OK last week i hauled a trailer with a motorcycle on it with my ranger. While going up long hill my check engine light came on and started flashing, after road leveled off engine light stopped flashing but stayed on. This happened several times as i climbed several hills. Had codes read. O2 sensor error, 2.3,5 cylinder intermittent miss. After getting truck home and trailer off the engine light stayed on but truck ran well. was going to look into plugs and ignition coil on weekend. last evening leaving work the truck started fine ran 45 seconds and shut off, tried to restart no fire. Tried again gave it a little throttle, engine started ran 5 seconds sounded like it had terrible miss the shut off with a very audible grinding/ clacking sound (not good). Did not attempt to start again. Any ideas as to what may have happened? I'm sure this is an ignition issue of some sort. 2000 ranger xlt 4x4 3.0 with 130,500 miles

 

Flashing CEL means back off the throttle, or engine damage make occur, its from hard misfires when engine is under a load, i.e. going uphill

When did you last get gasoline and where?
"Bad" gas is gasoline with higher content of water, it will cause those symptoms, long shot but not a no shot

O2 sensor code(should post that code), is probably one of the "Lean" codes which is caused by misfires, not the source of the misfires

You should pull out the coil pack and have a look at it for small cracks, misfires on 2, 3, 5 covers all 3 coils in the coil pack
which is unlikely but it is what it is

Also pull all the spark plugs and keep them in order, see what the tips tell you

Grinding and clacking sound is, of course, not good, but hard to say what that is, after you pull the spark plugs maybe you will find one that broke up inside the cylinder

You can pull off the cam sensor and then have someone crank over the engine, no spark plugs, and make sure the rotor under the cam sensor is turning, that means oil pump is most likely turning

 

Thanks for the response, I have never seen a CEL flash before so had no idea about backing off the throttle. though i did back off when it occurred.
I always get gas at the same location, so I don't think this was an issue.
I don't remember the code for the O2 sensor I will have to hook it back up. The coil pack was going to be my starting point of diagnostics.
I've heard that the cam phaser could have stripped/warn gear that could account for the grinding clacking noise. I do plan on pulling the plugs as part of diagnostics.
I know that I had oil pressure before it shut off the first time, I always check all my gauges upon start up of all my vehicles. Habit from being a former tech.
Considering that it just snowed and is hovering around freezing during the day in my area and the fact i don't have a garage to work in this work is going to wait awhile. Fortunately I own another Ranger, and just picked up an 03 Escape for the wife to drive. Even though I've been driving it this week, kinda impressed with the double overhead cam 24 valve 3.0. It gets around in the snow pretty damn good too.