94fourdoor
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- February 16, 2009
- Messages
- 310
- Reaction score
- 1
- City, State
- Bakersfield, California
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 1994 XLT Four Door
So I decided to start a build thread for my rig, mainly for my own benefit/reference/enjoyment... or a painful reminder for how bad things can go and maybe inspiration for newbs, as I still consider myself a newbie. I should have started this a long time ago, as I have already modified the Ex substantially from stock, though not even close to a lot of the incredible machines this forum has to offer. Someday I hope to join the ranks of virtually unstoppable doomsday rigs that I drool over every time I browse the threads and build logs of others, but for now, one step at a time!
A little history about the 94 Ex whose name has been chosen but still needs to be earned...
I bought my rig for three reasons: The price was perfect, my Thunderchicken was done for, and it really pissed off my inlaws... mainly because of the later. They are bowtie peddlers. I will always bleed Blue Oval. My in-laws neighbors had this Ex that would only go in reverse, they wanted 600 bucks for it, but they took 250.
I quickly found out that if I revved the motor to about 3 grand, it would catch 1st and drive normally until it was put back into park or reverse. I drove it this way for about 6 months until she finally rolled over and played dead. The first trans replacement was now in order. I found a great deal on a 94 ex with a blown motor, but practically new trans. I harvested every part that could unbolt from that Ex and swapped the trans. That trans lasted about 1 year or so, then started overheating on longer drives. The time had come again. The next swap took place and I was up and running once more. About a year later, I was driving my buddies home from a great night of tasty adult beverages and harmless mischief, when the temp guage went through the roof... blown head gaskets. Awesome. Luckily I have friends in the auto repair industry and they happen to have another Ex that they had just acquired after a 90 day lien. Apparently the previous owner thought that 85 bucks was too much to pay for a tune up and ditched it with my friends... lucky me. They said I could have the motor if I pulled it. Thank you! Up and running again! Fast forward about a year and a half, more trans issues. I had a 50 or so mile commute to work, but the last few miles are a winding, uphill battle. My trans started boiling all the fluid out, so I got a Bugpack external oil cooler with an electric fan, pretty *****in' setup if you ask me. Before I could install it, the A4LD crapped out on me again. This time I wasn't surprised. After whining about it for a few months, I started a "help me" thread and was contacted by an awesome forum member that has turned out to be a tremendous help and a good friend... enter Jon (Turdle). He lets me know that he has a complete manual setup that he would sell me and at last, I see light at the end of a long, dark tunnel! A few PM's later, a short wait, and I have a manual trans setup with my name on it sitting on my front porch! Yeehaw! Now the fun starts...
I am currently in the process of the manual swap, which I will be doing a write up on after it is finished and I have all the bugs worked out. I am also doing a custom, sort of, dash that I will fill you all in on as soon as I figure out exactly what I am going to do. In between the previous trans and the last, I installed a Superlift 5.5 with superrunner extended radius arms. It has served me well, but after extensive thread reading, I think I would be happier with the James Duff kit. Hindsight, oh well. A Dana 60 SAS is a definite in the future. I have done the Throttle body mod and I found Spdrcer34's write up on it EXTREMELY helpful. It's currently running 33's and stock gears, which I don't recommend as thats probably one of the reasons (I'm sure there were others) that my last trans crapped out. If any Newbs are reading this long-winded post, let me give you a bit of advise (that you will undoubtedly hear from many others if you post a frequently covered topic): SEARCH THE FORUMS BEFORE ASKING QUESTIONS! As much as we all like to think that we are somehow special, and that our problem is probably the only Ex to ever have a certain problem, I assure you that you are going to be wrong 99% of the time. I can tell you that if I had done more thread searching, I could have saved myself quite a few headaches as well. The knowledge that this forum holds is second to none. All that being said... on to some pics.
These are unfortunately, the only pics I have of the Ex before I started to really do anything to it, are of me getting stuck!
These are during the lift process, camera phone quality...
And these are, for the most part, pics in its current stage...
This is the dash in progress. All the factory padding and the gray vinyl has been scraped off and sanded for the modifications to come.
That's pretty much the extent of things for now... I will be working on it steadily the next few days and updating this thread as I go. Thanks for checking out my progress, and if you feel up to it, a few words of encouragement are ALWAYS appreciated!
A little history about the 94 Ex whose name has been chosen but still needs to be earned...
I bought my rig for three reasons: The price was perfect, my Thunderchicken was done for, and it really pissed off my inlaws... mainly because of the later. They are bowtie peddlers. I will always bleed Blue Oval. My in-laws neighbors had this Ex that would only go in reverse, they wanted 600 bucks for it, but they took 250.
I quickly found out that if I revved the motor to about 3 grand, it would catch 1st and drive normally until it was put back into park or reverse. I drove it this way for about 6 months until she finally rolled over and played dead. The first trans replacement was now in order. I found a great deal on a 94 ex with a blown motor, but practically new trans. I harvested every part that could unbolt from that Ex and swapped the trans. That trans lasted about 1 year or so, then started overheating on longer drives. The time had come again. The next swap took place and I was up and running once more. About a year later, I was driving my buddies home from a great night of tasty adult beverages and harmless mischief, when the temp guage went through the roof... blown head gaskets. Awesome. Luckily I have friends in the auto repair industry and they happen to have another Ex that they had just acquired after a 90 day lien. Apparently the previous owner thought that 85 bucks was too much to pay for a tune up and ditched it with my friends... lucky me. They said I could have the motor if I pulled it. Thank you! Up and running again! Fast forward about a year and a half, more trans issues. I had a 50 or so mile commute to work, but the last few miles are a winding, uphill battle. My trans started boiling all the fluid out, so I got a Bugpack external oil cooler with an electric fan, pretty *****in' setup if you ask me. Before I could install it, the A4LD crapped out on me again. This time I wasn't surprised. After whining about it for a few months, I started a "help me" thread and was contacted by an awesome forum member that has turned out to be a tremendous help and a good friend... enter Jon (Turdle). He lets me know that he has a complete manual setup that he would sell me and at last, I see light at the end of a long, dark tunnel! A few PM's later, a short wait, and I have a manual trans setup with my name on it sitting on my front porch! Yeehaw! Now the fun starts...I am currently in the process of the manual swap, which I will be doing a write up on after it is finished and I have all the bugs worked out. I am also doing a custom, sort of, dash that I will fill you all in on as soon as I figure out exactly what I am going to do. In between the previous trans and the last, I installed a Superlift 5.5 with superrunner extended radius arms. It has served me well, but after extensive thread reading, I think I would be happier with the James Duff kit. Hindsight, oh well. A Dana 60 SAS is a definite in the future. I have done the Throttle body mod and I found Spdrcer34's write up on it EXTREMELY helpful. It's currently running 33's and stock gears, which I don't recommend as thats probably one of the reasons (I'm sure there were others) that my last trans crapped out. If any Newbs are reading this long-winded post, let me give you a bit of advise (that you will undoubtedly hear from many others if you post a frequently covered topic): SEARCH THE FORUMS BEFORE ASKING QUESTIONS! As much as we all like to think that we are somehow special, and that our problem is probably the only Ex to ever have a certain problem, I assure you that you are going to be wrong 99% of the time. I can tell you that if I had done more thread searching, I could have saved myself quite a few headaches as well. The knowledge that this forum holds is second to none. All that being said... on to some pics.
These are unfortunately, the only pics I have of the Ex before I started to really do anything to it, are of me getting stuck!
These are during the lift process, camera phone quality...
And these are, for the most part, pics in its current stage...
This is the dash in progress. All the factory padding and the gray vinyl has been scraped off and sanded for the modifications to come.
That's pretty much the extent of things for now... I will be working on it steadily the next few days and updating this thread as I go. Thanks for checking out my progress, and if you feel up to it, a few words of encouragement are ALWAYS appreciated!
