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Performance Upgrades - Maintenance - Modifications - Problem Solving - Off-Road - Street Trucks. Covering the Explorer, ST, Sport, Lincoln Aviator, Sport Trac, Mercury Mountaineer, Mazda Navajo, Ford Ranger, Mazda Pickups, and the Aerostar. Featuring H.I. - Human Intelligence.
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Just a quick look back at what it used to be. It had a puck shackle 1-2" lift riding on bfg a/t 31x10.5's. It had the factory 3.55 gearing and open diff's.
We started the build off by re-gearing and locking the rear 8.8.
Part #'s
G2 4.88 gear G/22-2013-488
Instal kit g/235-2013
Detroit Locker eat187c145a
The install went really smooth,factory shims weren't far off.
Comparing the pinions the left is the factory 3.55, right is G2 4.88
Out with the old in with the new! Unfortunately didn't get a picture of the wear pattern bu i was really happy the way it turned out. I love having a locker in finally! 4.88 and 31's is a little much but in a good way. The truck is much happier not being under-geared on the 31's. For the locker i choose the Detroit for a couple of reasons, one my brother (turboexplorer) runs one in his explorer and has liked it a lot, two I daily drive this truck so it helps keep it street-able, and three it is not as pricy as a selectable locker like a ARB. I have been really happy with the way it feels around corners, only chirps tires when i get a little throttle happy. It is very quite as well, i have yet to hear it make a noise. My buddy had a Aussie locker in his Cherokee and for me it was extremely loud around corners.
I don't have a ton of pictures, but the instal went very good. All of the brackets fit extremely well, seems to be very well thought out and made kit. The only real complainant i have is anything they had to do with brakes was wrong! From them not sending the Y for the drivers side brake line, to the brake line ends were too narrow no the caliper side and would allow the banjo bolt to go through and hit the piston. Making it not be able to release. I didn't get pictures of that although i should have.
31x10.5 compared to 35x12.5
New coil buckets, ttb mounts, radius arms and beams installed
The 35's were a tight fit so had to do some fender trimming. I had about 1" from the back of the tire to the fender, and not much more than that behind the fender. I wanted to keep the inner fender well, so we decided to cut and basically roll the fender back, then welding the seam. We ended up moving it back almost 4" giving it tons of space for the 35's.
I remembered seeing an explorer i believe it was froaders that had the front bumper with the ends cut off. I wanted to do something similar to that but not take the ends completely off, just in case anything were to happen since i do DD it. I cut basically cut off the bottom up until just behind the plastic bumper cap.
Before
A couple of pictures from the first night o drove it home from turboexplorers house. I have since put on a set factory shackles to help fix the stink bug look.
I took it out for its first run up American fork canyon last Tuesday. You can see in some of these pictures how much room we made with rolling the fenders. It did really well, i love having the locker and some ground clearance for once! We found a little bit of snow about half way up the canyon. I forgot how much i love playing in snow! we cut the trip a little short because it was getting dark, we weren't with any other trucks and my wife is due any day with our first daughter. So didn't want to push our luck.
Looks great man! Even though it's old and faded I love that two tone.
I've been runnning a similar setup - Ever find you want to do something about axle wrap in the rear? I've been neglecting to fab something - but I have a Skyjacker 5th link meant for a Jeep sitting around that I've been wanting to install. Looks like this:
I know anytime I get on it hard with the lower gearing and spring over axle, I loose a lot of initial oomph to the springs twisiting upward.
It's hard to beat the First Gen Explorer platform with a properly engineered lift setup such as yours in terms of bang for buck performance, drivability, and utility.
Its been a while since my last update. The truck has been doing great! My brother (turboexplorer) and i went down to St. George for thanksgiving. We took both of the X's down to go wheelin. I was really happy with how mine drove on the freeway, very stable especially with no sway bars on, and rev's sit at about 2600 so not to shabby there either. Over all very pleased with how it turned out, there are however a couple of things that i have found that need to be taken care of. The main one we found was with the rear shock placement. we mounted the bottom of the shock almost level with the bottom of the leaf pack, which was fine with the longer shackles, but since we removed those and put on the factory i only have roughly an inch of up travel right now. Easy fix just need to spend a little time and move them down. Alinement is another thing that is i little off with the factory eccentrics i can't get the right caster on the right beam. The last thing that is really bugging me is the front coils. Do other people have a problem with them sagging? I feel like they have sagged enough to get the same stink bug look that i got rid of with the factory shackles. I have heard of people switching coils to the early bronco bronco style, to get better springs and more options in spring rate. I haven't looked into it to much though. Anyone have any suggestions there?
My brother and I went up and explored above 5 Mile pass and ran rattlesnake this Sunday.
I got a different position at work with way better hours so i hope to be doing a lot more to the truck soon!
Subscribing. Didn't know you had posted any pics on here, lol how sad is that.
Hopefully we can get my new rear leafs on this Tuesday quickly and look into what we need to do to move your shock mounts. And now that my winch is done we need it to snow so we can get them buried!
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