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Josh's 4 door 1st gen explorer crawler (SGT Ex)

last night i got home and was getting ready to go hunt down the female npt fitting, but I wanted to make sure I got the right size, and I knew I had a spare on my fittings shelf, so I opened up the door and WAHLAH! A rear axle vent tube I bought for the bumblebee that didn't fit was staring right in the face with a light coating of surface rust to prove it was steel.

I cut the threads off, drilled the hole out to a full 1/4" took the pump off, pulled the brass fittings out (getting that brass nut from out of the reservoir sucked), found some sheet metal and made a patch, then took the pump over to my neighbor so he could tig everything together.

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Randy (neighbor) was not too happy with the prettiness of his tig welding, so I didn't get a pic, but will take one tonight after the paint has dried.

Also got my new temporary front shocks. the measurements were ~16.5" collapsed, and ~27 5/8" extended. I went searching for something that had these same measurements with an eyelet top and bottom, and found out that a 99-06 2500 silverado rear shocks are the same measurements...

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I say these are temps because I want to go to coilovers soon, and these shocks will be perfect for my daily, and they were the cheapest of the performance brands, so I got them. These are also why I couldn't afford to do anything else with the pump. lol

and because I like looking at it, I took another picture in basically the same spot as the last picture
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Don't See pictures :-( Am I not worthy LOL :)

not sure why they are not showing unless your network has photobucket images blocked.

Just went through and fixed all the broken image paths, and tried to update everything to current.

@BKennedy if you want to swing by and check out the trucks, feel free to holler at me. I live in La Mesa. I am leaving for KOH a week from tomorrow.
 






not sure why they are not showing unless your network has photobucket images blocked.

Just went through and fixed all the broken image paths, and tried to update everything to current.

That's crazy I can see all your other images but not those you just posted. Meh its all good. I must needs to be an elite member :) LOL
 






That's crazy I can see all your other images but not those you just posted. Meh its all good. I must needs to be an elite member :) LOL

Shouldn't have anything to do with being an elite member. They are image paths directly to my photobucket

edit: The links were broken... lol. Should work now.
 






Now I see them :) Hope you are able to get things taken care of on your Steering. Can't wait to see pics of KOH!
 






Now I see them :) Hope you are able to get things taken care of on your Steering. Can't wait to see pics of KOH!

Thanks! I think it will be ok. I should have it all back together tonight and get it bled out tomorrow to test drive it around the block.
 






steering works! still need to bleed the brakes, but at least i got all the hydraulics in and the steering is working really well and seems to be smoother than before.

Also got the misalignments and sleeves installed on the drag link. What a huge difference they made. Had to rob the ranger for the ones on the drag link, but will pick some up for it next week from Ruff Stuff.

Before
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After
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I need to raise the axle side trackbar mount to get it inline with the drag link and keep it away from the housing, and double sheer both the pitman arm and the knuckle, but I like the amount of travel the drag link has now.

Now for the bad news... after getting all the air out, the fluid has a pretty significant amount of metal debris in it. And the pump housing where the reservoir was originally attached is leaking. This really bummed me out, after all that work, and the leak is coming from the original housing. It's a steady drip, so I will have to address it. Just going to get a coat of permatex ultra black and run it until I do the pump upgrade.
 






That's awesome you got her all going again but bad about the leak. But hey this is why we have these vehicles right. To give us something to do. :)
 






Decided to add a double sheer to the passenger side knuckle. I didn't preheat it before, so we will see how well this holds up. With it being just a support, I don't expect any damage, but we will see.
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Then I drove the truck around the block a few times this weekend. The brakes are still squishy, i think driving it around is helping get the bubbles worked out. each time after driving it, I re-bled the brakes and it got better. The bad news for this weekend was the power steering pump was being a PIMA. It would not stop leaking from the seam where the reservoir and pump housing meet. I tried just putting ultra black gasket maker, but that didn't help.

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So last night I pulled the pump back off, and welded up the seam. I also put a layer of gasket maker on there to hopefully seal off any pin holes that I may have missed. I let it cure over night and all day today, will put everything back together tonight. I just need this pump to hold on for a few more months!

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Last week was awesome. I loaded the truck up Tuesday night with it still leaking from the power steering pump (and as i found out later the rear caliper). The steering was still working, but the brakes were sketchy, but I knew we could get it figured out on the lakebed, so off we went.
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My silverado with 170k made it with no real problems, but the trans temp did start rising (around 210) as we topped the last "hill" going into Yucca Valley, and with its age and mileage, I pulled over to let it cool off and wait for BFTank to meet us, so we could follow them into camp.

Once we got to camp, we unloaded and headed into hammertown to knock out some errands. We then went out to Jackhammer to play in the rocks, but only made the 1st climb before I realized my brakes were gone, a tire was loose, and BF's truck was boiling coolant. So we headed to backdoor to watch people (sorry, no pics of the rock crawling, but both trucks made it through easily)

Thursday morning we ran around trying to figure out the brake issue so we went back into town to try our luck with other calipers... This didn't work because the caddy calipers run a different brake pad style, so I was at a loss. Then one of the guys in camp (Josh, you are the man!) showed me how to properly pinch off the steel hard line going to that caliper, we tested and bled the system, and then wahlah! We had brakes.

so then we went into HT to watch the EMC finish up and power hour. Here are a couple of my favorite race cars...
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Thursday night, we went back to backdoor to watch the craziness.

Friday, we ran around bombing through the desert in Ex around 25-30 mph going back and forth between the spectator areas. The truck worked freaking awesome. The steering was great, but still slow. the tires were great, and overall it just worked well.

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Then we ran back to HT to watch the top 10 finishers roll in. Also seen this bad ass sum *****
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Friday night they were calling for rain, and my truck has bald tires and is a 2wd, so rather than risk dealing with 50,000 people trying to leave the lakebed after it was a muddy mess, we loaded up and headed home.

Overall it was an awesome weekend. Feels great to get back into this sport, even just as a spectator. When we were loading the truck up, the toe on the front tires was acting a little funky, and the upper link rod ends are SMOKED after my attempt to be a prerunner. This week I'll dive into the front end.

Also found a power steering bracket on ebay for 25 bucks, so when that comes in, I'll start the hack fest on fitting the pork chop pump in.
 












Started digging into the front end today, mainly to replace those joints in the upper links. After investigating, they were not that bad, just the housing itself is rocking back and forth in its location making a lot of noise. I dunno how I'm going to remedy this yet...

Next thing was checking suspension geometry. I zeroed out my gauge and it looks like the front axle on the driver side at ride height is at 9* towards the rear at the upper ball joint.

Next, I am going to square the axle, replace the joints on the passenger side, and see where it is at then. I'd like to be around 6*

I noticed the old rod ends actually have a smaller housing than the new ruff stuff ones, so I am hoping the extra size in the housing will limit the rocking of the rod end. If not, I'll just suck it up and deal with it racking back and forth in the mount
 






got the other upper link rod ends replaced and on the passenger side, that side is sitting at 10* towards the rear. I also think the passenger side may be pushed towards the front of the truck a little more, so I am going to measure off the link mounts to the axle centerline, square it up, and hopefully set the caster at 7* without jacking up the front pinion angle.

Also got my power steering bracket in yesterday, so as soon as I get paid, I'll get the u bracket from PSC and the new pump to see if I can make it work.
 






got the axle squared back up and it is now sitting at 7* on the top of the knuckle, with equal spacing from the factory body mount to the axle to the frame side link mounts.

Also, my pitman arm was off just a little from center, I could tell when I was trying to turn the wheels last weekend. I could go all the way one way, but not the other. So I pulled that off, took my measurements and got the pitman centered in the steering box.

When I went to center the drag link and tierod, I noticed something...

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As you can see, the track bar bolt is contacting the tierod. The track bar is also off center to the front of the truck. So if it isn't raining on Sunday, I'm going to relocate the axle side track bar mount to on top of the factory mount, similar to how my Ranger is done

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update from before TDS: I shaved the bolt for the track bar and it really helped with turning radius. Then I went to TDS...

So TDS was awesome. Hit some fun trails, killed some hills, and Ex did awesome.

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Then I decided to try the "Shoots and Ladders" trail, which is a ravine that is somewhat of a really tight S shape.

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I was about 10 feet from the end of the trail when my back tire sucked down in the ravine...

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and as you can see, Ex started to slide in the ravine. Instead of turning driver and getting all tipy, I pussed out and turned passenger to try and pull the rear back up, and failed miserably...

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I was stuck AF, and no one behind me to pull me backwards, so I tried backing up, and popped the passenger side lockout. I was basically dead in the water.

So I pulled out the winch cable, and pulled myself through the ravine, crushing the driver side of the truck

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video of the crunching.



after getting past the windshield, I drove out.



got back to camp, and took a hi-lift to open the door opening up back to almost normal, then hooked up a winch on each side and pulled the cab back out to get it away from the steering wheel and driver seat

 



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So after I pulled it out, I swept the glass off the driver seat, replaced the lockout, and Ace Ventura'd it for the rest of the weekend.

A95ED9B7-2A15-4FA5-BDF2-D39279BFFE91_zpsurwwnokh.jpg


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Here is how the truck looked when I got it home

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and a before and after of the damage
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