This really isn’t much of a story except that I got a flat tire overnight, and I mistrust the little Ranger jacks so much I considered buying a floor jack and some jack stands at Harbor Freight before I just bit the bullet and jacked the truck up, following the directions in the manual, which, believe it or not, is still in the glove box on this 1993 model.
The instructions are also found under the hood, if your Ranger’s previous owner wasn’t as careful as mine.
There’s still a decent amount of brake pad on there.
That’s a nice spare. You could drive around on that. A floor jack wouldn’t really work well out here on all this gravel. The little bottle jack doesn’t look like it would support any weight at all, or would tip over really easily (I’ve seen it happen), but it got the job done.