Last night, at 6:55 PM
on the Dan Ryan and about 95th street (I think) The Exploder turned over 400,000 miles.
16 comments Og | Uncategorized
Friday 01 Apr 2011
That is a stunning accomplishment for an owner of a Ford Explorer. It speaks far more about the mechanical skills and knowledge of the driver than the quality of the vehicle.
It’s the equivalent of a country vet riding the same horse to town for 28 years.
It would be the same if the horse’s teeth were the only remaining original parts. All this proves is that you have had a working Odometer for 400,000 miles.
Now we need to see more odometers that are into the high digits.
When I was in the biz, the common hihg mileage car was the Buick Park Avenues. Some had engines replaced at 400k. Not out of need, just because it seemed like a good idea. And that car did not need a bunch of parts in its life.
Could not sell them when you had a intrepid next too them, but was a good car.
Mostly why I got out of the business is that the buying public was way stupid.
Carteach: Coming from you, high praise indeed. thanks!
Pro. hale: I don’t know how long you have been reading here, so I’m gonna be nice, though you felt it necesary to insult me:
The explorer has had multiple sets of brakes, sveral ball joints, a couple of wheel bearings, and a lot of oil changes. In other words, all wear items.
The engine is original, un rebuilt, and unmolested, and has the same compression it had when new. Since it has had a steady diet of synthetic oils, crosshatching is still visible inside the cylinder walls by looking through the spark plug hole with a borescope. The transmission is original, unrebuilt, and unmolested. The rear differential has had it’s pinion seal replaced twice, but all the internals have been on the vehicle since day one and continue to take it down the road just fine. The Ujoints were replaced- not because they had worn, but to replace them with parts that had grease fittings and could be greased.
Five non wear items have been changed- the EGR tube ($40) which cracked with heat some time ago, the radiator, which took a stone from a semi, (in other words, it didn’t fail, it was damaged by an external force) the front crankshaft pulley (Which may have been something I did, but I cannot prove) was cracked, the air conditioner filter, which rusted through, and the chain in the transfer case (Which didn’t need to be replaced; it thunked when I nailed it because of some aggressive offroading early on, so I replaced it to stop the clunking noise) Far less than 1% of the items on the vehicle that could have been repaired or replaced.
So yeah, I could have just moved the odometer from vehicle to vehicle to get it to read 400,000, but i did NOT. Stick that in your pipe, and smoke it.
Paul: I always loved that Park Avenue ride. And the Buick Roadmaster wagon was one of my favorite hunting vehicles, early on.
Eek! Doing 60 mph and you take a pic of your odometer. Isn’t that somewhat naughty?
I think he can handle the multi-task, Frank.
No, that’s not possible. Everyone knows American cars don’t last that long.
:P
This afternoon … somewhere over Ohio, my American Airlines travel miles just crossed 4,000,000.
lol. Nicely done, USC.
yep, Ed, like there’s no way an Escort engine would go 100k.
Og,
No offense intended, except to Ford.
I have owned two Fords and cannot say enough bad about them.
I admire men who can get things done, like keeping their vehicles running. I have no bone to pick with you or your mechanical skills.
When the transmission of my Ford Windstar blew at 85,000 miles, the mechanics at the stealership were congratulating me on it making it that far. The head gaskets blew at 65,000.
I have known a few people with Explorers and they have universally described them as maintenance pits. I think even you have referred to yours as an “exploder”.
So, again, I am genuinely sorry if I have ruffled your feathers. I make no apologies for my anti-Ford bias.
Hale: Any vehicle, properly maintained, will run for ages. My explorer (I call it the exploder because of the Firestone recall) is just a run of the mill assembly line ford, and I took care of it.
The trans in your Windstar may have failed because it was a bad design.You could keep them running forever, though, bad design notwithstanding. Ford has had some bad designs, but no more than Chevy, and not nearly as many as Dodge. Had you purchased a Mercury Villager, you’d still be driving it.
Anyone who has an explorer and has issues with it is either not doing routine maintenance, or is horribly abusing it, (And mine has seen plenty of hard use)and that’s a demonstrable fact. Until last year, I was unable to find ANY parts for my explorer in a yard, and that is because unless they were in a horrible wreck, they were still on the road. the ONLY reason the yards have them now, is they were the single most popular “Cash for Clunkers” car.
I’ve had great Dodge vans. great Chevy cars and trucks. Funny how I take care of my shit, and it doesn’t give me trouble. Other people don’t take car of their shit, and “Can’t say enough bad” about it.
The winstar had the taurus tranny in it. Take a car and load it to max and run 85k, if you are lucky. Dodge was worse. Many of there mini vans in the mid 80 to 90 would have transmission problems at 25k, 85, and 125k. The third one would be when we saw them come out as tradins.
Well actually, the Mercury Villager was in fact, just a rebadged Nissan Quest.
Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you. Just that the Villager wasn’t really a FoMoCo product.
Having grown up in a rather GM loyal family, I’ve owned several Fords, interspersed with a Benz, four BMWs, a trio of VWs, a GMC pickemup (with the 6.2 diesel) and a few other rides to boot. (a surplus U.S. Postal Jeep doesn’t quite count as “typical” for comparative purposes, does it?)
I’ve found that the Fords have been, on the whole, the most reliable and the cheapest to operate and maintain of them all.
Hell, my Crown Vic is so damn all around useful, I sort of consider it a 1/2 ton quad-cab truck, just one with a fully enclosed bed.
But, soon as they come out with half ton trucks with small, high-energy diesels in ’em, I’m in!
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
That is amazing.
Just turned over 300,000 Priority Club points at Holiday Inn.
So that makes me smart, right?…Right?
Good on ya Og, miss my ’96 Exporer.
Explorer…fat fingers!