Hey all, been on the sight for quite a while, but i'm new to the world of the ranger, with my purchase of an 88 ranger with a 2.3 and 5speed, fully loaded. Anywho i bought it for 500 bucks (had a bad fuel pump and 2 clogged fuel filters, and the previous owner thought that the motor was toast) and about 500 buck later in new parts (tires, shocks, rear brakes, tune up, ps pump, and intank fuel pump, and some other little things) the truck purrs like a kitten and is like new, and hopefully she'll treat me good when i head off to college in a few weeks.

Anyway i have a few questions about this ranger. The first one is what should i expect for milage out of this truck (assume average city driving, and like i said the truck has the 2.3, 5 sp od manual tranny, and 3.73 gears)? I'm hoping around 23-25mgp out of it to make it worth while.

Now my next question is about getting some power out of this motor. Now if i do do this it will be over the upcoming summer when i have some more time. What i would like to do as i know where i can get a parts car to do this is turbo charge it, and i'm wanting to know what kind of job this would be, and if this is do-able. The parts car that i can get is a 88t-bird turbo coupe (it uses the ihi water cooled turbo and not the T3 turbo from early years) that has a bad motor but the turbo and electronics are still good. Now my biggest concerns with this type of project, is not so much the mechanical part of it (as i am very mechanically inclined), but the EFi part, as i'm not sure if the ranger uses the same type of efi as the t-bird does.

Any help would be great, thanks in advance.

 

Welcome to the Ranger world, I'm not familar with the 4 bangers but I'm sure you'll get plenty of answers.

 

for the mileage, that is about what i get from my 91 2.3, but i usually do more highway than city. for the few times i did more city than normal i got no less than 21 mpg. good luck.

 

i had a '88 2.3 2wd s/c many years ago with the 5spd and 3.73s i could get 29 on a trip and averaged 23 or so around town. at 140,000 miles a freind borrowed it and took it to canada, somewhere along the way the converter plugged and toasted the valva train, one cyl had only 50 psi commpression. so i overhauled it, had it bored .40 over, all new bearings, valves, clutch/pressure plate. dad had replaced the 302 in his bronco with a junkyard engine after it dropped a valve, the replacement motor came from a '90 grand marquis and only had 50,000 miles on it. i took those fuel injectors and put them on my 2.3 it worked, i also gutted the cat (no smog test here) and got rid of the e.g.r. tube and put plugs in their place. (they are big, took a while to find) after all the modifications it ran great, didnt get quite as good of milage but still not bad id say 21-26, and i had also added a grill guard and a 'glass topper. drove it to to 203,000 miles and traded it for a 3/4 ton, it is still on the road today, not near as pretty but still going. and i got rid of the 3/4 g.m. almost 2 years ago for another ranger s/c. hope i get as good of service out of the '93 as i did my '88. the only problem i would see with the turbo is that the t-bird turbo-coupe 2.3 has a diffrent (i beleive lower ) compression ratio and im not sure if you can just "bolt on" a turbo from a donor vehicle. i have heard of aftermarket cams that do make a difference though. good luck and enjoy, Dave.

 

Cool that's good news, the trip from my home here where i live to where i will be going for school is a 6.5 hours trip so the 25mpg figure is a lot better than my 82 flareside (by 10mpg). So hopefully this truck will run good enough to get those figure's. Yeah with this ranger being a farm truck all its life, I doubt that the cats made it past 500 miles on the truck (no testing here) so thats on less thing i have to worry about.

I just looked up the CR's on both motors (dad has a 40 years of t-bird book, and the we borrowed the ranger shop manual to figure out the fuel system problem) and the only difference is about a half a point, which is a small enough difference to not have to worry about, but it will entitle a higher fuel grade though, i think that if i did do this i would switch to carb if the EFI would be to big of a problem.