WARNING: Lots of images!
Mostly for Fungal as he showed interest in this car it seems :D

When I came to Mexico with my wife from Berlin my mother in law had a black Ford Ranger her husband bought her for her business. Somehow he knew somebody who made him buy this one from the US as imported vehicle. It then was parked for quite a while at the coast of the Golf of Mexico until somebody could get it to our town. She would have several different employees use this car as if it was a trash can. Some even learned to drive with this old lady. Then I started to use it too to move from this town to where my wife and I planned to build a little off grid cabin (things have gotten rough on this one, won't get into details). I also used it to transport material like wood, plants, tree saplings, water tanks and other stuff around.

The whole repair story started when I got fed up with not having a parking brake in an area that is the central mountains of Mexico. Our town has streets that may seem like a roller coaster to some folks. So I headed out to buy the cables for the parking brake and have a local mechanic install them. Oh boy...little had I known that this would cause so much trouble. After the installation I thought everything was done, but here is where a long journey of repairs on my behalf really began. The brake wouldn't disengage well. Sometimes I'd have to press/release the pedal ten times to disengage the rear drum shoes. (Just today I'm again working on this, and became aware of quite more details.

But why would I bother with the whole car just because of this you might ask. Well I don't know to be honest. I suppose its my German attitude of wanting the things surrounding me be in good condition. So I started with electronics that didn't work like they should or didn't work at all. So the ignition switch had some minor issues with the key position and the instrument cluster several burnt bulbs. Also the poor girl had no radio anymore due to theft years ago. A cousin of ours had left the window open just slightly once he borrowed the car and out it went. Didn't even bother to apologize less replace the unit. Lots of lighting not working and bad wiring.

So while I was on this I couldn't ignore the incredibly poor condition of the engine bay anymore. The thing was just coated in a mix of sand, salt and oil. Tons of oil. Like seriously, heavy coats. While looking through the bay I noticed that the PCV valve was missing. What the f***? So well, I went to a local store, and the valve is a very simple plastic valve that is a few bucks. No big deal. Had a rough time installing it with the manifold in place but eventually got it to fit.

This is a view from top through the intake manifold to where the PCV valve should be sitting:

And this is the EGR vacuum solenoid covered in mud just like any connector, any tube, any component in the bay:

So while that alone was not yet enough to make me loosen any bolts, I did notice that the fan clutch bearing was completely worn out and stuck. Basically this was a turning point at which I decided to take some things apart. And look at that water pump. I just had to take the opportunity to change that as well. Now I'm not a fan of part changing but in this case there was no doubt about it. Also the thermostat housing is a good representation of many metallic tubing in the bay. I actually first asked at a local junkyard for the fan clutch but they failed on me and made me wait like three hours for nothing after which I decided to better buy a new one that would at least last a bit:

So basically from here on I was like "F*** this, I'll give this granny a spa, clean her up really good and in the process see if anything needs a replacement. (I suspected injectors actually, but one real issue was the power steering pump leaking causing severe oil contamination on the driver side of the bay. (The following picture is actually again a result of the missing PCV valve but everything around and below the power steering pump looked even worse:

The next step was to get components out, unbolt mounts and unplug lines and connectors. Later on I would re-route several vacuum lines and electrical wires to clean the bay a little. Here I had taken most motors/generators out including their mounts and uncovered the timing belt.

It struck me that some very intelligent person had marked the oil pump with a "custom" mark in a position that had nothing to do with anything. Some earlier Rangers didn't need the oil pump to line up with the timing belt in any special manner, but this year specifically should line up diamond to diamond on the oil pump only. (The camshaft is triangle to triangle)

After adjusting the timing of the motor (the camshaft was also slightly off) I then took the intake manifold off. This one comes in two parts, an upper and a lower. Both were horribly carbonized to a thick layer of black carbon dust (this is the lower one):

And this is the upper one after a thorough cleaning (cannot see the inside here, but it's just as shiny ;):

With the intake out of the way I got to see why the engine was lacking power before. The number four injector was completely covered up with dirt making it impossible to inject anything anywhere (the others were also very dirty but not as much).

Moving the fuel rail out of the way it was time to get the old gaskets off. The lower manifold gasket was really stuck on the block, I had to get my angle grinder out for this one. Some people really say you shouldn't do this, but this car is such a mess that it wouldn't matter too much anyways. I actually did grind a little deep in the region where it looks a little black on the picture. But all in all it turned out pretty flat and resurfaced.

A random look from above at this point:

I also took the time to take the exhaust manifold out and try to free it of some of its rust, which was almost impossible. It did get a new gasket and new bolts though. On this one you can already see the new water pump installed and the cleaned thermostat housing both with a new gasket. The thermostat itself was still good.

Here I installed the cleaned lower intake manifold, the cleaned alternator/coil mount and the cleaned injectors (tested for resistance, all still good within spec values).

A new set of spark plugs and wires was mandatory at this point, not only for maintenance but the old wires had actually been cut and rejoined before so they were just unreliable really. All the pulleys were cleaned and sanded smooth, the new power steering pump also got a new pulley and almost everything is back in place:

And this is from yesterday. Finally finished this part. I decided to route the spark wires of the intake side around the front of the engine as it simply makes more sense for this setup and looks consistent. There's still a lot to do and I'll maybe post more. These days I'll flush the tranny, the rear differential and reassemble the whole back.

After all this hassle the motor runs quite smooth, responds well and powerful and has a stable low idle around 780-800 (which is actually still a bit higher than spec [695 - 745] but most Rangers and four cylinder trucks idle around 1000RPM due to poor adjustments so I'm really happy with this).

Still so the scan data on RPM in relation to LTFT with a warmed up engine indicates a vacuum leak which I'll still have to find. On this graph the blue line is RPM and the red line is long term fuel trim in percent (grey is STFT). Whenever I rev up the engine the LTFT improves instantly. It is supposed to be an indicator for a vacuum leak, as high air intake makes the leak relatively unimportant, improving the ratio. On idle the air intake is so low though that a leak causes a lean condition.

And also I'm rather baffled by the timing curve. When stepping on the pedal the timing jumps almost instantly to about 25 degrees, but takes almost half a minute to get back to 10ish (that normal?)