Bone-Stock 2024 Ranger Off-Road Review

At the time of this writing, our 2024 Ranger Project Truck has less than 500 miles on the odometer, so we did the only logical thing we could think of and took it off-road for some exploring and testing outside Lake Pleasant.  For the uninitiated, our 2024 Ranger project truck is a fairly base-model STX with 4WD, vinyl floors, cloth seats, no frills, and an overly-aggressive moron (namely myself) behind the wheel.  The good news is that we managed to not break the truck, and for the most part, it pleasantly surprised us with its capabilities right off the showroom floor, even with our base STX lacking Trail Modes and a locker.  That being said, there were some drawbacks that limited us to some lines that didn't require a bunch of ground clearance or approach angles.

Taking a 2024 Ranger off-road for the first time

I picked up Desert-Tested's 2024 Ranger a few weeks ago, and aside from driving it back and forth for my day job and hockey, it hasn't seen much hard use.  Overall, I was pretty happy with the truck on-road, and it was definitely a huge upgrade in usability, fuel economy, and technology over my elderly and high-mileage 2011 F150 5.0L Project Truck.  I was pretty curious to see what it would do off-road, considering that this base-model truck comes with 3.73 gears and decent tires in the form of the stock Goodyear Territories.

The truck did VERY well overall, and while there's some room for improvement to make it a true trail-truck, the fact that this thing can do so well in such a base model, zero-upgrade form was a very nice surprise.

The area around Lake Pleasant is a mix of fairly well-maintained and graded dirt/gravel roads with a bunch of mild to moderate trails splitting off from the main arteries.  While there's not much that's super-technical, there are some trails with decent obstacles and shelfs that can really test a stock truck's ground clearance, approach angles, and departure angles.  Now, we could have done some dumb stuff and took harder lines to purposely hurt the truck, but we decided to try not to damage the truck and see how far we can push it while making it back in one piece.

On Well-Traveled Paths

On the graded and gravel roads, we were going about 30-35mph, mostly to not whip around turns and end up face-to-face with the numerous UTVs that were out and about during the day, but also to not overly stress the UCA ball joints on some of the more washboard paths.  The Goodyear Territory tires did excellent work, and we only had one or two times where traction became an issue, and only a single time where I had to put the Ranger in 4WD to back up an incline so that Leo could get a shot of the truck coming around a corner.

The truck had more than enough power to handle the inclines, but the tires were the real heroes here.  Even at their off-the-delivery-truck 50psi of inflation (and even the door says they should be at 38psi), the tires had more than enough grip on gravel and graded roads to take the truck just about any where the roads are decently maintained.

Off the Beaten Path

Taking the Ranger on tighter trails with rougher terrain and obstacles got a little dicey, but we managed to make it through without too many desert pinstripes or outright damaging the truck, but we came close on a couple of sections and we had to pop into 4WD a few times.

We sought out a couple places that had slicker rock, shelves, and places were we could really articulate the suspension to really see how much the stock ride height and factory tires would let us get away with.  The good news is that we managed to not scrape the air dam, frame, oil pan, or transmission pan.  The bad news is that we came pretty close.

The stock ride height and tires are part of the issue, and the ground clearance just isn't there for more of the aggressive lines. Another part of the issue is the huge amount of front rake this truck happens to have.  The 2024 Rangers have pretty good rear clearance and departure angles, but the front clearance and approach angles just aren't helping this truck out. 

The annoying part is that this truck has a TON of front rake.  I haven't measured yet, but it's going to take probably 2.75" to 3" of front leveling to get this truck a "dead-level" stance, and it feels like Ford probably could've spared us some grief with an extra inch or so of front ride height.

However, we did manage to make it out unscathed and we had a good time.  Again, the tires deserve a mention, but so do the 3.73 gears that are paired with them.  3.73s are pretty aggressive for a 255/70R17 tires (31.1" tires), and the gearing provides more than enough extra oomph with the low-end torque of the 2.3L EcoBoost under the hood to get this truck through most terrain.

Conclusion

We're very happy with how the Ranger performed.  We've had to pull folks out that had more equipped and taller trucks, and we had absolutely zero issues with the Ranger.  There is still plenty of room for improvement, and I look forward to adding some sort of leveling kit and bigger tires to squeak out some more ground clearance and fix some of the rake that was giving us trouble.  Aftermarket bumpers that free up some approach angle would also be great, but as of this writing, none are available.

Stay tuned as we put this bone-stock Ranger through its paces on some more official trails before we start throwing parts and accessories at it.