Dora- The Prerunner 4x4 DD Build

[87xjmike]

Need to start this for Motivation.
Plan is to build it into a capable 4x4 pre-runner for my race truck, Hit my local 4x4 trails and also DD.

Spent some time searching for a 5sp 4x4, finally found one for $600 locally and swooped on it fast. Ran great, needed 4x4 motor fixed (took 10 minutes to fix that notorious cracked plastic bushing), AC fixed, and some other minor things.

Only pic I have of it stock- Doing its duty runnen parts and towing the ski.

And this one where I tried to wheel it without 4wd. Didn't work out well. Got stuck fast with only 2 wheels on the ground...lol

Plans were to go straight to extended beams and cdino fluidovers but that was a ways out and I found a drop bracket lift kit for $75 locally and couldn't pass it up.
I added some gueestt to the DB's and some weld washers to my radius arm pivots that are from McNeil, as well as the radius Arms i have.

Had to modify the cross member for these long ass radius arms:

I built these BPE's for the upper shocks to run some smaller fox's.

AFter the timy fox's blew in a week i went straght to a 12" resi shock, took the unibals out of the top and bolted them with factory bar pins.

Ebrake cable was rubbing like mad so i cut the bracket, dropped the cable out- welded it back together and pulled the cable away from the tire with a bungee. Has lasted 1000's of off road miles like this:

First trip in the dirt with the new front kit, read add a leafs and homemade 9.5" shackles.

Than took it to bowman lake to snow wheel after I added some glass fenders

Hit a local trail down the street from my house- found a fallen tree.

Toook it snow wheeling in truckee

Helped my cousin move with my car trailer:

Spent a long night out on a local trail, busted an auto hub on a gnarly hill, ended up leaning the expo against a tree and couldn't go anywhere without 4x4. Only pic i got was post rescue:

Next day this ***** had the manual warn hubs on that I foolishly sat on for too long

Took it to Cal city Dez-

Boron abandoned state Prison

Fun will now begin after a delivery of toooobz-

First project was a bumper

INstalled some HID's and and LED bar

Took it to the Mint 400 race in vegas- We decided to take as much dirt as we could en route to vegas via California city to calico, Then tried to do Calico to Primm via the Mojave trail and had a catastrophe happen.

Completely Siezed up the motor in this water crossing. Wouldn't budge with plugs removed.

Almost made it...lol

We still,trekked on to vegas to for the MINT and had a great time, one truck down

Local vegas talent...

Following weekend i Had to drive 1100 miles with my tow rig to go get the siezed *****. Good times:

This canteliver kit i picked up will eventually go into the back.

What it was designed to look like, I'll have to midify it quite a bit to work on an Expo.

Added the auto fab motor and tranny mounts. They dropped right in perfectly:

Right now im in the middle of rebuilding the motor- Stay tuned lots of blingy parts are planned to go on.
Here's partially what i've accumulated so far.

I polished up some free beams i got and sent them off to threat motorsports to get extended 3.5", he plated the extensions and I had him add some unibal cups. I plan to truss them myselves .
Sorry for the crappy IG pics i lost a lot of pics and a few other trips on a trashed phone.

I've had this truck for about 11 months now and have enjoyed every minute of the explorer life. So you can say I'm hooked.

 

[mounty71]

It'll never work.

 

[87xjmike]

Don't you have some **** to install that wasn't designed for you truck? Get to work lady.

 

[mounty71]

Oh ya, haha, I must have thought I was in my build thread.

 

[87xjmike]

Snapped a couple pics tonight of the radius arm set up.
This is what a couple thousand off road miles looks like.

I plan to add a 4th bolt to the pivots....eventually. maybe.
My hacked up tranny crossember is hidious anD I hate looking at it. I'll likely have to change it when i swap to my long travel set up for more up travel. Till then it's holding.

My super basic cross brace I made

Other things I've done that I didnt get pics of are front ball joints, cam pos. Sensor, mclutch and clutch slave, wheel bearings brakes and all the tune up nick nack paddy whacks

 

[87xjmike]

Apperantly I can't write v e g a s on here....?

 

[Travisfab]

You caught the bug man! Race trucks have their place, but Explorers are so damn versatile & cool!

 

[RangerX]

Damn, you do NOT mess around when you buy tube, so you!? That's an impressive pic, what is that, about 30 sticks on the trailer?

 

[87xjmike]

Block carnage from the h2o

Good block I'm running.

Got the deck cylinder wall ridges and pistons all cleaned up.

 

[bats]

Few q's about your beams... Are you planning to have them cut and turned or just extended and run with the drop brackets? Cut and turn has the advantage of using stock brackets. Pre-runner purists would say that's the de facto way to go.

What are you doing for axle shafts with the extended beams? Supposedly there was a golden number for axle extension length that allowed you to use stock shafts from another type of axle. The details escape me at the moment.

 

[87xjmike]

I had threat cut and turn them as well. It's 4.5" and you can use a bronco d44 shaft. I wanted to stay slightly narrower for the trails in my area and I plan to stay with a 33" tire so I'm not worried about axle strength. I plan to extend two sets of axles myself for spares, although if I want to be real with myself, I'LL likely screw up the first set.

 

[mounty71]

4.5" total or per side? I remember reading that to use the stock passenger D44 shaft, the beams need to be 2.25" longer per side. That's what I was going to do before buying Dylan's kit.

 

[87xjmike]

Pretty sure it's 4.5 per side matt, I could be wrong though.

 

[mounty71]

Ah ok I understand what you're doing. My brain skipped over the part where you said you're extending axles haha. A friend did this a long time ago and by cutting down a D44 passenger shaft and keeping the stock D35 driver's shaft, he didn't need to extend any axles to work with his 2.25" extended beams. That's what I was going to originally do.

http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=206455&page=7

I'll shut up now.