Hello, I am a brand new member and a brand new ranger owner (about 1 week ago). I just purchased the truck and was hoping to get at least a few oil changes out of it before having to do any work. So it turns out, barely one tank of gas later I'm having a major issue...on Christmas eve no less.

The truck is a 2003 4.0 XLT Automatic

On my way home from a family members house, under normal highway driving conditions (about 65-70 mph), i began to hear what sounded like debris in my engine and severe loss of power followed by what seemed like only a couple cylinders firing. The truck was violently vibrating from the engine running so terribly. I managed to limp it off the ramp and into a Parking lot. Eventually under idle the noises grew louder and my oil pressure gauge was going from normal to nothing, off and on.

I was told by my tow driver that it may be something in the distributor department, but I am new to Ford and their trucks all together so I'm not really confident. So here I sit on Xmas eve in hopes of an answer from a collection of knowledgeable people.

I thank everyone in advance, and its too bad my first post wasn't on better circumstances.

 

did you check engine light pop on when it was acting up?

 

It did, unfortunately, I don't have a code reader at my disposal...and due to the holiday weekend it seems its impossible to track one down in my area.

 

I just had the exact same issue happen today. Driving along, engine starts running really poorly and actually died but restarted. There is a severe rattle in the engine and the oil pressure is zero.

The rattle sounds like no oil pressure and the rockers are slapping but I was hoping anyone might have first hand knowledge of the same problem and their root cause.