| The Ford Ranger has been only a short time in New Zealand since it was introduced here in 2006. However its pedigree goes back much further than that, via a Ford Courier lineage that dates back to the late 1970s. In all that time it’s been endowed with a strong ladder chassis, and although it has been upgraded and strengthened as the years have gone by, it’s essentially the same. Each time Ford has announced a new medium sized ute it has stated that the underpinnings are basically unchanged, with the exception of better brakes and steering, improved shock absorbers, and so on. However my bet is that there are lots of bits they don’t tell you about, because for most of us mere mortals it’s not very interesting stuff. A gusset here, an extra weld or two there, thicker or stronger metal in this or that section. It’s all part of the constant improvement that goes into modern motor vehicles to address problems which may have arisen, and it’s one of the factors that make the latest version of a given vehicle more appealing than the outgoing one. So we have a new Ford Ranger on the market. Basically, says Ford, it’s the same as the old one, except for a few cosmetic changes here and there. But my bet is that a lot has happened under the covers to make this version of the Ranger the best yet – by a country mile. In fact we went out to prove it. Our test venue out at Extreme 4WD Park near Helensville outside Auckland is not a place to visit in the middle of winter if you’re faint at heart. It’s a working farm with lots of steep hills, valleys, streams and bogs, with lush green paddocks on clay which become a slippery mess under the slightest provocation when there has been lots of rain. When we took the Ranger there it had been raining on and off for weeks, and we didn’t expect it to be a picnic. But there was testing to be done, not just of the Ford ute but also the LanCor winch anchor as well as mud testing of the MaxTrax – both of which appear after this article - so we went out there prepared for a full and muddy day. We took all our usual recovery equipment, including the hand winch, and in addition Project8K, our Jeep Cherokee project vehicle, as a safety backup. Plus spare boots and clothing in case the mud got the better of us. We aired down to 20 psi in both vehicles (although the Jeep has big lugged GT Radials mud tyres) for extra safety and grip. First up I went into a series of holes specially dug to test axle articulation. We went in OK, but with a rear wheel 20 cm or so off the ground that was as far as we got. Wheel in the air means wheelspin, which, with an open centre differential, means no drive. However when I selected reverse the wheel dropped and we were able to get out. That’s typical of a 4WD ute without a locking rear differential. Next we set off to what is often referred to as the “nursery slope”, a short but steep hill on a well-worn sandy track with a hole just before the top. On a dry day the hill is dusty and gives lots of wheel spin, with that hole throwing the left front wheel into the air if you hit it too fast, and often causing some 4WDs, particularly of the “softroader” recreational kind, to lose traction and sometimes fail the hill. 4WDs with low ratio usually have no such problems, and when we got there we thought we might not even bother. After all, our Ranger Double Cab XLT auto has a perfectly good low ratio gearbox (which we engaged before we moved off) and shouldn’t have too much of a problem. Except that when we looked more closely the “sand” had turned into a layer of thick cloying mud, which was further churned up by the mud tyres as Project8K bit deep into the surface. The Jeep hesitated for a second or two as it hit the hole, then crested the hill and moved out of the way. “I didn’t give the Ranger much hope of getting up easily,” said our resident engineer Neville Taylor. But we decided to give it a go. I selected second low – and it was just a breeze. As we hit the hole the front wheels hesitated for a split second, then bit again, and we were up and over with even less hassle than the Jeep! Test no. 2 passed with flying colours. Our next plan of action was to test the MaxTrax and the LanCor, so we went looking for a nice gnarly bit of churned up paddock where the cattle had been drinking at a stream. There were a few choices, but on the way we had to descend from the top of Extreme right down to its lowest levels. That’s a lot of driving on open paddocks which were so slippery that I almost fell while merely walking, never mind riding downhill in two tons of ute on what are essentially road tyres. I put the truck into first gear low – remember it was an automatic – and set off after the Jeep, which was leading the way, expecting at any time to start to run away as speed built up, and constantly looking ahead to ensure I would have enough space to come to a safe stop if it did get too fast. I certainly didn’t wasn’t going to touch the brakes (we’re talking steep and slippery here) despite having ABS. Sometimes the electronics just don’t react fast enough to stop a momentary lockup, and in this situation a rear lockup could have meant the ute popping the tail out and possibly rolling down the hill. But I needn’t have worried. With an overall gearing of 29:8 to 1 the Ranger has one of the lowest automatic gearbox ratios on the ute market, and comparable to such 4WD station wagon icons as the Toyota Prado and the Mitsubishi Pajero autos. So I chose the gear, and steered, feet off everything as the 3-litre turbo-diesel took up the job of holding everything at an even, safe speed right to the bottom. Well almost. I stopped on a flat bit just before the final slight slope, and watched as Ashley tried to turn the Jeep around, finally ending up sideways across the slope in front of me, with little grip and no way to go but down to the boggy bit at the bottom. Which he did after turning downhill again, and as it turned out, the boggy bit looked worse than it was, he found a way out on a drier cattle path on the sunny side of the hill, and we knew it was safe to carry on. So I followed, and eventually we ended up at this VERY boggy bit. There was a stream flowing through the middle, but it was obvious this constantly changes direction as the cattle tramp in it. It was one very muddy and slippery place (as I noted when I crossed to take photographs) and made an ideal test site for the MaxTrax. I’ll talk about the test on page 21, so won’t go into it here. But after we got out and going again, I still had to return to the hard bit to find the way out. And to get out I ended up having to give it maximum revs, spinning the wheels madly until there was enough grip to back off the throttle. The “keep the wheels turning slowly” approach was a no-no when we tried it as each time one wheel would spin and stop the flow. Next up was the LanCor test. This time we drove right to the other side of the farm because the sun had shifted and we needed a place where there would be good light for photography. We had to go through lots of standing water – which gave no problems for the Ranger thanks to its good ground clearance – though we were worried about the computer under the bonnet on the truck’s left mudguard, as well as the intercooler, low down at the front of the vehicle, and protected only by a piece of flimsy plastic. Definitely something you’d have to sort out if you were going to take the Ranger onto any rocky ground on a regular basis. Either way, in our case we didn’t encounter any problems. On the way we tried some tracks we hadn’t used before. At one place there was a split, straight on relatively easy, but long, to the left a steep but short exit onto flat ground. Hard try first. I took a run at it, the front wheel hit a mound of earth, and we were rocketed up into the air and over the top. Next we had to climb a long and constant slope, slippery as it could be, and quite frankly I expected once more to be relegated to finding an easier way out. But this time, with judicious use of the accelerator I managed to keep the wheels turning, power on all the time but lifting off slightly as the grip became constant until we reached the top. Easy peasy. By now I was well satisfied with the Ranger’s performance and ready to go home and start the cleaning process, but we still had the LanCor to test. This time the Ranger wouldn’t play any active part (although it was parked on a solid bit of ground in case the anchor failed and we needed something heavy to attach the winch cable to). But the LanCor did its job, too, (see p. 22) and all that was left to do was go back to nearby Kumeu and get rid of the mud! Our Ranger came with a load bed liner, and it was great just being able to rinse off all the mud which had accumulated on the dirty equipment, with a high pressure hose. |
The rest took a LONG time though, a total of four hours before everything was back into (almost) showroom condition.
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