Project "X"plorer

[sLoWnStEaDy]

Well, this is my winter "beater", hunting, off-roading vehicle. In a round about way, this vehicle was completely free so I decided to play with it a little bit, nothing crazy, I set a $1k budget on this one!

It's a '95 Explorer XLT, 119K miles, 4.0 V6, 4wd etc... Plans are fairly simple and include the fallowing:

lift
35" tires
4.56 gears
lockers (sooner or later)
sloped body lift
system (unknown head unit, RE Audio SEX 10"s, 4th order bandpass, components, using "Crypt" series PA amps)
chrome bumpers will be cut/welded and sprayed with bed liner only chrome will be the center caps on the wheels

I already have the entire system laying around because I actually bought it for the Conquest then sold the Quest to my brother-in-law. I got a set of rims/tires with an extra set of rims off craigslist for $200, sold the one set of rims for $150 and will be selling the other set for $50 so tires will end up being free. Stock tire height is about 27", when all is said and done the explorer should be about 9"-10" higher than stock with about 4"-5" more ground clearance.

It is going to be a bit of a "ghetto" lift as the front lift kits for the IFS explorers are insanely expensive IMO. I will be getting 5"-6" of lift total and I am sure I will have to cut a little bit for final fitment. I am doing a Spring Over Axle conversion in the rear which should get me 5"-6" of lift. For the front, i am doing a "torsion twist" which is good for about 2" of lift and I am doing a "sloped" body lift. The explorer has 10 body mounts front to back body lift height will go as fallows, 3", 2-1/4", 1-1/2", 3/4", 0". That will make the front have a total of 5" lift and the rear 5"-6" of lift.

cost looks like:
Explorer - $0
35x12.5x15 Kumho Tires - $50 (as of right now, free if I get $50 for the rims they are coming off of)
Summit Racing "soft 8" wheels - $190
3" body lift blocks - $20
grade 8 bolts - $10 (for the body mounts)
Torsion twist - $0 (2" of front lift)
SOA parts - $50 (U bolts and leaf spring perches)
4.56 gears - $300 for both sets
system - $0 (from an old project but all BNIB still, no added cost to THIS project)

total - $620 thus far, I will make money back selling stock parts. the tires on it are almost new and should get me a solid $300 when/if I sell them, stock gears should get me $50-$100.

As always, I am having issues uploading pics, i will get them up sooner or later.
http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/5132/exlpoder.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/28/exlpoder.jpg/)

[85XR7Project]

You'll ruin the front axle shafts changing the torsion bar that way. Just sayin. Puts em at an abnormal angle and wears em out faster. I thought about doing it on my 5.0 Mountaineer until I did some reading.

Should be interesting. Any plans to make a smidge more power? Those 4 liters are fairly gutless.

[sLoWnStEaDy]

You'll ruin the front axle shafts changing the torsion bar that way. Just sayin. Puts em at an abnormal angle and wears em out faster. I thought about doing it on my 5.0 Mountaineer until I did some reading.

Should be interesting. Any plans to make a smidge more power? Those 4 liters are fairly gutless.

torsion twist is fine up to 2" of lift. After that, the cv shafts are at too much of an angle and cause abnormal wear and/or binding. Ran a 96 with TT and shackles for years and probably 50k+ miles on 31s without an issue.

As for power, probably not. I am sure the simple cold air intake, cat delete and a tune-up will be all i do. The 4-runner did fine with 33's and didn't have 1/2 the power of the exploder. The more power, the more you break stuff! Haha i wont be getting to extreme with this thing, just enough to get through the fields to recover my deer and through the mud puddles, shallow creek areas, etc... I is more of a daily driver build than an extreme off-road thing.

[Drifte]

Wish i had one of these for a winter beater. My dad had one, did really well in the snow just stock with good tires.

[sLoWnStEaDy]

Wish i had one of these for a winter beater. My dad had one, did really well in the snow just stock with good tires.

you can pick one up dirt cheap. It's pretty common to see "beaters" in the $500-$1k. Pretty nice, low mileage ones like mine are still only like $2k-$3k.

[Batwood]

I know a guy with some shitty 35s for cheap if you don't have any.

I had an exploder for a little while, but the 4.0 timing chain took a shit on me.
Moved up to a Mountaineer with the 5.0 and LOVED it!The torsion twist didn't really do much on mine, I finally just cranked it as far as it would go. Had 33s on it for a while with just lift shackles in the rear. (2" lift).They rubbed bad, but I didn't care.

This beast drove TO the trailer race last year, placed 6th, and DROVE HOME!
Finally lost oil pressure... even filling it full of Lucas oil treatment eventually wasn't enough... lol.

[sLoWnStEaDy]

I know a guy with some shitty 35s for cheap if you don't have any.

Actually got a nice set off Craigslist for next to nothing. They are Kumho PowerGaurd M/T, dont make them anymore but these are in really good shape and have about 5/16" tread or so, more than enough for the $50 I am out for the set.


I got two of my wheels today, I have to say, they are really damn good looking and seam to be pretty well made. Not use to steel wheels so the weight surprised me but I decided to check the straightness for shits and giggles and it was as good as I have ever seen, within .0020" of perfectly round which is pretty damn impressive IMO. I have checked brand new OEM equipment and I have had some be off over .0100", anything within .0030" is fantastic.

As for the rest of the project, I finally got the 220v ran and hooked up in the garage over the weekend. I now have my air compressor and welder functioning again so I can actually get going on stuff! I was planning to take the winter season off work as I usually do but got a really nice job offer working for "the man" (government job, lol) so I am going to be working a lot and need to get this done asap. Heading over to H&W to get my spring perches and what not...

[Krumm]

Wish i had one of these for a winter beater. My dad had one, did really well in the snow just stock with good tires.

are we remebering the same explorer? the one i remember had some BS ABS system that couldn't ever get the truck stopped. not to mention that retarded auto-4x4 that never kicked in at the right time and made it extremely unpredictable.

[Drifte]

Put in in 4x4 it was great. abs in it was fine, it was the GM abs at that time that sucked. Thats why the monte had so many excursions. Gonna have to unplug the abs in my s10 too im sure.