Next weekend I'm picking up a vehicle which will be used as TTF's first budget/sleeper turbo project vehicle (first since I got here, not first since the site started). It's not the best platform for a turbo build, or a common one, but I can't pass up the deal:

A friend has a 1996 Ford Explorer Sport:

1. Manual transmission
2. 4.0L DOHC V6
3. 120,000 miles on the odometer
4. Never been in an accident, no dents, etc.
5. $200!

Basically, a friend has driven this thing for years. He was taking care of his elderly mother for quite some time and driving her Mercedes, so he parked the Explorer for a long time. Now he just wants it gone. The Explorer's injectors are all clogged up, it'll barely idle and needs some basic R&R (injectors, fuel filter, oil change, spark plugs, air filter, new hoses/belts, etc). But mechanically it's sound. Its too good an offer to pass up -- he gets rid of something just sitting in his driveway and I get a project vehicle which my daughter can also drive until she's done with her university degree. For $200 and an 8 hour round trip with the trailer I have a "new" project.

I welcome user suggestions and ideas for the project. Also, sponsors are welcome to get in touch with me concerning parts for it. Articles will be written about installation, tuning, etc. of both sponsored and non-sponsored parts and featured prominently on the home page (and the appropriate article sub-section).

 

This will be a sleeper in the sense that not many are going to expect a college aged girl in an Explorer be sporting a turbo under the hood. I know it won't be terribly quick but it'll be much better than the stock 4.0L. Because my daughter's gonna drive it I can't have any downtime so the stock engine stays in. I'm going to write a tune to limit it a bit when she's driving it - she doesn't have a great track record with vehicles, lol.

Next year when she graduates and is in the work force (already has a job waiting for her) she plans to buy a car and I can take it off the road for a long term build to get it to be the vehicle *I want*. In the meantime I'm going to shop around for a 3-valve or 4-valve 4.6L I can put on the engine stand and take my time building it strong as hell. Plus a strong transmission as well. I'm going to document that build as well.

I've tuned a lot of customer vehicles which were turbo'd in the past, as well as supercharged. Plus my F150 is supercharged. This will be the first turbo build I've done for myself.

 

He's supposed to call me with the VIN later today so I'll have more info. Doing some quick research just now found out if its a 1996 its OHV, not SOHC. Also, it may be a 1997, don't know until I talk to him again today. If it's a 1997 then it could be OHV or SOHC. Fingers crossed that its a 1997 with SOHC! I only talked to him for about 5 minutes last night about it so my info now is sketchy but I did ask him to get me the VIN so I'll know what's in it (I'm going to pre-order parts later today so they'll be here by the time I pick up the Explorer).

 

Yeah, its gonna be lowered as well as upgrading the sway bar and putting Bilstein shocks on it, and some good tires.

Just got off the phone and he gave me a VIN. Its neither a 96 or 97, its a 1998. It has the OHV 4.0L (X in the 8th digit of the VIN). Probably going to need to do lubrication system upgrades based on what I've read about this engine, and take a look at something better for the head gaskets. Not going to do any mods I can't reasonably get done in a single day (Saturday, which gives me Sunday "just in case") since she has to be able to drive it Monday-Friday.

 

It took a couple of weeks longer to make arrangements to go pick it up, but I finally managed to get it here yesterday.

The ordeal:

- Get there and one tire on his Explorer is flat. I pump that up with an electric pump.

- Back the trailer in, and I don't have enough room (had a good idea before I started that could be a problem). My diesel is sticking out blocking the road in both directions.

- Pull my trailer into the street, unhitch the trailer, go back to his Explorer, put wheel chocks behind the wheels and put it in neutral. Go back to my truck, use it to push the Explorer as far up the driveway as it can go.

- Hitch the trailer back up, back into his driveway but there is not enough width in the drive way to maneuver the trailer around to get it line up with the Explorer - and I'm pretty darned good at maneuvering it. Problem was I couldn't really take the time to do it, his house is right next to a busy road and cars are pulling into his street all the time, so I have maybe 30-60 seconds of maneuvering time at best without risking it getting hit.

- ^^^^That part worked out for the best actually, because the Explorer would have been backwards on the trailer, and it would be very hard to get proper weight distribution.

- Pull the trailer back out into the street, unhitch it. Pull my truck into his driveway, hitch up a tow strap and wait for him to get home. Call him and he says he'll be there in an hour. Two hours later he shows up, its hot as hell and my A/C switch in the truck is broken (picked up a new one Thursday but hadn't gotten a chance to install it). So needless to say at this point I'm sweaty and in a sour mood.

- Start to tow the Explorer with him steering to a point where we can roll it up onto the trailer. Mind you we're having to pull it backwards. I don't know what the hell he was thinking but at some point he smacked the brakes, the tow strap went taught then strung back like a rubber band, slamming his Explorer into the Powerstroke. I was ready to blow a cork at this point.

- Get the come-along I purchased before the trip, rated at 6000lbs (Explorer is 4700 lbs). Cranked the Explorer up maybe 1 and a half feet up the ramps and the steel cable starts to fray... really obvious it'll snap trying to pull it up the rest of the way. Pretty pissed at that POS and will be returning it to Tractor Supply tomorrow. By this time I'm ready to ask God "why me?" If you're wondering why I had a come-along instead of a winch on the trailer... prior to this the trailer has always been used to load running vehicles.

- So now we're left with the one thing I didn't want to do and breaks the rules about loading a trailer: use my diesel with a tow strap to pull it onto the trailer, with no vehicle connected to the trailer to keep it from moving. 4 huge wheel chocks... but I had visions of the trailer climbing over them, the front end going up and an Explorer laying on it's side in the street. We took our time, did things very slowly and managed to get it up on the trailer.

- Strap down the Explorer. I have two straps rated at 20,000lbs each (they about 5 inches wide) on the front of the Explorer, one on the back, plus a 2,500lb strap on each corner.

- He lives a mile away from the interstate and everything is fine until I get on the Interstate. The moment I get over 30 mph it's was obvious to me that this wasn't going to turn out so good and I needed to exit ASAP. Why? Because it became apparent that in 15 years my friend had never replaced the shocks on it! Every ripple in the road was causing the Explorer's body to bounce so violently it rocked the F250 and trailer.

- Its rush hour, and I tried for 4 damn exits to get over and off the interstate because I knew there was a Home Depot/Lowes not far from these exits. Not a single person would let me over, I had to go 15+ miles with this death trap driving like a grandma with every a-hole in metro Atlanta thinking it was their job to cut me off to show me their displeasure for my slow driving.

- If you've ever been on I-285 in rush hour, you'll understand me when I say pulling onto the shoulder would be more dangerous than trying to exit.

- Finally manage to get to a Home Depot. One of the smaller straps had actually snapped and one the other small hooks had come unhooked from the bouncing. The huge straps would have insured it couldn't come off the trailer, but the problem was the bouncing... one wrong move and the Explorer might have pulled the trailer onto it's side.

- I buy several LARGE straps and completely compress the Explorer's suspension so it could not bounce. Go a few exits, pull over check the new straps, they all stretched about a half inch or so which is normal for new straps, tighten them up, and I'm on my way (finally) at freeway speeds). I stop a couple of additional times to check everything, and its fine so it's a nice speed limit drive the rest of the way.

So:

- 3.5 hours going out there.
- What should have been 30 minutes to load it turned into 3.5 hours.
- 3.5 hour trip back turned into nearly 6.

I have hauled cars many times, and towed as much as 11,000 lbs plus the weight of a 19ft dual axle trailer... and never had I had such a nightmarish scenario. First time I was honestly frightened with a load, but I've been doing this long enough to know you have to fix a sub-par situation - not try to struggle along and "make it there." Fix the situation, then haul. I have to take some blame here... I've never hauled a vehicle with shot shocks, so it never occurred to me to check them before loading the Explorer. Lesson learned.

BTW... picking up a winch tomorrow!

 

Sterling351, really wish I could take you up on the offer of the engine, but first I need to spend a couple weekends going over this thing to see what needs to be addressed concerning what regular maintenance items were or were not done. Basically, after seeing the condition of the shocks, I'm going to give this thing a complete going over replacing all the short term and long term maintenance items, because I'm willing to bet he rarely went further than regular oil changes. He was good about oil changes, but knows next to nothing about vehicles so I doubt he did a lot maintenance wise.

I plan on documenting pretty much everything about this for the site (not BS items like "here's how to change the wiper blades", lol). It's a mess, the interior is full of trash (and that's after he cleaned it out, he's a pack rat and it was loaded to the ceiling with stuff before I headed out there!). The exterior, it honestly looks like he has never washed it.... its covered in layers of pollen which got wet often enough to stick it like glue, but I did clean one small spot and the underlying paint is in very good shape. So I'm going to have my hands full getting it road ready before I can consider swapping out the engine.

My eventual plans do include a modular engine swap. Before I do that I'm going to get drop keys and lower it a couple of inches. Problem with that is I've read that using drop keys actually softens up the front suspension so I'll need to address that as well. Don't want a powerhouse under the hood until I'm confident it won't easily roll over, lol.