Hello,

I have a 2001 Ford Ranger 3.0 with 140k miles, been a great truck and owned it for a about 3 years. It overheated with my mom once about a year and a half ago and I flushed the radiator and put all new coolant in it. The coolant doesn't stay clean very long it turns brown. Fast forward to last week, I let my wife drive it to pickup some stuff from town and it over heats on her on the way home. She makes it home and It was slightly low on coolant and I topped it off. I go to work the next day extra early to buy some parts for a tune up and as soon as I get on the freeway I start losing power immediately. I got my pedal to the floor and my speed is decreasing so I merge off the next off ramp. I could hear something squeaking really loud from the engine inside the cabin. Right after that the truck died and I coasted into a parking lot. I had it towed home and it won't start it cranks but sounds like there is no compression at all. There is also all this brown **** blown all over the engine bay which looks like coolant/oil thats been mixed together and has dried into a powdery residue.

I tried my best to take some pictures of the aftermath. Now whats crazy is I'm super **** about clean engine bays and a week before this mess happened you could eat off the engine bay it looked like it pulled right off the dealer lot.




Coolant Reservoir is totally full of nasty brown ****



I'm not sure if I should just buy a headgasket kit and try and replace or source a new engine, never had this happen to any of my vehicles before so not sure on the best solution.

 

This is almost the exact things that happened with my truck. Basically I notices the thick brown junk probably 10 or 15K miles before my truck completely died. I was stuck on the side of the road after I believe my timing belt jumped. I'm currently going to replace the head gasket/s and hope that I didn't ruin the engine. My truck has 150K miles on it. This ranger has been a real disappointment. I try to by Ford and have always liked them but this truck seems like it's only made for local travel around town or something. I don't want to sell it for junk so I'm going to try to repair it one more last time and sell it some one might only have to drive it a few miles a day. I'll keep everyone posted.

 

sounds like a head gasket. that squealing sound that you heard was prolly your motor running on no lube. so you might have locked it up and you might need a new motor

 

These engines are very prone to this. You need to chemically flush the cooling system and possibly replace the radiator if you cannot get good flow through it. I see it alot of 3.0s and Dodge 4cyls. Continue to flush the cooling system until you get clear water through it. I remove the radiators and back flush with hose until clear.

 

the water pumps too they corrode. causing rusty coolant. if you replace the radiator id put the 5.0 one in. makes for a cooler running truck. and the newer water pumps dont rust