Had to make an unplanned road trip to Oklahoma after my Father in-law became stranded during his somewhat planned trip when his Ford engine quit holding compression. I actually think Ford is a good brand & company, but I still had to take the opportunity to harass him about needing a Dodge to finish the trip:



Thankfully most of the trip was sunny and not too cold or hot.

Just before I left one of my tires valve stems started giving me hissy fits. I thought this was going to be an problem being kinda low on $ and needing to make a 2,000 + road trip. I called up discount tire, told them I bought my last set of tires from them, which I had traded in with my last truck for the one I had now and asked if they could help me out with this one valve stem issue I had. I was a bit surprised when they said no problem. I showed up and they checked out the tires. Then they replaced all 4 valve stems and rotated my tires, no charge . I was planning to drive to a nearby city's PepBoys to get some Definity Dakota tires when the time came, but after that service I plan to pick from Discount Tire's selection for replacement tires.

Some gas mileage info/figures:
Tires when I left: General Grabber 165/70/16R's. With tread depths of 4, 7, 8, & 9. (yeah I know, strange wear pattern, I have no idea why, tires came on the truck when I bought it.)
Traveling to Oklahoma I got 14.1 MPG running regular unleaded/87 Speedway gas for much of the trip with camping gear loaded. Speed was either ~4 MPH over limit or faster if collective traffic flow was faster.
Traveling back I got 12.5~12.7 MPG running premium ~93 again using Speedway fuel when in states that had Speedways, hauling camping gear plus the ford, two more people and their stuff. Speed was a pretty consistent 62.5 MPH as I found this speed with OD off and hauling my load ran about 22000 RPM's which came close to what she was running at on the way down for RPM's & it was still fast enough that most of the time I was moving along with a group of semi's. Though as I approached the Michigan boarder I just wanted to get home so I bumped it to the speed limit/70 MPH.
I used cruise much of the way but generally around St Louis it was kinda hilly for it to be effective. Not to mention it's some kind of crazy construction season there right now apparently.

Now, time to save up for a new set of winter tires because from what I understand these oversize aggressive tires are why my MPG # is so low.

Edit: I learned in another thread with my H.O. motor I should have been running 91 octane, I mis-read the manual, opps, good thing it won't hurt anything, just gave me crappy performance.

 

where abouts in michigan are you?

 

Southwest/k-zooish.

 

What engime was in the ranger? I had I had an 86 with the 2.3. That thing never knew when to quit. Loaded or unloaded it got 25mpg even the 1k mile trip to dallas to pick up a motorcycle.

 

2.3 w/~299,000 miles. She'll keep on ticking after the engine rebuild.

 

Almost made 300. I've seen 350 before on a Ranger.

 

good googly moogly.....

 

Dodge tows another Ford home, very nice man. I have to agree with Discount Tire being great to work with. I ordered my summer rims and tires from them online and they went out of their way to find the rims I wanted which they didn't carry and nobody else reputable could get (Tire Rack was no help).

 

Probably would have been cheaper to have sold that thing to the nearest yard and got a greyhound ticket for the father in-law.

 

Perhaps, but handicapped brother in-law was stranded w/him so it would have been two tickets and he had been gone for a few months so probably would have had to pay an excessive luggage fee or something.

& the Wife (& I...) got to go see some relatives she hadn't seen in half a decade or more along with having her Grandma, now in a nursing home, see our toddler for the first time, and perhaps the last . Plus while we were down there her Aunt and Uncle gave both of us their really nice compound bow's (They quit using them due to injury) including cases and about a dozen custom made arrows . Plus it was a good excuse to go camping!

So, all and all, it was worth it to us.