BLOGS

I was up in the mountains near Fish Lake last week with entomologist Connie Mehmel with the forest service looking at budworm damage when on our return, the front tire blew out of the forest service's Ford Ranger. Not too big of a problem but as we found out, the jack that they issue with this truck is way too small! We jacked the truck up - not enough height. We put a piece of asphalt we found along the highway under the jack - not enough height. We put a rock between the asphalt and jack and could just get the tire off the truck but it wasn't high enough to get the new tire on.

I put the bad tire under the chassis and tried that but it was still not enough. I put asphalt between the tire and truck but that didn't hold up. I put a large rock there instead and was then able to get three layers of asphalt under the jack to get the new tire on! BUT - when I jacked it down, the truck now wouldn't go down far enough to get the jack out. So here's what I did:

I put the rock under the tire and we drove the truck off the rock. Ford needs to either put a decent jack in the truck or add the above steps in their operators manual.

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