I had a good but busy weekend with The Turd involved in my activities. The first thing I have to report is that this past Saturday, my club had a Mustang and All Fords car show about an hour from my house. Since I am a club officer and wasn't planning on showing my Mustang, and because I had a feeling it was going to rain, I drove The Turd to the show. It ran really nice and is a comfortable vehicle! The only issues:
-shifts between 1 and 2 have a little lag; all other shifts are awesome
-rear end noise
-AC isn't freezing my [insert anatomy part here] off LOL
Saturday was a long day; I left the house at 6am and rolled into my driveway at 6pm. When I got home my wife showed me I had received two packages in the mail, but all i cared about was a cold shower, a cold beer, and a warm meal! LOL
Sunday morning a friend from my competitive BBQ team (I have way too many hobbies) messaged me to come over and pick up a part for my Explorer. He has owned many Explorers in his lifetime and says he was even a member of this forum back in the day. About 13 years ago he sold his last Explorer and hasn't had one since but seems to have a huge love for them still. Anyways, he had a brand new Hidden Hitch brand trailer hitch for me that he bought a long time ago (just over 13 years ago) and never installed. He even had the installation hardware and installation instructions for me! We briefly tried to mount it but found we had a touch of interference from the inside-bottom of the rear bumper and couldn't get it on. He said this is what he never completed installing it on his own Explorer, and it went home in the back of mine where it will sit in my garage until I can get it sorted.
Sunday evening I made some round-about progress on The Turd. My wife was "in a mood" and felt the need to straighten up the house a bunch and put things away. This put me in a similar mood and I went out to the garage and unpacked all of the Explorer parts I've collected that are waiting to be installed. This included a rear-end rebuild kit, axle seals and bearings, gear oil, gaskets, shocks, and a few other small things. I also opened one of the packages I received and it was from
@toypaseo . It is the plastic plugs for the back bumper to fill in where the trailer ball is installed. So when I get my Hidden Hitch installed, the ball will come off the bumper and I'll be able to dress it up with the proper plugs! Thank you sir!
So the garage got straightened up and tools got put away. My wife even came out and helped me break down the seemingly billions of boxes I had piled up that car parts got shipped in to go out to the recycle can.