Greetings From Northwest Indiana | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

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Greetings From Northwest Indiana

IH-7_Operator

New Member
Joined
October 3, 2014
Messages
2
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City, State
Burns Harbor, IN
Year, Model & Trim Level
1997 Explorer XLT 5.0 AWD
Hello to all-
After many years of lurking and leaching valuable insight from the good members of this forum, I have finally joined ranks to do my best to give back and pay forward some of the small lessons I've learned through 8 long years of labor and love with my two '97 5.0l Ex's.

As for me...
I worked for 3 years as a technician at my local Ford dealership, before gaining employment as a welder/fabricator at what used to be Inland Steel. I am currently slaving to prepare my oldest explorer for another brutal Chicago winter, and am looking around to purchase a fairly well-kept '93/'94 Explorer for a full body-off rebuild & reinforcement, possible engine swap project.

Thank you for welcoming me as one of this fantastic group. I sincerely hope to be of use, and look forward to making as many shared-intrest connections as possible in the years to come.
 



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Is there still a lot of steel production around there?

When I was a kid we toured the USS plant for their 100th birthday. Unfortunately things went downhill fast :(
 






Is there still a lot of steel production around there?

When I was a kid we toured the USS plant for their 100th birthday. Unfortunately things went downhill fast :(

Yes sir, I'm at the old Inland plant, now ArcelorMittal Indiana Harbor (Roughly 9 miles west of USS Gary Works). Our flagship blast furnace, No.7 (largest in the western hemisphere) cranks out 10,000-13,000 tons of raw molten iron every day. The industry is suffering here, though it's managed to trudge through profitably thus far. USS is facing the worst of the domestic production downturn though, for a multitude of reasons ranging from outdated equipment to (our problem as well) fierce overseas competition. Lets put it this way: our newest furnace, also the most recently built blast furnace in the country, is 40 years old. The bigwigs are wringing every bit of profit possible out of our existing facilities, but once that no longer becomes viable due to astronomical upgrade and repair costs just to remain competitive... You can see where it's going from here. Personally, I look at the '15 aluminum bodied F-150 being produced profitably en-masse, and see a painful foreshadowing of the final blow to our longstanding foothold in American demand for high grade steel as other vehicles follow suit. Forgive my rant, I get a bit wordy at times.
 






Not ranting at all. We can't afford to rely on foreign countries for some of our most crucial needs. If we hadn't been able to produce mass quantities of steel during WWII we wouldn't have won the war.

Our bombing raids in Germany were aimed at steel factories, ball bearing factories, etc. I don't believe we could be considered a world power without the means of producing our own weapons of war.
 












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