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Colorado 5 cyl emgine
I've been doing a little research on small pickups. I'm thinking along the lines of a Chevy Colorado or Ford Ranger. I've had a two or three Dodges in the past that weren't much and I'd rather stay with a domestic brand. I think Ford still uses the 3.0 V6 that gave us good service in a couple Taurus cars, and Chevy uses a 5 cyl engine that I have no experience with, so just wondered if any one who has one could offer their thoughts, good or bad about the 5 cyl. Frank.
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Colorado 5 cyl emgine
The five is a version of the six offered in the Trailblazer. It had some teething issues early on with dropping the #5 cyllinder sleeve (sleeved aluminum block), but, I think that has been overcome now.
I know little else on the five.
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Colorado 5 cyl emgine
My recollection of the Ford Ranger was that it was a rebadged Mazda B2000. Don't know if that is still true though.
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Colorado 5 cyl emgine
Maybe the Ford Ranger & Mazda badging is the other way around. Ford was selling a small Ranger like pickup (the Courier) before they bought Mazda. My Ranger was built in the Chicago Ford plant. Of course these days maybe the Chicago Ford plant is really a Mazda plant.
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Colorado 5 cyl emgine
Ford had a marketing arrangement with Mazda long before the share swap.
Mazda sold Ford cars & trucks in Asia, Ford sold re-badged Mazdas in NA.
I have a friend who has a fleet of small service trucks, for years he had Mazdas & Toyotas and was happy with them. The local Ford dealer convinced him to switch to Rangers and the fleet was replaced in short order, with more Mazdas.
It seems that the Japanese design / American build just didn't work out well. They had repetitive break-downs with items that lasted the life of the vehicle on the Mazdas.
Best of luck.
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Colorado 5 cyl emgine
Hardwood:
I'd suggest staying away from the Ford Ranger. It is a Mazda based design that I've heard has lots of issues. I haven't heard much about the 5 cylinder. Have heard rumors that gas mileage isn't the greatest. Also haven't heard much about the Dodge Dakota.
My suggestion is to get a real truck in the half ton category like a 1500 Chevy or F150. Have heard there are some good pricing incentives on the larger trucks that get you almost down to pricing of the little ones.
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Colorado 5 cyl emgine
There is no such thing as an "American car" anymore.
Putting out a product with a defective engine... something so basic... speaks volumes about the corporate thinking.
They can blame the unions, but there is a deeper problem here.
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Colorado 5 cyl emgine
I think the Mazda is just a rebadged Ford with slight differences in the interior trim. The hardware was sold as a Ford before they started to rebadge as Mazda and stopped importing the Mazdas.
The Toyota Tacomas are assembled in Freemont CA and Baja CA.
The Ranger/Mazda are out of St Paul or Edison NJ. They are listed as Ford plants.
Colorado is made in Burlington VT or Shreveport LA. You can buy it as an H3 also.
The quality is sometimes quite different depending on the assembly plants with in the US. On some vehicles I would check the plant before I would consider it.
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Colorado 5 cyl emgine
My Ford Rangers have been lousy. The 2.9l V6 (same family as the 3.0 I believe) had cracked heads from defective castings. The 4.0l was replaced due to piston slap and defective wrist pins and the new one is doing the same thing. Now they claim it's normal. Not to mention all the other stuff that has been replaced, sometimes several times. If you get one be sure to get the longest extended warranty they offer. Then sell it before it hits 100k miles. I've had two Rangers and the extended warranty more than paid for itself on both of them. I like everything about the Ranger except reliability. My business was the domestic automakers to lose and they lost it.
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