Picked up a 96 Eddie Bauer today.

[renswic]

Been thinking about trading in the Wife's 98 mercury sable wagon for a Ford Explorer. Last night my parents made us a cash offer for the wagon plus their 95 Ford Bronco. So today we went to check out one of the explorers we had looked at and ended up bringing it home.

Its a 1996 Ford Explorer 4x4 Eddie Bauer. Has the small much more fuel efficient V6, 169k on the clock. Only problems is a good sized dent on the front passenger door and a couple of small things with the inside of it. Due to the dent the price sat right were we wanted to pay, $3000.

The sale went easy as well. We walked in and told the owner of the lot that we would give them the bronco plus $1000, as I expected they said no and asked $2000 plus the Bronco. My last counter was $1500 cash and the Bronco and they took it!

Hated to have to give up the Bronco, but it just wasn't getting used, was starting to be a money pit as well so it had to go. Been trying to sell it for the last 6 months and at even $1000 we had no bites.

Going to pick up a transmission filter kit tomorrow and get it changed out. So far we have had to buy 3 new wiper blades, honest people gas cap(locking), chiltons book, passenger mirror motor works but it is really sluggish so I'll be haunting the junk yard for that as well as a center console lid and a rear air vent. The inside looks almost show room.

I'll also dig out one of my extra sets of all weather mats and got a head light restore kit.

It has an aftermarket Kenwood radio in it, I need to pull the trim off and see how it was installed and fix if needed.

Pics, night ones but deal with it:





The dent, back story is that one of the salesmen backed into it. Price went from $5k to $3k for that and they had paper work that showed the frame is still straight.


I lurked this forum last night and got ready to find the keypad code so we could use it and got lucky, the stock code card was in the owners book.

Going to do some more lurking and see if I can find anything on why the fog lights and lighter are no workey.

[1AJeremyD]

Welcome to the forum! Inside looks great. It's definitely unfortunate that there's a sizable dent i the truck already but i you will be much happier with the explorer over the bronco!

[1ATony]

Welcome to the site

[renswic]

Thanks guys!

Originally Posted by 1AJeremyD

Welcome to the forum! Inside looks great. It's definitely unfortunate that there's a sizable dent i the truck already but i you will be much happier with the explorer over the bronco!

Ya it sucks but it took $2k off the price tag and moved the price into our price range. I had the door panel off today and it looks like I'll be able to push most of it out.

Today I ended up hitting the junk yard. My mission was to find a passenger side mirror, console lid and one of the rear vents. Ended up spending $45 on a bug deflector, mirror, new cup holder piece(one that came with it had 2 small cup holders right next to each other with a covered ash trey/storage cubby). Replaced it with one that had 2 bigger cup holders that sat farther apart with an open cubby spot, 2 roof rack tie downs, rear passenger door handle trim and sun glass holder piece for the roof console. Didn't find a black center console lid though.

Stopped by the parts store and sadly was only able to get the plastic rivet things to hold the bug deflector on as the power was out and they couldn't search for the part number for the filter kit, but managed to get the bug deflector and mirror on before our road trip. Road trip was fun and free for us. Fiend of my mother in laws flew into town and ended up needing a ride to his house 110 miles away(closest air port to his place) he offered us $100 to run him home so it was shake down cruse time.

The Explorer handled like a dream, had the normal problems that a boxy vehicle has with wind but that was it. I ended up riding in the back seat so I could handle the kids(mostly feed the baby and be a pillow for the toddler and there is a shit ton more room back there then our old wagon and the Taurus we had before it. The electronic/auto HAVC controls took some getting used to.

Still want to pick up vent visors for it, I want the firestone spare tire gone ASAP, we need to get the adapter for the kenwood radio that will let us hook our iPods up to it and I need to hunt down who put the radio in and shoot them. Instead of buying the more expensive wiring kit that would have worked every thing they just cut the factory plugs off and ghetto wired it.

Oh and the tires on it have less then 1000k miles on them according to the receipt I found, bonus!

[cougarsexplorer]

Sweet I just bought a 1998 Eddie Bauer Explorer myself. Funny, same exact color combo and mine too came with brand new tires with less than 1k. They are michelines from Les Schabb but a size to big 255/70/16 They are a blast off road. Never have had a problem yet and only had to lock down into low once.