1997 XLT SOHC...Loaded.
129,500 miles. Bought it in 2004 with 106,000 miles on it. Knock on wood I haven't had any "major" repairs needed. It's mostly my wife's ride, but doubles as the family truckster for trips etc...
The truck originally came from Florida, I have some of the original paperwork that was still with it. I bought it from a dealer in NY.
Let's see...I've done brakes a few times, had to run new lines to the rears recently, they rotted out right at the calipers. My wife was driving one day and all of a sudden...no brakes. Yikes!
Upper/lower ball joints both sides. Passenger side went first, I just did driver side last spring. Just replaced the original battery the other day.
Driver side end link, shocks all around. Floppy heat shield on the cats too, just yanked them off. I've done that on every car I've ever owned with heat shields.
New heater core and thermostat a while back due to a mis-diagnosis of the blend door issue. Heh heh, free...Although I ended up fixing the blend door myself. I couldn't figure out why the heat wouldn't work, drove me to drink, so I finally cracked and sent it to a shop to get it fixed, they ended up doing the heater core, t-stat, radiator flush, and trouble shot the climate controls.
Coincidently, the heat worked for a few days as the blend door hadn't completely broken yet, but after bringing it back a thousand or so times, they scratched their heads, felt like idiots, and gave me my money back. This was during October through November mind you...need the heat!
Anyway, this problem is how I found this forum! I did a search to try and figure out what was going on and I ended up here...the rest is history.
I have intermittant "death rattle" too. It's been going on for some time now, a year or more. At first I thought it was pulley related, because it does sound similar to a bad waterpump or alternator etc...or possibly catalyst flopping around in the converters(which I think is happening as well) and figured I'd get around to figuring it out someday, but thanks to this forum,
I now realize it is indeed the dreaded "death rattle".
Sometimes it sounds like someone shaking a coffe can full of quarters, and other times it's not there at all. So be it.
While poking around I discovered the tranny had been replaced, had a re-man sticker from Ford on it, most likely due to the recall issue way back when. Some other stuff had been replaced before I bought it as well, just can't think now. But other than routine maintenance items, I haven't done that much.
Overall, it's been a very good vehicle. Never got stuck anywhere other than my driveway, even when the brake lines let loose my wife still made it home.
Just this weekend is the first time it didn't start, and it ended up being the battery not giving enough cranking amps, it was brutally cold the other day.
She's starting to have some rust issues on the underside, mainly on the floor pans. I hate undercoating, so I used a 50/50 mix of kerosene and motor oil and coated the underside with it in a spray bottle. Some old timer told me about this trick a few years ago and I tried it on my F150 and it really kept it in good condition underneath. Every once in awhile I would power wash it off and re-apply the kero/oil stuff.
My brother had a 96 or 97 with the 5.0 that he bought brand new, and it was very good to him until the end. It was also the training vehicle for his step daughters when they first got their licenses, so at that point it began to live a very hard life, ha! When it got up to the mid 100K's it just became problem after problem, so they traded it in and replaced it with...drum roll...another Explorer.
So, the moral of all this? Explorers are better than bad, they're good. Ha!
