Who is disappointed with their EX?

[patrleach]

I love my EX, have I had some maintenance performed, yes. Brakes, ball joints, couple of other things. But I am in no way disappointed with her. She is reliable and gets decent milage.

Now the Suburban I replace when I got my Ex; lets see in 75K miles; 4 trannies, 3 motors, 4 ac units, 3 alternators, 3 brake jobs, shocks. And I was always waiting for the next thing. My GF has an 02 Trailblazer has had some minor issues but when she had to have the motor mounts replaced at 100K and the mechanic said I'm suprised it didn't happen sooner, we see most of them at about 80K. It shows that none of them are as perfect as haters would have you believe.

But after owning one Chevy in my life, I'll never own anything but a Ford again.

 

[Sully1]

Oh where to begin.......
First of all, I really do like my Exploder. I live in northern Michigan, and the winters and road conditions here are atrocious for 5-6 months of the year. But out of all my friends and family members, guess who never got stuck? Me, with the HORRIFICALLY maintained Exploder from hell that had 4 bald tires, a failing transmission, 4 bad wheel bearings, spark plugs that could have been used to do tattoos with, and a leaking front axle shaft. ( This was the previous owners fault, not mine ) Oh and also, out of everyone I know, who's vehicle doesn't have ANY rust? Mine, the 11 year old Exploder.
Second, if you are complaining about having to fix a couple routine maintenance parts like wheel bearings and ball joints,then go whimper and whine to someone else, because guess what, most of us are here for the exact same reason. And I don't see anyone else here crying about actually having to WORK on their vehicle. If all you are going to do is whine about fixing something, then you don't deserve to own it in the first place ( oh wait, you don't own it )
Now for my Exploder:
I bought mine about 5-6months ago, having no idea of how badly maintained it was. Heck, looking at it from the outside, you would have thought it was perfectly maintained from how clean it was. When i got it, the tires were about as close to racing slicks as you can get. Then, i had to replace the rear wheel bearings, which i did myself (mind you I am 16, and had never even so much as changed a pair of break pads ) Then, I made a 1000 mile round trip to detroit and back, with a failing transmission and 2 bad front wheel bearings, and the explorer still never gave up. so i got home and immediately changed the front bearings, also myself. i didn't know the transmission was as bad as it was at the time, until I put the EX in reverse one morning and nothing happened. So after finding this AMAZING site and finding out the band was probably broken, i had to keep driving it because I nor anyone in my family had the money to get it fixed. So I got a trans with 12,00 miles and then guess what, I did the entire transmission swap MYSELF, in a crappy old garage, with tools that were older that my parents. did I come on here and COMPLAIN because i had to work on it?? No. In fact, i never even had to post for help with it because of the amazing people on this site. In fact, if i had the money I would personally throw a party for all of the helpful people here as a thank you.
So if anyone has any reason to complain a little bit about their explorer, i think I've earned the right to. But guess what, i'm not going to, because i know for a FACT my EX will get me where ever I need to go, when ever i need to go there. And i'm still not disappointed in any way with my explorer.
I'm sorry if I ranted a little much, but posts like this make me sick. if you don't want to work on a vehicle, then don't buy one. It's that simple.
And thank you to everyone who has ever posted helpful information on this site.

 

[D Hook]

^^^bravo!!^^^

 

[patrleach]

Great post.

 

[03explorerL]

Oh where to begin.......
First of all, I really do like my Exploder. I live in northern Michigan, and the winters and road conditions here are atrocious for 5-6 months of the year. But out of all my friends and family members, guess who never got stuck? Me, with the HORRIFICALLY maintained Exploder from hell that had 4 bald tires, a failing transmission, 4 bad wheel bearings, spark plugs that could have been used to do tattoos with, and a leaking front axle shaft. ( This was the previous owners fault, not mine ) Oh and also, out of everyone I know, who's vehicle doesn't have ANY rust? Mine, the 11 year old Exploder.
Second, if you are complaining about having to fix a couple routine maintenance parts like wheel bearings and ball joints,then go whimper and whine to someone else, because guess what, most of us are here for the exact same reason. And I don't see anyone else here crying about actually having to WORK on their vehicle. If all you are going to do is whine about fixing something, then you don't deserve to own it in the first place ( oh wait, you don't own it )
Now for my Exploder:
I bought mine about 5-6months ago, having no idea of how badly maintained it was. Heck, looking at it from the outside, you would have thought it was perfectly maintained from how clean it was. When i got it, the tires were about as close to racing slicks as you can get. Then, i had to replace the rear wheel bearings, which i did myself (mind you I am 16, and had never even so much as changed a pair of break pads ) Then, I made a 1000 mile round trip to detroit and back, with a failing transmission and 2 bad front wheel bearings, and the explorer still never gave up. so i got home and immediately changed the front bearings, also myself. i didn't know the transmission was as bad as it was at the time, until I put the EX in reverse one morning and nothing happened. So after finding this AMAZING site and finding out the band was probably broken, i had to keep driving it because I nor anyone in my family had the money to get it fixed. So I got a trans with 12,00 miles and then guess what, I did the entire transmission swap MYSELF, in a crappy old garage, with tools that were older that my parents. did I come on here and COMPLAIN because i had to work on it?? No. In fact, i never even had to post for help with it because of the amazing people on this site. In fact, if i had the money I would personally throw a party for all of the helpful people here as a thank you.
So if anyone has any reason to complain a little bit about their explorer, i think I've earned the right to. But guess what, i'm not going to, because i know for a FACT my EX will get me where ever I need to go, when ever i need to go there. And i'm still not disappointed in any way with my explorer.
I'm sorry if I ranted a little much, but posts like this make me sick. if you don't want to work on a vehicle, then don't buy one. It's that simple.
And thank you to everyone who has ever posted helpful information on this site.

Pretty sure I never stated I didn't want to work on the car, I was stating how cheaply made the explorer had become starting in 2002, and how the reliability seemed to have slipped with this explorer. I love working on my cars and have no issue working on this if need be, I just came on to say I thought that for a $32k SUV, you would've thought some things would've lasted longer than 60k miles.

 

[College Student]

I'm sorry if I'm the first person to inform you of this but this is now the age of buy new when it breaks. In the US history there was a time when people would rather work on their own cars because it was worth their time. Now days people don't even do their own oil changes because it costs $20 and Wal-mart will do it for $30.

And expecting running gear to last longer.
I'd have expected a $100k+ tractor last more than 100 full pulls... or 300000 feet (a little over five miles)

 

[03explorerL]

I'm sorry if I'm the first person to inform you of this but this is now the age of buy new when it breaks. In the US history there was a time when people would rather work on their own cars because it was worth their time. Now days people don't even do their own oil changes because it costs $20 and Wal-mart will do it for $30.

And expecting running gear to last longer.
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I'd have expected a $100k+ tractor last more than 100 full pulls... or 300000 feet (a little over five miles)

Very valid point.
We ended up going ahead and changed out the transmission fluid, rear diff fluid, brake fluid, and changing out the upper ball joints and stabilizer links (this weekend). Hopefully she runs for many more miles. The transmission fluid and filter change seemed to solve the shutter into 4th and overdrive, so I guess I'll consider that a success.

 

[Donystoy]

My Explorer is a 2002 model that had 75,000 km's on it when I bought it in the fall of 2004. It now has about 120,000 km's on it. A very high percentage of the 45,000 km's that I have put on it are trips towing a heavy tandem trailer with a small backhoe or other equipment. I even hauled a few loads (2.5 yds) of granular A gravel a couple of years ago without any problems. I was definetly at my maximum allowed GVW or more.
Since I have had this vehicle I have done mostly regular maintenance items and would have no problem if I had to overhaul the transmission etc. if required as it has always been there for me.

 

[deamon3]

Coming from someone who has owned 22 cars of various sizes and prices , four of them were ford explorers and they all were very unreliable. Compared to other vehicles in the same price range whether you buy one for 1000$ or 10,000$ it's less reliable then other vehicles.

Don't get me wrong , I love explorers , but they aren't very good.