One morning I left my truck idling in the yard while looking for my work badge. When I came out the yard was filled with white vapor that was pouring out of my tailpipe. Knowing this to be a sure sign of water in the combustion chamber I assumed one of my heads/head gaskets had failed. I pulled both heads and took them to a machine shop where they checked for cracks. The machinist said the heads were good and resurfaced them. I reassembled with new gaskets and head bolts and torqued everything to the specifications in my Haynes. I am still having the same problem. Once at temp, I can see a wisp of steam coming from cylinder 2 (the higher side).

Help?

Oh and it is a 2000 Ford Ranger 3.0 Flex Fuel 4wd Automatic.

 

If there is no water/coolant in the oil after new head gaskets then I would say intake is leaking.
There is a coolant passage in the intake from head to head.
And I believe on the 3.0l they added a throttle body pre-heater, so coolant circulates thru there as well.
You can put a by-pass on the pre-heater to eliminate that as the source

 

I don't know what the Haynes manual torque specs/procedures are, but I would not trust them or chiltons for that matter. I think this is even mentioned in a post below about 3.0 head gasket thread.