Jen's 03 Sport | Page 18 | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

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Jen's 03 Sport

Hello all...

To celebrate the final payment of my beast, I thought I should finally make a registry for it, with pictures and all!!!

When I was in college, I really wanted a 2door SUV that was relatively new and looked cool as well... Obviously that led me to the Explorer, as Jeeps are cool and all, but not all that practical as my daily driver. Sooo, the search was on! I wanted a black one, the newest year I could get for the Sport, with the fewest miles, with leather and a sunroof! :D

Eventually my searches pulled up my exact specs, but in South Dakota. I lived in Iowa at the time, so no big deal. I bothered the people at the dealership with my excessive questions to make sure it was worth the drive there to look at it. And luckily, it was! Mom and I drove out to look at it, and I ended up buying it. My first (nice) purchased car. It had 16,x.. on the clock, was a certified pre-owned from some old man so it was pretty nice, other than that saggy rear end.

First thing I did was swap out the stereo, and figured out how to wire it to the factory sub thanks to the forum! Then, add a leafs were next. I had the next several years mapped out for it when the tires would wear out and I was outta college and could finally have some money!!! I took off the step bars and added a Yakima rack and drove it like that until I moved to CO. That's when the magic started to happen, ;).

I knew I wanted to lift it from the day I bought it. When I started my big kid job out here in CO, I was able to buy new wheels, tires, shackles, and body lift to get it started! Thanks to the awesome boys from this forum (hokie, nssj2, sparkyXplorer) they got it on for me. I was of no use as I had just had shoulder surgery, but they made sure to get my on the right track :thumbsup:

Awesome! Now I'm good to go. Cranked up the torsion bars a lil, time to hit the trails!!! Got my feet wet in Ouray with the group. And by feet wet, I mean I almost peed myself on Black Bear pass, haha

Since then, I've upgraded my exhaust to 2.5 pipes from the cats back, Flowmaster 50 muffler (kinda quiet :rolleyes:) and a MAC intake. Changed out the plugs and wires at the same time, put on Motorcraft plugs and JBA cables...I also added a Yakima load warrior basket that is pretty quick to take off that holds my snowboard racks and my spare.

Mods to come ---- upgrading gears to 4.56, adding an Aussie locker (or something of that sort depending on my $$), removed gray plastic body panels to paint black, thus discovering rust on my doors GRRRRRR, need rock sliders, skid plates, and on and on.
 

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Yes the honey comb pops out but I can't remember if you have to remove the bumper skin first , I did mine with the whole front end off the truck

I thought that the cover might need to come off... that isn't too hard just wanted to avoid it, ran out of room in my garage wouldn't have anywhere for the fresh bedliner to dry inside... might have to wait on the honeycomb part, no big deal.
 



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U might have enough room if u take the top plastic piece off , the honeycomb is just held on with rubber push pins
 






DONE! I still need to peel some of the masking tape off, I left it on too long and will have to slice some little pieces out with a razor blade.... ughhhh. But it's just some pieces along the rubber trim along the windows. I'm happy with the results - I will need to touch up a few places with some color matched paint that the company also sells if I get that detailed, but all in all it looks pretty good, better than it did at least even though it isn't perfect. There are a few pieces where there is a small chunk here and there, the liner starts to skin over in the roller pan if it's humid and I missed seeing some of them. Here are a couple pics of the front, shows the final texture a little better, these were taking this morning after it sat for about 14 hours overnight.

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Ok, you've made me request some sample chips. I'm looking at mixing some Jungle Love (to stay with my green) and either a black/grey/desert sand hood. I've got to do the hood and roof soon as I park it outside and this GA sun took its toll this year.
 






Ok, you've made me request some sample chips. I'm looking at mixing some Jungle Love (to stay with my green) and either a black/grey/desert sand hood. I've got to do the hood and roof soon as I park it outside and this GA sun took its toll this year.

right on... i really liked jungle love too, thought hard about getting that one. i read they are releasing a bunch of new colors in the next month or so, the magnet paint guy said some new greens were in the works. it was really stupid easy to roll on, just a ton of prep work in my case. i ordered a whole set of chips if you want pics of any other colors in different light let me know!
 






Looks good.

I think I would stick with red (on mine) just because I think it would look better when you open the doors and see that red exposed and getting to those tough to reach areas behind the bumpers (I doubt I would take off my bumpers to do this) and sliders (welded on). Plus if I missed a small spot, there wouldn't be such a contrast in colors and it wouldn't stick out.
 






Cool. I won't be in the market until spring so I have time to consider the new colors too.
 


















Thanks! Looks way better. Will throw the lights back in and peel the rest of the tape off sometime this weekend, hopefully I can drive to work on Tuesday!
 












Hey Jen, are you doing your bumpers too?

I left the bottom part of the front bumper cover black, and my rear bumper is already painted black with rustoleum spray bedliner but I have a quart of black that I might do the rear bumper with down the road
 






Looks great jen!! May need to try this on bumpers and step bars. Thanks for the writeup and looking forward to more pics.
 






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Pics after work yesterday...not completely back together, still had some tape to get off of of the trim as you can see in the pics. The tape that came with the Monstaliner kit I don't love, it is realllyyyy sticky especially since I didn't take that off right away. Going to get most of the trim back on tonight and the roof rack back on too.
 


















That looks great

That does look really good.

Thanks guys, it did turn out good enough for my needs... not perfect, I might've mentioned already that the masking tape needs to be pulled immediately after finishing the 2nd coat... that was a problem for me since I had to wait a few days between coats. I should've taken it off anyway but didn't want to remask. It was hell getting the tape off without screwing up a the liner but I used a razor blade and it turned out ok. I had a friend helping me scuff down the original paint, I didn't say not to do the door pillar area so you can see that's scuffed up. I was planning to respray that black anyway so no big deal. In the bright light I see a few places that aren't perfectly uniform, and I didn't bondo the part of the quarter panel because with the primer and the 2 coats I thought it would hide it better... it did hide it a lot but I could get another quart and roll a few more coats on to blend it a little bit better.

For now, I'm going to put some rust converter in the rockers and paint some of the chassis saver stuff over the visible rust spots down there and throw the molding back on, it will look pretty good then. I'll address the rust with some new sheetmetal later this fall, but for now I want to get out and play with it :)
 






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