New to RF. I tried searching and could not find any posts with the same conditions that I have. Hoping that someone can provide some help on a new topic.

I have a 2000 Ranger that was a 3.0 / manual truck that I bought for my daughter. Well, she rolled the truck on an icy road and it was a total loss (she walked away with only a scratch) but the truck was so clean and only had 120k on it so I picked up a 1999 ranger that had a 4.0 / automatic with a blown head gasket. I swapped the engine, transmission, ECU, wiring harness, PATS module, steering column, gauge cluster, clutch pedal, floor shifter, and everything I thought it needed. The 1999 truck is now running and driving with the 3.0 / manual combination but I have a couple of error codes. First code is P0176 and when I saw it, that made sense because the original 2000 donor truck was a flex fuel truck and the 1999 that it went into was not. There is no sensor and I cannot find a plug for it in the harness inside the frame rail in order to swap it over from the donor truck.

What are my options? From what I can find, it looks like the flex fuel sensor defaults to an 87 unleaded condition and only make adjustments when ethanol is detected. Can anyone confirm that? The truck seems to run fine without the sensor but the P0176 code comes back without the flex fuel sensor input to the ECU. They make emulators to use in place of the sensor on a FF truck but is there a clean way to add it as an input to the ECU without the factory harness and plug inside the frame rail? It seems like the ford engineers made everything else in these trucks modular so I was actually surprised that the 1999 didn't have it in the harness but I have read different posts with different info on what years had the flex fuel option so maybe it wasn't an option in 1999? I suspect that the ECU could also be reprogrammed to a non flex fuel 3.0 so that it is no longer looking for that input. Can anyone provide a trustworthy source for that if it is an option?

The only other code I get is P0340 which is for the cam sensor. I replaced the sensor when I did the swap but now after some digging, I am thinking that I need to replace the cam syncronizer because I do get the squealing sound for a bit when it first starts up. I will order an OEM one and swap it out to see how worn the original one is when I pull it out and if that solves that problem.

Thanks in advance for the help. Forums like this are priceless because of the great people who participate and offer help.

 

I've seen this question answered many times by the knowledgable Ron D- there is no diff other than fuel injector size, they still fit the rail, The flex V injectors are a tad bigger push more fuel to keep the mixture right for 85. (less combustible)

hope that helps

 

from what i understand, you moved with the 4.0 motor the same ECU and wiring harnass. i dont know why that code would show?

 

A Flex Fuel engine is designed to run on gasoline and high‑ethanol blends like E85 from vin checker https://carfast.express/en/cars/check , using special sensors (including an ethanol content sensor) and often larger injectors/fuel system components. The non‑Flex setup doesn’t have these features.

 

It sounds like you should have moved the flex fuel sensor and wiring as well since the computer is from the flex fuel truck, if I understand correctly what you did.. If the cam syncronizer is not sloppy worn you can remove the sensor and squirt motor oil on top to lube the bushings. It is a poor lube design problem.

 

I think you'll find that the only thing you need to do is get the larger sized injectors which fit on the same rail. No ECM or sensor change needed. I read up on this when I I bought an ebay Vulcan last month. I wanted to replace with a V (flex) but would have grabbed a U (gas only) if it looked good. Just passing on what I learned here. Search past posts on this subject - easy to find.