Okay preface ive worked in fleet operations recently for both a company and the university.
This has to be on of the stupidest complaints ive seen from the average joe. Im sorry im calling every single reddit complainer out for this. I generally dont put an entire group of people on blast because some people in the group have sense but this is nearly senseless.
In the fleet we have scheduled maintenance intervals. Lots of things are scheduled at the same time and grouped by convenience of taking off the least parts and having the quickest turn around time but reliability is also taken into account as a factor
Now this article is reasonable about it so I am not putting this article on blast.
People love to jump on the first bandwagon they find to group think often about car issues especially american built cars because well there have been legitamate disappointments in the past but the oil filter relocation actually makes complete sense.
The OCI of the 2019 Ford ranger coincides EXACTLY when you are suppose to rotate tires. People are complaining that this is an unnecessary step added to the OCI. Well lets just look at the statistics almost 78 percent of all people who do their own oil change do rotate their own tires. If your bloody tires are already off why are you complaining that the left tire has to be pulled off? Seriously. Not to mention the relocation of the oil filter had to occur in this manor because of the largely improved oil cooler system and transmission cooler system. These systems improve the reliability of the vehicle one would be complaining about. From an engineering perspective a lot of these ranger pick ups and F-150s are heavily used in fleet operations. OCI is almost always scheduled at the tire rotation intervals of most fleets anyway and if you talk to any fleet guy he would tell you that its still a breeze and minimally affected his turn around time if any.
For the average joe. If you are good about your maintenance which I am one of those people who is meticulous to an engineering level LOL. Then you are likely rotating your tires as you do this. Tire rotation takes 5-10 mins tops its a super easy job. Plus during tire rotation I frequently grease my calipers, check the suspension joints, inspect the struts, clean off the excess break buildup and dust. My vehicle gets the full work up every time. I clean the engine bay every time I do an oil change. I inspect the whole bay for issues. Battery terminals are cleaned and protected with protectant, all oiled up parts of the engine are degreased, alignment of headlights is checked, all fluids topped off and checked. These are all procedures I typically do at an OCI. The only OCI that is different is the one where Transmission Fluid and filter changes are occuring which I also do. That one involves me doing that and changing the spark plugs and checking the IGN coils. My normal OCI takes me 50 mins to an hour on my focus. If your going to do your own maintenance at home do it right. If your complaining that you have to take a tire off when you should be rotating them why are you doing your own maintenance. yes people can take their car into have their tires rotated but a good few people that do this also hit up a quiklube place for their oil change anyway so the question comes down to. Is this really that much of an extra step?
My thoughts are its just another reason to jump on the hate bandwagon of a rather good truck. The negativity that surrounds this vehicles comes because people could not get a ranger raptor in north america. There are reasons for this. The primary reason for this is actually our current presidency. I will cite the political commentary by ford briefly. “The local market conditions did not make this project suitable or profitable due to restrictions on the market for certain part imports”. This is largely due to Trumps big political agenda against outsourcing which is fine he is the president its his choice but yes this is all to do with your presidency very little to do with the vehicle being manufacturable.
Enough on the politics end of this. The fact that people complain before stopping and thinking about the “why” of a design choice is just dumb. If you dont like it you can settle for the less powerful toyota tacoma or the chevy prone to the transmission needing to be replaced “as early as 60K” unless you get the ridiculously expensive update to the TCM… those model years sucked. Every vehicle has its issues. This is hardly one to complain about.
Thoughts?