Radiator or coolant leak on the 2000 Ford Ranger
2 crashes 2 injuries 4 of the 11 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 5 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When radiator or coolant leak gets reported
There are 11 reports of radiator or coolant leak on the 2000 Ford Ranger, 5 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 98,000 miles. It is the 19th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 135,000 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 2 a crash and 2 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $350–$1,900 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure, every year of the Ford Ranger
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
Driving along highway in phx az. Lady collided with another vehicle. She was spun around in a circle sending her sideways across 3 lanes of traffic in reverse. Ending up in my lane, on the far right, driving around 65 MPH I stepped on my brakes, skidding into her drivers side rear corner head on directly in the center of my truck. My bumper was creased in the center, pushing it back into my radiator, front grill was crushed, hood was smashed upward, windsheild was broken, both front parts of the frame were bent inward towards the center, steering wheel was bent at the top forward and the center of the steering wheel was cracked to the point that I was unable to steer the truck as the steering wheel just spun around without turning the front wheels. I was wearing my seat belt as was my 5year old daughter. I was thrown agianst the steering wheel and my knees hit the dash board under the steering wheel. I feel that my driver airbag should have gone off preventing me from hitting the steering wheel and the dash board. The truck has not been fixed as of yet, as I am waiting on the other drivers insurance company to have it appraised…
I was east bound doing 50 MPH when a west bound chevy made a left turn into my lane, I pushed brakes turned right impacting the chevy head on spinning it 180 degrees and back into the west bound lane. Both the chevy's air bags deployed and it broke it's wind- shield. The air bags in my truck failed to deploy; I'm the original owner of the ranger. My truck as well as the chevy were totaled; $8,988. To fix my ranger. My wife suffered a broken left wrist and she broke a titanium rod in her back. She had to undergo a six hour surgery to remove the broken rods parts in her lower back and the surgeon had to add more rods in her upper back to stabilize two vertebrae , which were damaged in the crash. I send ford the accident report, body shop estimate and 20+ pictures of the truck and accident scene. Ford said the impact was not enough to set off the air bags. Both fenders were buckled, radiator was pushed into the fan, frame was bent, it took several minutes to open the pass. Side door to get my wife out of the truck. Bumper, grille and headlights were totaled. Ford offered to check the restraint control module and report their own lab…
The engine was 'not right' one day so the hood was opened in the bank parking lot and it appeared to be overheated. The temperature gage did not indicate this but the radiator was indeed without water. The radiator was filled and later checked out at the shop. It was determined that the temperature gage was not accurate and an external gage was added (a separate gage not part of the dashboard). The engine was never the same and has since needed to be replaced (with a remanufactured) due to being overheated. This was preventable if the temperature sensor had been operating properly. It was not broken (ie registered zero all the time), it was . . Bad or wrong sensor for the gage? Don't know really. The vehicle had less than 90000 miles.
Also reported on the 2000 Ford Ranger
Other wheel or tire problem
Other body or interior problem
Other suspension problem
Other powertrain problem
ABS module or sensor failure
Other speed control problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 11 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 11 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does radiator or coolant leak happen on the 2000 Ford Ranger?
Across 5 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 135,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is radiator or coolant leak on the 2000 Ford Ranger?
11 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.0 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed