There is a running 95 4.0/5sp at the local yard to me in Rahway NJ. The body looked pretty good (no dents or rust, just a few dings and some chips on the top of the tailgate) and it does run, my buddy started it up saturday as he was thinking about purchasing it for his son as his son's first car (he's about to turn 17). The seats and headliner look as though raccoons sharpened their claws on it, but other than that the truck looked and ran fine. I don't remember the mileage, as I didn't really look at it that closely. The tranny shifted fine and the clutch seemed okay to me... but we just drove it around the pot-hole laiden roadway in front of the junkyard. As of this past Saturday, it's in the "whole car" lot on the side of the junkyard, not racked and stacked for parts rapage, and typically they sell whole "big three" cars for $500-650 depending what it is. One flat tire, three corded tires, and it has a trailer hitch of some kind under the bumper (looked like a class 1). The radio is gone as is the headlight switch, and the cluster surround is on the passenger seat but it looks like most of the screws were on the floor. I have some if you need them. The passenger mirror seemed loose, but not broken, I think the screws just backed out a bit or maybe was replaced and not tightened all the way.

My friend who went with me to the yard this past Saturday was thinking about acquiring it for his 16 y/o son as a project truck, also buying the powertrain from my crewcab (5.8L, ZF, when I swap that out this summer) and making a fun sleeper. Other than the seats and the headliner, I didn't see anything terribly obviously wrong with it. Obviously a drive around a pothole road wasn't a real road test... but what we looked at seemed okay. I *don't* think my friend is going to buy it, as after mentioning it to his son he got the "honda honda honda honda" discussion. I dunno... if when I was 16 my father offered to buy me a used car, I'd have taken anything, even a pink volvo!

If the truck is still there and you're interested in it, you can come here and I'll take you over since they know me, I have access to a dolly and you can store it here for a few days to a week if that helps you out at all. You can even borrow the dolly to haul it home if you have a 2" ball on your truck. But you'll need to replace the seats, headliner and the tires for sure. I didn't see any other similar year rangers there so you'll have to go elsewhere for that stuff, but the rims/tires I'm sure they have there. They have a huge, cleanly marked (though unsorted) area for tires. Rows and rows.


I'll be there tomorrow anyway for leeching EFI bits, I'm happy to take pictures of the thing if you'd like... save you a trip if its absolutely below your expectations. It has AC and it blew "cool" power windows, power locks, sliding rear window. The tailgate latched too though it didn't open the first couple of times we pulled the handle, that mechanism is obviously a bit loose, but it doesn't rub on either bedside, so its within the tailgate and not indicating a twisted frame or such. The bed contours line up with the cab on both sides so Im guessing that it wasn't wrecked and repaired. The carpet looked okay, its filthy dirty and has junkyard mud footprints both sides, but that can be steamed out. Maybe a cig burn or two is hidden under that mud, but it didn't look bad at all. The seats are bad... really really bad... for the test drive I took a moving blanket out of my truck to sit on because I didn't like the metal seat frame poking me in the ***. The driver side is much worse than the passenger side, but the yellow foam shows through on both seats.

Definately raccoons lol.