I have a 98 Ranger X-cab, 4.0L with a 5-speed automatic. I bought it the way it sits and the only upgrade I know of is that the previous owner added a Flowmaster Cat-back dual exhaust system which gives it a little bit of a "throaty" sound. I added a K&N filter not that the means a lot. I have posted several pictures on my gallery if anyone is interested. I have had this truck for little better than a month. I have noticed the accelerator pedal seems to lack much of a range of movement. What I mean is the pedal does not seem to have a lot of travel from idle to floored. If I'm cruising at say 65mph and I floor it the pedal is almost against the floorboards already. This does not seems to have any affect on acceleration though and the truck winds up pretty quickly without any stumbling or hesitation. It just seems strange that the pedal is almost floored at cruising speed. Flooring the pedal from a dead stop results in very responsive acceleration and again, no stumbling or hesitation. This is definately not a racecar but for a truck it aint' to shabby. I don't hot rod it though and I get an average of 20mpg so I can't complain. I guess I was just wondering if anyone else has a Ranger that has a seemingly short throw accelerator pedal? It's not causing any problems but I'm just curious.

 

Pull the intake tube off of the throttle body & have someone floor it is the throttle plate wide open?

 

if you look at the cable where it is connected to the accelerator pedal you will see the slack. you could put some zip ties around that slack to take it up. there has been a lot of discussion about this in the past. do a search and you are bound to turn up something.

 

Many thanks to "87 XLT" and "el conquistador" for responding to my querey. Yes, my throttle plate opens all the way. As I stated in my post the truck does not lack throttle response nor is it sluggish about getting up to speed. That was worth looking at though and thanks for the suggestion. I do, however, have a seemingly considerable amount of "slop" in my throttle movement. The suggestion of looking at where the throttle cable attaches to the accelerator pedal was something I would not have considered. You can certainly see this "slop" when your down under the dash and using your hands to manipulate the pedal. I would never be able to feel this with my foot. In lieu of using zip ties I fabricated a thick aluminum washer to fit between the end of the throttle cable and the spring to remove the slack. I have yet to drive the truck to see if this helped but by feel alone the "slop" seems to be considerably less now. I fired her up to make sure I didn't add too much shim that would affect the idle. No problem there. Maybe with the "slop" removed the feel will be more to my likeing. It probably sounds kinda' dumb being concerned about "feel" but I'm picky that way. I've also done some research regarding the weak leaf springs/vehicle lean issue. I've seen a number of people compaining that they had a difference of up to 1" bewteen the left and right side of the rear of the truck. I could only wish that was all I had! I've never measured the difference on my truck but I would judge the difference to be close to 2-3". When I park in my garage you can see the difference like a slap in the face. If I put any kind of load in the bed you'd think I was hauling a dead Hippo and he was mostly on the left side of the bed. One of these days I'll work that issue. For now, it's not causing any problems outside of irritating me to hell. People I work with tell me I'm being paranoid and "they" wouldn't even worry about it. Funny how things like this don't bother the person who dosen't have the problem. I'd sure like to put the shoe on the other foot and see if "their" attitude changed. Whataya' bet it would!!

 

Sounds like a pretty slick fix for the throttle problem, congrats on that.

I bought my 87 Ranger new and when i did the first brake job at 150K-ford did put some very good brakes on this thing-I noticed the right rear shock was leaking & replaced both rears. Now have 226K on it & thats all the suspension work that i've done to it. The front shocks are still going strong. It never has had a lean in it.

So having a lean in the truck would also make me crazy.

I have'nt paid much attention to the posts on this lean thing. Have you found the solution to it? New springs I guess.

 

So far the throttle "fix" seems to be working fine. We'll see. Yeah, the lean problem is frustrating. I already considered replacing the springs but one of the posts on this subject provided me another option. "Texan2004" replaced his drivers side spring only with good results. Seems the spring on the passenger side on some trucks is somewhat taller than the drivers side. A manufacturing problem!? At any rate, he got a spring from the junk yard and compared the two and noticed the difference. He stated that after he replaced the existing spring with the one from the junkyard his leaning problem was corrected. That's most likely the route I'll take as well. I'll just have to get the spring and the time to accomplish the change. It's on my list on things to do.