes out filter port.

Common complaints from owners seem to be issues surrounding the air conditioning and seat rails rusting out. Other frequently raised issues with these seem to be turbo failures and a few reports of engine crank bearing issues. All in all very little can be faulted on the Ford Ranger and as much as I hate to say it, it seems to be a rather spectacular vehicle.

We will finish with this. The service intervals specified by Ford is 15,000kms. This is far too long between drinks in our opinion. There are many arguments for and against these long service intervals and we will cover them in another article. Our arguments as to why this is not frequent enough will be outlined in that article, but for now we shall leave you with this, a few hundred dollars extra for more frequent servicing, is far cheaper than a new engine.