You've gotten some great advice from the peeps. My two cents, with 10k on the drive train, you should have nothing to worry about. It's not even broken in yet. I have 326k miles on my '91! I finally updated the front and rear springs about 60k miles ago so it almost drove like a brand new car again. Ball joints are good, wheel bearings good, just needs new control arm and sway bar bushings to feel complete. At 140k miles on yours, it's time to update the suspension.
That being said, I have replaced her with a '96 with an OHV motor with 162k miles on everything. I am retiring and selling the '91 only because she has rust in the dog leg panels and welding is one thing I don't know how to do and I don't have the time or facilities. So last year, I found a fully loaded XLT and bought it for $1800+tax. The lot originally tried to sell for $4500. But I took it over to 3 of my mechanic buddies for a look over. After spending about $1000 to completely renew the suspension, replace the bad gasket in the timing cover along with a new timing chain set, change all fluids (haven't gotten to the front or rear diff's yet but did change the transfer case fluid), upgraded brake pads, cleaned out the EGR, cleaned but eventually replaced the IACV, all new coolant hoses, thermostat, new clutch fan and belt, new plugs/wires/coil pack, full alignment, she drives like a brand new car. No lifter clatter on this motor, at least as of yet. The '91 has sounded a bit like a diesel motor for over 20 years! After all that time, I only went through a quart of oil about every 3000 or so miles!
This week, I finally swapped from the '91, the 2.25" cat back and put on a Flowmaster series 40 Dynaflow muffler. You'll notice an improved performance, better throttle response. The stock 2" pipe and muffler is restrictive and makes it run like a turtle. Caution though, it's not plug and play like I hoped. The length of exhaust on the '91 is about 4 to 6" longer than the '96. I haven't taken a hard look yet to see if the length is at the intermediate pipe or pipe between the muffler and resonator of a little of both. One of my mechanic buddies is going to cut and weld and extension for me so I can put the stock pipe from the '96 onto the '91. The exhaust hangers look to still be in the right place. The other difference but it works, on the '91 - '94 exhaust tail pipe, it curves to the right exiting under the right side of the bumper. '95-'01 is straight. So if you want a few horses/torque and better engine efficiency, go with a larger cat back. I think, given the motor specs, you can get away with up to 2.5" but it may be harder to find. Don't go up to 3" with this motor.
The other thing to check, take off the air intake so you can see the throttle body butterfly valve. Either put something heavy on the gas pedal or have someone press it to the floor. If the valve isn't opening to almost horizontal, you have a stretched out accelerator cable. There's a quick cheap fix using zip ties. I can't remember if I saw it on Youtube of here in the forum. I think it was here in the forum. Or, just get a new cable. I discovered, my rubber floor mats were a bit too high and impeding the gas pedal to the floor!!! I cut part of if away and voila, my Explorer felt like a little road runner again! She's doing 0-60 mph in just over 10 seconds which is about a second faster than factory spec. Oh, also clean the throttle body. In your case with 10k miles, do it in another 5k to 10k.
Now that you have a new tranny, take care of it. Even though these trannys are "weak", all trannys are like that. Why, mainly because of lack of fluid maintenance. Everyone will change their oil about 3000 miles but no one talks about the tranny fluid. By the time people do some maintenance and it's too late. Change out, don't flush, the fluid and filter about every 35,000 miles. More if you drive in hot weather and/or a lot of towing. Use the right fluid, should be the old Mercon III to Mercon V. You might see it as a Dexron/Mercon mix. Don't use LV. Get a tranny cooler (tow package) and that will help a lot and extend/maintain the fluid. I have a larger than stock on mine. Generally, tranny fluid is a very viscous solvent. As it gets older and breaks down, like motor oil, loses its qualities. There's also a lot of friction material from the clutch pack floating around. When you change fluid/filter, you'll lose that material. That is what starts to make the tranny go bad with the loss of friction material and more sluffs off. If you flush the tranny, what fluid left in the torque convertor that has friction material will also be gone. It's actually ok to mix the new fluid with what's in the torque convertor. Remember I mentioned that tranny fluid is a solvent? The new fluid is "stronger" so a flush can blow out the seals. In conjunction with this, add a back flush kit onto the inlet hose of the heater core. Flush out your cooling system at least every 2 years. This also allows you to check the hoses.
Ok, I hope this helps. Shaka!
Hi there,
Need some advice. We have a 1995 Ford Explorer with 140,000 miles. Its transmission and motor were both replaced around 10,000 miles ago, and it's been fairly well-maintained (although the AC is busted). I do have to kind of floor it to get it up to speed on the freeway, but I've alway attributed that to its size/age. Would you let your child drive it 2,800 miles cross-country or would you be worried?
I'm going to take it to a dealer and have a mechanic do a detailed inspection—are there any particular problems you'd suggest I ask them to check with this kind of car?
Thanks in advance for the help!
