ok bought my daughter 2000 ext ranger with the 3.0 4x4
after school she jumped in started it up noticed the abs light on and the o/d light blinking and a brake light stuck on, the heat, radio, turn signals did not work when she tried putting it into park it made a nasty azz noise, when she put it into drive it started buckin at around 20 mph, i told her to put it in 2nd see if she could nurse it home which she did (not far from home)
got in the garage and had her shut it off in nuetral turned it back on and everything worked like it should again. odd huh kinda tells me there is a prob like pcm or something else that controls all of these things at once.
help please with any info or expeirence you may have to share
thanks!!

 

Sounds like a loose ground problem to me. The PCM does not control, the heater, radio, ABS or turn signals. It should not at all be related to any noise the engine would make putting the truck into park. I will tell you to check G201 behind the Right Hand cowl panel which is a ground that controls your ABS, Heat, Cluster, Radio, Air bag module and Central Timer Module. Look for a loose bolt, corrosion or anything else there or at any other grounds as well.

 

sorry the nasy noise was coming from the tranny it made the noise in both park and nuetral. the engine is running fine also it was hard to switch gears from like drive to second and so on

 

Well, check the grounds, it may be affecting transmission shift issues but it's hard to tell from here.

 

just to clarify none of the problems were with the engine,the tranyy was acting up along with all the numerous things i mentioned, sorry for the lack of knowledge on this but what is a cowl panel? g201=ground 201? i have a chiltons manual to help locate what your telling me to check

 

Yes, it is Ground 201. Look down near the floor of the instrument panel on the passenger side.

 

ok check exactly where you said, i removed the plastic mold check the grounds , no corrosion or anything, started it up moved around wires and couldnt get it to duplicate the problems that were going on, i suppose to be on the safe side i will let her drive my truck to school and work so i can drive hers to see if it happens again, the only thing i did recently is remove the topper and there were three wires that connected to that i left hanging in the box, i suppose that wouldnt be causing it?

 

just took if a spin damn thing runs great,ill keep checkin grounds, has anyone else ever had this problem before?

 

If you left three wires hanging in the box and one of those is an unfused 12 volt wire grounding out you could experience something similar too. It would be a bigtime long shot, but presumably those wires were for a third brake light and the lighting system does include the GEM module which controls the Transmission Range sensor, wipers, lighting etc. I'd make sure those wires were secure for sure and see if it happens again.

 

thanks john, i was wondering if the GEM module was on its way out after reading up on it last night,well i took the day off so i can look further into this and see wtf is going on
thanks agian for your help

 

after more reading, do you think being that the key for this truck has to be programmed that the key may be getting faulty?

 

No, if the key is going bad it will cause a no start condition, it won't affect the modules communication wise.

 

i thought id let ya know what i found concerning this, what was happening is when you turn the key over to start the truck the key would start the truck but turn to far and not snap back which made thing go out of whack,so you have to turnit back after starting the truck just a bit so that its in the proper position, weird huh
im sure with this anti theft deal it isnt going to be cheap to replace the ignition seeing that to have a key made was 70 bucks, thanks for the replies!!