Ford Explorer V8 95-01. Are they solid?
- Thread starter RedVenom48
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I just sold my 98 Explorer Sport 4x4 back in August when I bought my 12 FX4. I DD'd it for 7 years, and it was one of the most rock solid dependable vehicles I've ever owned. It wasn't a 5.0, but the 4.0 SOHC with the 5R55 and factory 4.10 gears had plenty power for what it was. I slapped on some General Grabber AT2's, and it would go anywhere I wanted to go deer hunting in the WV hills.
I was always leery of the rear timing chains due to hearing the horror stories. But my 4.0 never made a single weird noise, nor ever leaked a drop of oil. I sold it to a good friend locally, and he still DD's it every day. I think it's knocking on 200k miles now.
They are known for rusty rocker panels and sagging rear springs after time. I installed 2" lift shackles and outer rockers, and only had to do routine maintenance like ball joints, hubs, etc at approx 160k miles.
I was always leery of the rear timing chains due to hearing the horror stories. But my 4.0 never made a single weird noise, nor ever leaked a drop of oil. I sold it to a good friend locally, and he still DD's it every day. I think it's knocking on 200k miles now.
They are known for rusty rocker panels and sagging rear springs after time. I installed 2" lift shackles and outer rockers, and only had to do routine maintenance like ball joints, hubs, etc at approx 160k miles.
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I have a Ranger with the 4.0 Engine, all I've had to do is a T-stat housing, but I think you'd be more happy with the 5.0 especially for towing.
That thing is super clean.
I miss the days when second gens were new enough that they were still worth money and a lot of people did them up as street trucks. Most people on EF these days buy 700 dollar 2nd gens and do a TT/shackle lift and wheel them with cheap mud terrains.
my brother (who is still on EF 4 explorers later) had a 98 that he did up with a lot of parts from explorer express including a mac CAI, TM headers, EE airdam and EE swaybar. It looks like it got junked in PA in 2014 after getting in two accidents sadly.
I know a guy, he used to work with me, has a black 2 door sport with manual. He doesn't know anything about cars and a shop charged him 3grand roughly to "replace the transmission" He DD it still to this day as far as i know.
One day a guy walked into the office and mentioned to me "i should see this car in the ditch out back." There is a ditch/wood area behind the parking lot. I go out and look and it is this Explorer. (more on this in a second) I go back inside and grab the guy and tell him it's in the ditch. We go back outside and he said "o shit, i guess i didnt leave it in gear." I respond, "what about the e brake." He responds "never use it." He got in and pulled it out.
Now, back to the more on this above.....my car was parked in the back row next to the ditch. There were 2 empty spaces between me and and next car. He had parked in the row in front of where i was. There is a driving path to exit between these two rows. The row he was in was 1 car over from me. When it rolled back, it missed my car probably by 6inches. I was like holy shit! I would have probably said some unforgiving things, I am glad that didnt happen. It hit the curb and weight carried it over into the ditch....
Dude wtf? Drives a manual and uses the transmission to immobilize the vehicle, not the PARKING brake? Glad your car didn't get wrecked. Semi impressed the Explorer made it out of that situation.
All the bases have been pretty much been covered here. I have 3 currently. Personally I’d stick to looking for a 5.0 over the 4.0 even though I haven’t had any issues with any 4.0 SOHC i’ve had through the years. My 01 5.0 AWD has 300k on it with original drivetrain still. Actually all 3 of mine together have almost 800k on them all with original drivetrains so that’s about as good as you could possibly ask. I just use it as a spare vehicle or if it snows.
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Dude I wanted saleens (or Cobra R’s) on my 96 sooooo bad. Back then I barely was able to afford the fuel to go in it.
How do you know a vehicle was junked? Public record or did you track it? What? I’d love to track down my 03.
Back before I even had my license in 04-05, I wanted a 2nd gen with the Explorer Express supercharger kit so bad! I wonder how hard it'd be to make a 5.0 Kenne Bell kit work with the Explorer.
Funny enough a friend of mine in upstate NY parted out a xp8 that used to get serviced at the Ford dealer he used to work at. He kept the Saleen wheels since they're the perfect offset for a box body panther.
Carfax said it was wrecked and had a junk title, I ran the vin in that free auto check site that was shared here a while back and it told me what yard it went to in 2014. I wish carfax showed that kind of info, I looked up a 86 735i I bought as a parts car and I found out that went to a scrap yard in VA after I was done with it.
I wanted that Explorer Express kit for my 2002 Ranger.
Someone off EF shows up every year to carlisle (from Manitoba) with a 5.0L swapped sport that has the X-charger on it. I think its a baby M62.
Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen him the past couple of years. EF got mad at carlisle after the year the Shelby's took over and they got merged in between all the F150's.
The later ones were all SOHC.
What year was that switch to the SOHC? I know Ford offered the OHV and SOHC concurrently for a number of years
I don't remember exactly.
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