Hi Everyone,

Brand new to the scene. I had an 88 Civic before my current 99 Ford Ranger 2.5 manual. Up till now its treated me well, but here's what I'm facing and I'd appreciate any thoughts:

I was driving home from the airport up a gentle grade into the Sierra foothills on I-80. The engine started to bog down and didn't respond to more gas and continued bogging on a downshift from 5th to 4th. From the left lane I started to move over to the right lane and my temp gauge blasts up to just below red as I made it to the shoulder and shut off the engine. Coolant steam is spewing out from under the hood and then pouring en masse onto the pavement. Had the car towed to my house and let everything dry. Upon inspection, I found the coolant reservoir hose had blown off the radiator right by the radiator cap. Admittedly, I didn't mind the cooling system maintenance like I should have so I figured it was a good time to review all major components. Trying to drain the radiator from the petcock proved fruitless as the corrosion contamination was too thick to let it drain, so I drained out the lower radiator hose. What coolant was left looked awful. I decided to replace the radiator, upper and lower hoses, and after flushing the block, the thermostat and its housing components. Once I did this I tried flushing the heater core and this is where I think my problem originated. It is completely clogged allowing no reverse or forward flow through it. To save time and get the truck running again I decided tackle that later and bypassed the heater core closing the loop in the engine bay.

Once all that was done, I turned it over and here's where I'm lost. Turning over the engine now is pretty rough and the idle is really bad and rough, like I sometimes worry about the engine mounts, but revving it to higher RPMs it sounds and feels great. Once coolant level was topped out after working the air out, the temp is in normal operating range, upper hose gets hot with pressure, and nothing is leaking (good news!) On top of the rough idle, when the gear is engaged and you try to pull out, it is super boggy and you have to high rev to get it moving. I've yet to take it beyond 2nd gear on my dirt road to my house because I don't want to get stranded.

Lastly, I replaced the idle air control valve which helped a little on the start up and idle, but only a little and the driving problems remain. Check engine light is on when key is "on" but not turned over but no check engine when the engine is running. Code reader is on its way via amazon but thought as here too for any thoughts. What stumps me is I faced none of these post-cooling system revamp challenges before this all happened. Did something catastrophic occur? I'm at unplugging the 02 sensors and running open loop to test them to see if they're gone, but beyond that I'm lost. Thank you for sticking with the longwinded tale of trouble and thank you for your thoughts.

-KP

 

Welcome to the forum

No while smoke out the tail pipe?

Oil looks good on the dipstick, no "milkshake" look?

Cold engine
Remove rad cap
water/coolant topped up
Start engine
Watch rad cap opening
Might be a burp of coolant on start up but then no overflowing
If it starts to overflow you have blown head gasket or crack head, no way to tell the difference until head is off