Christopher DeHart
New Member
- Joined
- September 7, 2018
- Messages
- 1
- Reaction score
- 0
- City, State
- Gainesville, FL
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 2003 Ford Explorer XLT
I've been lurking for the past year and have used a lot of information from this forum to keep my Explorer going. Last weekend LKQ was running a 40% off labor day sale so I went and looked around. I found a 2003 Mountaineer with the message center cluster and thought that would be a cool upgrade for my basic XLT. After removing the cluster and switch panel from the left of the radio I headed home. I figured the easiest thing would be to just swap clusters and see what happens. As luck would have it the new cluster bolted in with no mods and there was already a harness dummy connected to the radio trim panel for the switch panel. I held my breath and turned on the key, and everything worked. All of the warning lights and gauges came on, and the switch panel for controlling the message center worked like expected. They only thing that's missing is the outside temp display, as I believe that would be displayed on the HVAC digital display which I don't have. Plus this cluster shows 50000 more miles than the truck actually has but I don't really care too much about that.
All in all I'm very happy with the results of this swap and the multiple additional features I now have with it. I may see if it's possible to get my temp display back but it's not a big deal.
All in all I'm very happy with the results of this swap and the multiple additional features I now have with it. I may see if it's possible to get my temp display back but it's not a big deal.