Greetings, i am new to these forums so forgive me if someone has had similar issues that i have over looked. Anyways, i have a 2003 Ranger Edge with a hair less than 95k miles on it. I am the original owner and up until about 3 months ago i had never had a single issue with the truck. So here's the situation.

It all started a couple months back, i was driving on the highway and noticed that when accelerating at higher rpms there was a chirping sound and i was losing a lot of power, the original local mechanic wasn't able to pinpoint the issue and advised me to take it to the ford dealer in the neighboring town and have them run their diagnostics on it. They ended up putting in new heads in and it appeared to fix the problem.

For about 2 weeks the truck ran perfectly and then one night while driving home i got a flashing check engine light and it seemed like again i was losing power. Since i was leaving town right after that i did not have time to take it in to get checked. When i returned about a week and a half later my truck was dead. I got a jump and it started but after a day it was still not starting on its own. I borrowed a battery charger from a friend and had it charging for about 5 hours, the charger is realllllly old and was only putting out something like 3 amps. After the 4-5 hours of charging i put the battery in and got it to start on it's own. I then drove to the local Kragen and had them test the battery and the alternator. The battery tested fine and had a 50% or so charge and the alternator tested fine. The guy that checked them just said to charge the battery longer and things should be ok. The check engine light has yet to come back on since having charged my battery.

So driving home thinking things are going to be fine i notice that my car does not want to exceed 60mph on a flat highway. The RPM's were hovering around 3k and when i applied heavy pressure on the pedal they started to jump and made a pretty loud rattle sound. So i am wondering if anyone has had a similar issue with their Ranger.

I am really hesitant to go back to the Ford dealer because they grossly under estimated the price when i went there the time before and tried to charge me more than double what they quoted me. The work ended up being fair but it was annoying enough to make me never want to go back.

Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated.

 

is it a 3.0 or 4.0? Manual or automatic? 4wd or 2wd?

 

/\/\/\ if its manual then its prob ur clutch going out

 

it's the 3.0 v6 and it's an automatic. also it has new spark plugs, the battery is only a little over 2 years old as well.

 

If its an auto my bud had the same problem with his exploder an it was the torque converter..Slipping slight jerk every now an then wile slowing down an would not go to fast an making a grinding sound.

 

its might be ur turbo encabaculater

 

na.... flux capsitor

 

you did check your tire fluid rite that can cause the same prob

 

on a serious note, maybe the trans is slipping?