Have you ever wondered how your Ford Ranger is made?

The Ford Ranger is sold in 180 countries, each with its own set of standards and requirements that demand rigorous testing.

The main manufacturing hubs for the Ranger are Ford Thailand Manufacturing and AutoAlliance Thailand, the Silverton Assembly Plant in South Africa, the Michigan Assembly Plant in the USA and the Pacheco Assembly Plant in Argentina. There are also completely knocked-down operations in Vietnam and Cambodia.

But let’s cut to the chase – here are some truly interesting facts about the Ranger and its manufacturing process:

• One Ford Ranger rolls off the production line every two minutes at the Ford factories in South Africa and Thailand.
• There are almost 600 robots employed on the chassis line. It takes about three hours to build a chassis.
• There are around 3 000 to 4 000 spot welds in the body of every single Ranger.
• To prevent corrosion, the body is dipped into 12 chemical baths before it goes to the paint shop.
• Every single Ranger is covered with approximately eight litres of Ford’s innovative 3-Wet High Solids Paint system, which allows the primer (three litres), the base coat (three litres) and the clear coat (two litres) to be applied while each coat is still wet.
• The 3-Wet process used at the Ford Silverton Assembly Plant and Ford Thailand Manufacturing ensures durability and chip-resistance.
• Each Ford Ranger, once painted, is checked by a paint scanner, which can detect defects as small as 0.2mm². This, just to put it in perspective, is smaller than a needle’s tip.
• There are more than 2 700 parts in each Ford Ranger. Each vehicle undergoes nearly 1 000 quality confirmation checks before it’s allowed to be sent to a dealership. Technicians also perform 300 electronic diagnostics checks and 35 electrical current-based tests to match Ford’s quality expectations.
• The water test subjects each Ranger to 20 minutes of pressured water spray to ensure that no seal is breached by any water. This water is recycled as part of Ford’s ongoing effort to lower its carbon footprint.
• The auditors uses a special audible alert to detect any moisture the passes the seals.
• Once the final quality confirmation check has been completed inside the factory, there are three final hurdles before it can be loaded up and sent to dealerships around the world. These are the Squeak and Rattle Track, High Speed Track and Rough Road Track.
• To ensure the steering and wheels are aligned and the headlights are pointing where they need to, an example of every single Ranger variant is removed from the line at random, every single day and lasers are used to check wheel alignment and so forth.

Source: MotorPress