2000 AWD Xploder from Turbo back to NA

[willzilla]

10/10/2012 mod list (help me keep track of things lol)

Updating my mod/to-do list so I can keep everything straight... Lol.

2000 Ford Explorer 5.0L XLT AWD w/127k miles

- 5.0 Engine w/ GT40p heads and intake
- 4W70 transmission
- 3.73 gears
- AWD

Current Modifications (performance):

- 39lb Cobra injectors
- Walbro GSS342 255L fuel pump
- AMSOIL Synthetic oil w/AMSOIL oil filter
- AMSOIL synthetic transfer case and differential fluids
- Taylor 8mm Spiro-Pro Spark plug wires
- Autolite 764 copper core spark plugs
- Modified MAC cold air intake w/BIG blue AMSOIL air filter
- 90mm Lightning MAF (LMAF)
- High performance 93 octane NA tune from Henson Performance
- Torque Monster headers (EGR delete)
- Custom 2.5" exhaust (no cats) into dual-in/dual-out Full Boar muffler w/side by side exit behind rear passenger tire

Current Modifications (show):

- 6k HIDs in stock headlights
- 6k Xenon "HID-like" fog lights
- AEM wideband & boost gauge in custom console gauge pod
- 6.5" touchscreen CD/DVD/MP3 head unit
- Terk Commander XM molded into radio surround
- 8" subwoofer in stealthbox powered by factory sub amp
- Custom built LED puddle and license lights
- Lowered 2"

Repairs Done:

- Replaced both front hub assemblies
- Replaced front brake calipers
- Replaced broken drivers side door handle
- Replaced PCV valve
- Repaired broken driver side door lock
- Repaired rear passenger door ajar problem
- Replaced broken driver side fog light
- Set new door lock combo
- Replaced rear wiper arm
- Some other things I'm sure :-/

To-Do Modifications:

- Replace transmission fluid with AMSOIL synthetic
- New front tires (need ASAP)
- Explorer express suspension possibly in the far future
- Possibly swap in a nicer screen/stereo head unit
- Install Electric fan and fan controller (mark VIII I'm thinking)
- Install 1" trick flow Intake Manifold Spacer (part on hand)
- Cam?

To-Do Repairs:

- Hook up the sat radio connections
- Fix/modify interior lighting
- Fix license plate lighting
- Fix little odds and ends
- Alignment!!!

I'm sure lots more stuff to do and more repairs if anything else breaks lol.

 

[TekMan05]

Awesome list. I also am curious on some suspension upgrades for mone as well. I don't want to lower mine though. What's available as far as sway bar kits? I also wanna finish swapping LEDs in the cluster gauges and dome lights. Not sure how to on the domes. So if you do these I'll be paying close attention. Keep up the awesome updates man!

 

[willzilla]

Awesome list. I also am curious on some suspension upgrades for mone as well. I don't want to lower mine though. What's available as far as sway bar kits? I also wanna finish swapping LEDs in the cluster gauges and dome lights. Not sure how to on the domes. So if you do these I'll be paying close attention. Keep up the awesome updates man!

Thanks man!

And yeah.. There is a write up floating around somewhere on how to change the dome lights (and all of the interior lights).. Can't remember where I saw it tho as I will need to track it down again myself as my front dome/map lights are all non functioning at the moment lol.

 

[CDW6212R]

You have been busy keep at it.

Get a look at the body for rust and corrosion too, if it's a keeper. Mine needs some attention there too, that's another thing I've put off. Find it soon and get started on saving the body. I see trucks in the salvage yards that look rough, parts are not easy to find if you end up needing something. Though I did see a nice red hatch on Monday, if I knew mine was too bad I'd go get that one.

 

[willzilla]

You have been busy keep at it.

Get a look at the body for rust and corrosion too, if it's a keeper. Mine needs some attention there too, that's another thing I've put off. Find it soon and get started on saving the body. I see trucks in the salvage yards that look rough, parts are not easy to find if you end up needing something. Though I did see a nice red hatch on Monday, if I knew mine was too bad I'd go get that one.

Thanks man! And yeah... It's def kept me busy so far, lol... Still LOTS to do!

Body rust and corrosion seems good... Nothing really... Some standard surface rust under the car but nothing crazy... I have a cpl small paint chip spots on the door near the key pad that need touched up before it begins to rust badly.. and a small flaked paint area in the hatch where the old broken rear wiper blade incorrectly sat and caused a little surface rust where the paint is gone... That's about it.. How hard is it to fix that kind of stuff (the paint stuff).. or would it just be easier and not to expensive to have a body shop touch it up real quick to prevent it from getting bad?

Any specific usual problem areas to look at/for?

 

[CDW6212R]

Check along the bottom edge of each door, and hatch, all around the radiator support, and under the side body trim. Those are the worst places to fix, and unfortunately, common to have rust there. Night,

 

[Limited02]

Where did your cam question go? CDW6212R will be able to point you in the right direction.

 

[willzilla]

Ok... I was able to knock out a few things this weekend, finally! Lol.

Replaced my fog light bulbs (one of the 8.8k bulbs burned out last week)... Put in some 55w 6k HIDs w/new 55w 6k Xenon plasma HID "like" fogs to hopefully more closely match my 6k HIDs:

My old iPhone4 adds some funky purple flare when trying to take a photo of the HIDs due to their extreme brightness, but, there is no actual purple from the lights AND the new fogs do not have the blue/purple-hue that my old fog lights emitted and seem to match my HIDs fairly closely.

Also, I put in a fresh AMSOIL oil filter and some fresh 5w20 AMSOIL oil... Took a few minutes to find the damn drain plug as the reference photo I had was from the old style and looked nothing like the one I had (and was of different size as well). Oh well!

I tried to replace my damn oil pressure sensor switch but could not figure out how the hell I am to fit my hand or anything in there to manipulate the plug from the sensor and then remove the sensor?? WTF... I took off the wheel and tried from the side, top, bottom, etc... Could not reach it... Suggestions??

I also added the torsion key bolts and lifted my front end up about 1/2"-3/4" and got the suspension off of the bump stops and the ride is MUCH less jarring and does not bottom out on every tiny little bump now! I may still need to tweak the straightness of the front-end as it, to me, looks a tiny bit off... Need to buy a tape measure as all of mine seemed to have dropped into a black hole, so, I was using a cut piece of wire to "measure" as best as I could lol.

Hopefully I can dig into my lighting (license plate and interior front) issues in the next few days!

 

[willzilla]

Where did your cam question go? CDW6212R will be able to point you in the right direction.

Hey... Sorry, I deleted it... Was trying to think of a better way to word the question(s) lol Quick eye! Haha.

Anyways.. I was contemplating "possibly" of going the route of adding a cam to the truck... But... My mechanical skills are not the greatest (I'm a computer IT guy)... I'm smart & learn new things quickly but without someone to show me the ropes (in person) I could def see myself blowing the truck up, lol.. So, that leaves me with having to pay a shop (ugh), or, convincing someone who does know these things whom is fairly close to me to, a) either come down and hang out with me for the weekend and knock the install out (via payment of free food/alcohol, gas money, etc, etc), or, b) I travel to them and pay the person in alcohol/IT work/some money?... Lol. Hopefully I can figure something out not involving of a shop which would bring the cost down substantially!

As for which cam.. I am not positive on what would be best for my truck AND what, in addition, I should add to work with the cam for the best combination.

I was reading the boards and also poking around Google and found http://www.compcams.com/catalog/COMP2012/pdf/COMP_Catalog_2012_78-83.pdf ... My cam knowledge is pretty much a -1 on a scale of 0-10 so, taking my modifications and planned upgrades (e-fan, 1" IMF spacer, and whatever else is best to go with the cam), I am unsure of which would offer the best power punch (torque/hp for a 99% road driven Xploder).

Open for any info/suggestions/etc! Thank you!

 

[willzilla]

If I was able to find someone to team up with on this (show me the ropes) I'd even like to go the stroker (331 or 347) route on the truck... I get my SVTf back soon and would be willing to have my Xploder down for some period of time without a problem

 

[TekMan05]

So far I'm pretty happy with the custom Street beast Cam from Flowtech Inductions. It's been pretty good so far as a DD since my build just tweaking out some bugs still though.

 

[willzilla]

So far I'm pretty happy with the custom Street beast Cam from Flowtech Inductions. It's been pretty good so far as a DD since my build just tweaking out some bugs still though.

Yeah.. I am reading your build posts and saw that... Still reading thru it all... But, how much was the custom cam, jw?

 

[Dono]

My vote is that you go turbo again
Hahahaha....

I kill me sometimes.

 

[willzilla]

My vote is that you go turbo again
Hahahaha....

I kill me sometimes.

Lol... How about 331 turbo!? haha

Tho... cam and/or 331/347 and/or re-turbo is some time down the road.. Have many things to knock out prior lol :-/

 

[CDW6212R]

For a stockish 302 the 302 HO is cam is tough to beat. Changing the cam in an Explorer is evidently very hard, given the lack of space up front. So avoid doing the cam unless other changes are done also.

If possible hold out until an engine rebuild is in order, then build the whole engine with a custom cam.

Unless something big has changed, Ford Strokers is still the best deal around to get a complete engine built. I'd consult with Jim(Woody) there and see what kind of budget you would need.

I'm holding out to build a different engine for my Mountaineer, the 347 is going in my Lincoln. So I may settle for just a N/A 363 engine with higher compression. If boost can be done with the air cleaner/filter under the hood, I still would love to run 14psi for that.

 

[TekMan05]

For a stockish 302 the 302 HO is cam is tough to beat. Changing the cam in an Explorer is evidently very hard, given the lack of space up front. So avoid doing the cam unless other changes are done also.

If possible hold out until an engine rebuild is in order, then build the whole engine with a custom cam.

Unless something big has changed, Ford Strokers is still the best deal around to get a complete engine built. I'd consult with Jim(Woody) there and see what kind of budget you would need.

I'm holding out to build a different engine for my Mountaineer, the 347 is going in my Lincoln. So I may settle for just a N/A 363 engine with higher compression. If boost can be done with the air cleaner/filter under the hood, I still would love to run 14psi for that.

Yeah sometimes I wished I would of saved a bit longer and gone stroker. I'm just NOT THAT mechanically skilled yet to take that on. When you start building power like that alot of other things have to be taken into account like Transmission, transfer case, drive line integrity, etc. Maybe down the long stretch but I'd like to convert mine to true 4WD before that. Not to mention I actually have a race car besides my truck. But no doubt a cam swap is essentially a motor pull on these things anyways. It would have been nice if these trucks were like GM's and the whole front clip could come apart but the radiator support essentially blocks that. So at the very least if you do a swap go ahead and just consider the whole re-build while you're at it and get some head work done if the price is right. It's what I did anyways.

 

[willzilla]

Yeah.. A full rebuld/stroker/cam combo is what I would do (either with help from someone much more mechanically inclined than I, or, pay someone to do it)... Sometime down the road a ways off lol

 

[willzilla]

SWEET!! Found this write-up some time ago, http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=259083&highlight=map+light ... Have been looking and looking and just recently it appears that LED Wholesalers NOW offers the circular 10-LED circuit in RED!! Woohoo!!

http://www.ledwholesalers.com/store/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=400

Now to check what I need with my license plate to fix that up before I make an order so I can group everything up together.

 

[willzilla]

Ok.. figured out the issue with the license plate lights... It appears Justin, before me, had custom wired in some LED type setup and placed a mini circuit board looking thing within each lens that had some resistors and an LED soldered on and then wires soldered to another wedge type board that was plugged into the original bulb connector... Well, the non-working side the super thin wires were completely broken off and the cable is lost somewhere in the tailgate (and I still need to try and fish it out lol), and, on the working side, it was all corroded up and the lens was super dirty inside and cloudy and barely cast any light.

Anyways, I yanked the lens off both sides and ripped out all the funky custom wiring and such and tried to clean everything up but ended up killing the lenses completely, lol, oops. Found a set of used ones in great shape and they are on their way, when they arrive, I will just toss in a 15 LED combo wedge LED direct to the bulb connector and call it a day! Lol.

Also... Currently trying to buy a new steering wheel cruise control button pod set as mine look like crap (all peeled up and ****ty) and plan on doing this mod: http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=214264 to replace my burned out lights so I can once again see my cruise control buttons lol

NOTE to all: DO NOT try to clean sealant type gunk off of plastic lenses with carb cleaner LOL

 

[BrianDye]

Man, been awhile since ive been on here, but sounds like your truck is coming along, but unfortunately seems like one thing after another is going wrong lol!

Spent the last half hour catching up great job so far man!