Nice truck Leon!! I personally like the look of the step side on the Rangers, the bed is so small you don't loose much space anyways. Great buy!
Butch, I had a '91 Ranger with the four in it, after I had to put the second head on it I upped everything. I got the SVO cam and Dynomax cat back exhaust. I averaged 19mpg. We took that truck to Vegas and back (never again in a standard cab!) the best we got was 24mpg, the worst was 14Mpg in the mountains.
My '97 F-150 std. cab short bed with the 4.2l 6 and five speed started out at 18mpg, I switched to synthetic and got 19mpg. I changed the rear gears to 3:73 from 3:42 and dropped back to 18mpg ( I couldn't hardly haul anything before)
My '04 F-150 ext. cab long bed tow package with 3:73 rear 5.4l 8 auto (which I would have been happy at 14) gets 16 with synthetic.
Does that help any? (Change you're oil to synthetic (yes it's expensive, but you should gain 1mpg) look at a cold air intake system, look at a good cat back exhaust system (remember, the engine is just an air pump, make it efficient) and look into a power programmer. None of these things are really cheap, but they will all improve fuel economy, and thats what it's about, do all of them, and you might forget all about the small trucks!