Well I've finally encountered my first hiccup with the 3.0. I'm at 70+k miles and P0304 and P0316 are my hard codes. Of course I threw the normal maintanence parts at it first and then did a compression check and I'm 50 pounds down on cylinder four. There is a TSB for the exhaust valves not closing and of course that's my problem. So over the next couple of months I am going to buy a new set of heads and possibly have them retooled, buy the roller rockers and the headers if I'm going to get this deep. I'm not looking forward to spending all of this money but I sure hope it will be worth it. But it was either this or it was time to trade it in on something small, cheap and efficient like a Scion. I really hope I don't regret this.

 

Depends . . . technology changes so much nowadays.

They make 4 cylinders with the same power the 5.0HOs made back in the late 80s.

Guess it just depends on what you use the truck for . . .

 

While that is true, a good old fashioned pushrod engine is so much simpler to keep running and repaired. I'm still crossing my fingers, but my oldest Ranger (2002) is well over 150,000 miles with no internal problems to date. While this doesn't seem like a lot, its all hard miles.

 

good luck! how many miles do you have on it? is its paid off?

 

70,000+

 

ha, yeah i cant read...

anyway miles seem low to be having issues.

 

Yeah, I thought the miles were low too. I beat on it pretty good for 24k when I was going to school and delivering pizza but for the last 46k it's been all highway miles to concerts in Orlando and Miami so I was a little disappointed about it myself. And it will be paid off in July I think it is.

 

Keep it, your 3.0 will be awesome once you get all those new parts in it