I'd love to be able to do that. Did you pull an entire harness out of a junked vehicle? That probably took hours!

Seems like it'll be cheaper and easier to just spend $225 on the aftermarket set up and do it myself. I don't like the ugly aftermarket handle. Better than nothing I suppose!

I wish I would have waited for a better Ranger. All the ones I could find had high mileage though. Found mine with 57K on it.

 

You did the right thing... and the same thing I did. Found my 2003 EDGE on the internet. Was a 4 hour drive to go see it. Pretty much bought it via text message. LOL Reason was low miles, EDGE model, flare side, fiberglass bed cover. So, I overlooked the fact that it had no tilt or cruise. Took care of that problem fairly quick.

What I did was found a gutted 1998 Ranger and stripped the engine harness right there in the salvage yard. Got the 10-pin servo plug and as much wire as I could out of it. Cleaned it all up and wrapped it as a separate harness, brought it into the cab and tapped into the appropriate wires under the dash. Since I added tilt, I made sure I had one with the the right clock spring and went with that. Was a long weekend's work, but I got it all wired up and ran the diagnostic tests. They all passed so I took it for a test drive and all has been fine ever since.

Yes, the aftermarket unit will be easier (and maybe cheaper) for you in your situation of no salvage yard close by.

 

Wow, that's impressive! I don't shy away from a challenge but parts would be hard to come by. I don't mind aftermarket, but it's not as clean at the oem stuff.

Did you add a master cylinder from a cruise control truck as well, or did you go with a brake pedal sensor?

 

Funny thing about that; the truck already had the sensor installed in the master cylinder. That, of course, made no sense to me since I didn't have the cruise harness but had the brake sensor. Ford really did an Ala Carte when it came to these trucks... nothing makes sense. The way it's wired it in, it actually has two brake cutoffs... one on the master cylinder and the brake light switch. I think this was for a fail-over in case one fails, the other will take over.

 

Makes sense to me. Hopefully the aftermarket system isn't too hard to install.

 

I've never installed one or worked on a vehicle with one installed, so I have no idea what they consist of.