pphillips250
New Member
- Joined
- November 16, 2017
- Messages
- 8
- Reaction score
- 4
- City, State
- Warrensville NC
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 1991 Ford Explorer xlt
Hey every body I’ve been on the forums for a little while and have always found great resources for any problems along with kickass build threads. So I decided to share my own build.
My love for first gen explorers started when I was a little boy my dad had bought a 1993 xlt that was a 5speed 4.0 and that car was a tank. Had all the room in the world and power enough to tow a little pop up camper.
So when I turned 16 and Restored my first car a 1979 fiesta for my daily I knew it could never see the salt of winter. I live in the upper most corner of North Carolina bordering Tennessee and Virginia. We see all 4 seasons and pretty rough weather during winter months. So I decided I needed a 4wd and I started looking for explorers.
Found an old friend of mine who was big into jeeps that had an old 1993 explorer that he didn’t know much about. I went and looked at it and it was solid and was complete so I payed the man 500$ for it and drug it out of the woods
Over that summer I worked on I and put in a fuel pump, brakes and brake lines soft and hard, manual hub conversion, some different wheels and a custom bumper
I drove it for almost 7k miles which over that time I put a new transmission in it, a radio speakers subwoofers etc. but when summer came again in 2018 it started misfiring and not throwing any codes at all. The miss was extreme and couldn’t even get up my driveway so I left it at the bottom hoping to scan codes and hopefully fix it, 45 min later I came back down the driveway and it was engulfed in flames....
I still have no idea what could’ve cause the fire or why it even happened, but everyone was safe and no one was near it so it was ok.
After grieving the loss of my poor car I realized I only have a few months to find a car for winter. So I started a search again to find some Little beater car of cheap, to no luck I started looking by local towing lots.
Only to find my next vehicle which is a 1991 Ford Explorer. I went to talk to the owner and he said unless I wanted it it was gonna be scrap, and told me 400$ takes it cause he didn’t know anything about it.
If I would’ve had the money with me I would’ve payed him that second.
He also towed it to my home for free of charge.
It is a full leather and power seat car with a sun roof. I scored big to say the least cause I had it running on a water bottle of fuel in about 10 min after it was at my home.
Of course I did the same maintenece which included fuel pump and filter, brakes and lines, and kept a close eye on the transmission fluid and cooler.
I soon started dreaming about all the stuff I wished I could’ve done to my green one, lift kit tires etc. so I began small with an old repurposed set of deer paws and some 31x10.50 15 Firestone’s
Soon I started driving it and had the windows tinted and decided I needed better lighting so I installed a pair of led pod style fo lights in the grille
I also had purchased a 20” led light bar bud didn’t want to drill into the factory bumper.
I drove it stock like this for a while until I was ready to lift it, I decided to go with a 2inch lift using a coil spacer and a shackle to maintain ride quality, and also found a sick bumper on a little Toyota truck and traded a boy out of it. Also blacked out my grilled and headlight bezels.
Before lift:
After lift:
Of course I have bigger plans for a body lift and bigger tires and wheels. But for the time being it’s really doing well in snow and off road.
After driving it with the new bumper I decided the tan two tone was outdated and needed to be black.
Of course the cheap paint didn’t want to stick to the chrome but the tan was gone and that’s all I cared about.
Me and some buddies around the area have a couple little 4wd’s like these and we get together sometimes at each other’s shops and work on our cars and what not, and I came across an old calmini roof rack off of a Suzuki sidekick that had been SAS, I asked the boy what he was gonna do with it and he said since he had bought a rzr that he didn’t really wheel it any more and said to take the rack since he didn’t need it. I me and friend made some brackets and installed the rack onto my factory slides in the roof.
I had a spare tire on it at first but it felt way to top heavy so I took it off for time being.
This is as far as I’ve came with my build in about 5 months of owning it. Definitely more to come, possibly a custom 1.5 inch or 3 inch body lift and some 33s on hopefully 15x10s. I’ll do my best to keep the thread updated on this rig, definitely has a lot of potential.
Stay Tuned ! More to come !
My love for first gen explorers started when I was a little boy my dad had bought a 1993 xlt that was a 5speed 4.0 and that car was a tank. Had all the room in the world and power enough to tow a little pop up camper.
So when I turned 16 and Restored my first car a 1979 fiesta for my daily I knew it could never see the salt of winter. I live in the upper most corner of North Carolina bordering Tennessee and Virginia. We see all 4 seasons and pretty rough weather during winter months. So I decided I needed a 4wd and I started looking for explorers.
Found an old friend of mine who was big into jeeps that had an old 1993 explorer that he didn’t know much about. I went and looked at it and it was solid and was complete so I payed the man 500$ for it and drug it out of the woods
Over that summer I worked on I and put in a fuel pump, brakes and brake lines soft and hard, manual hub conversion, some different wheels and a custom bumper
I drove it for almost 7k miles which over that time I put a new transmission in it, a radio speakers subwoofers etc. but when summer came again in 2018 it started misfiring and not throwing any codes at all. The miss was extreme and couldn’t even get up my driveway so I left it at the bottom hoping to scan codes and hopefully fix it, 45 min later I came back down the driveway and it was engulfed in flames....
I still have no idea what could’ve cause the fire or why it even happened, but everyone was safe and no one was near it so it was ok.
After grieving the loss of my poor car I realized I only have a few months to find a car for winter. So I started a search again to find some Little beater car of cheap, to no luck I started looking by local towing lots.
Only to find my next vehicle which is a 1991 Ford Explorer. I went to talk to the owner and he said unless I wanted it it was gonna be scrap, and told me 400$ takes it cause he didn’t know anything about it.
If I would’ve had the money with me I would’ve payed him that second.
He also towed it to my home for free of charge.
It is a full leather and power seat car with a sun roof. I scored big to say the least cause I had it running on a water bottle of fuel in about 10 min after it was at my home.
Of course I did the same maintenece which included fuel pump and filter, brakes and lines, and kept a close eye on the transmission fluid and cooler.
I soon started dreaming about all the stuff I wished I could’ve done to my green one, lift kit tires etc. so I began small with an old repurposed set of deer paws and some 31x10.50 15 Firestone’s
Soon I started driving it and had the windows tinted and decided I needed better lighting so I installed a pair of led pod style fo lights in the grille
I also had purchased a 20” led light bar bud didn’t want to drill into the factory bumper.
I drove it stock like this for a while until I was ready to lift it, I decided to go with a 2inch lift using a coil spacer and a shackle to maintain ride quality, and also found a sick bumper on a little Toyota truck and traded a boy out of it. Also blacked out my grilled and headlight bezels.
Before lift:
After lift:
Of course I have bigger plans for a body lift and bigger tires and wheels. But for the time being it’s really doing well in snow and off road.
After driving it with the new bumper I decided the tan two tone was outdated and needed to be black.
Of course the cheap paint didn’t want to stick to the chrome but the tan was gone and that’s all I cared about.
Me and some buddies around the area have a couple little 4wd’s like these and we get together sometimes at each other’s shops and work on our cars and what not, and I came across an old calmini roof rack off of a Suzuki sidekick that had been SAS, I asked the boy what he was gonna do with it and he said since he had bought a rzr that he didn’t really wheel it any more and said to take the rack since he didn’t need it. I me and friend made some brackets and installed the rack onto my factory slides in the roof.
I had a spare tire on it at first but it felt way to top heavy so I took it off for time being.
This is as far as I’ve came with my build in about 5 months of owning it. Definitely more to come, possibly a custom 1.5 inch or 3 inch body lift and some 33s on hopefully 15x10s. I’ll do my best to keep the thread updated on this rig, definitely has a lot of potential.
Stay Tuned ! More to come !
