Looking good. The tear downs just seam to go on forever with out looking like much is getting done and then all of a sudden it's apart and the more glamorous stuff can begin. I wish mine was as clean as yours. Mine is a total rust bucket by comparison.
Thanks for the kind words man. Mine does have a few spots that will need to be taken care of that I am not to happy about but for being 15 years old and 200,000 miles while also seeing winter use through those years, I guess I can't complain.
Sorry it has taken me so long to update the thread. Didn't seem like too many were interested anyways but I finally got to work a small amount on it today. Nothing to ground breaking but the small things that take up a lot of time.
First thing was to get the garage cleaned up a good amount as it was pretty bad. It was really dirty and not organized hardly at all. I have been crazy busy with work as well as having to work on a few other vehicles and my 3500, so the explorer has got the back seat for awhile. Plus with me not having concrete yet and the garage not being insulated well, it seems like it gets a lot dirtier with dust, cobwebs, etc than say a really nice insulated, concrete, drywall, etc garage that many have. I can't wait to build a nice one in the next few years but for now this is a million times better than having none at all so I shouldn't complain. Got some things organized, a lot of explorer parts put away that I previously was storing on my trailer that was in here, blew all the dust/cobwebs out of there and anything that got built up underneath the explorer.
Most of my time tonight was spent on the actual garage and cleaning but I turned my attention back to the inside of the explorer and the "hellish" amount of factory sound deadening material. If any of you have ever spent the time trying to get it all out including old factory seam sealer, you will know exactly what I mean. It literally is such a slow process even with heat, scraping, etc. You will have hours of work into what looks like just a small area. Didn't really take pictures of that as it still kind of looks like the above ones I have already posted.
A reminder. You can see how it just gets chipped/scraped very slowly away. You can also see the plastic wiring harness covers/pockets a little bit here that I will mention later on.
Then I cleaned up the huge mess it makes and vacuumed all the small pieces up. The sides of the interior have these plastic covers/pockets for the main wiring harness to run through which are riveted in place at the factory. This was really bugging me as I couldn't get the area behind them and between the sides of the vehicle in order to vacuum and clean the gunk build up in there. I really didn't want to pull them since they were riveted but the thought that I have taken so much time/effort to clean everything else and do this "right" to the best of my current abilities, it seemed almost a crime to leave it.
Word of advice for anyone that is planning on doing it, drilling out the rivets aren't really the best way to go. The center section of the rivet that gets drilled out doesn't really hold them in place much, it has a set of 3 wings that get flared out underneath the vehicle which seem to stay in place even after you drill the center section of them out. After a few different methods, I found it best just to go from underneath and cut straight sideways through the entire bottom section of the rivet that sticks out underneath the vehicle with a cutoff wheel. Making sure that you go parallel to pinch weld and as close to the underside of the vehicle body as you can. You end up slicing right through the center part of the rivet as well as the majority of the three wings. This weakens them enough that you can go up top and pry underneath the plastic pocket section to where it pulls the whole rivet head and remaining portions of the wings through the opening. One thing to note on the front driver and passenger ones, there are four rivets each holding them end One of the four rivets goes into a chassis section that you don't have access to when underneath the vehicle. The other three just go straight down through the floor pan with nothing to block access from underneath. So for that one on each side, drilling it out is really the only option but it does take a fair amount more work than the other method I mentioned.
Sorry I didn't get some pictures of them installed from underneath but it was just one of those days where I didn't want to stop the work for pictures. I really do try my best to just go slow and spend time taking progress pictures, but sometimes it just doesn't end up that way. Especially since I ran out of vinyl/mechanics gloves half way through, my hands became really filthy which halted a lot of camera holding.
Front all finished and cleaned up.
Rear all finished and cleaned up.
Putting it to bed for the night.
Thanks
