94 Explorer

[theerandyg]

I've been waiting for a place to keep a timeline of this thing. With DR being down more than up I never bothered.

I bought the explorer 10/28/19 for 800 bucks. With a few small issues. My idea behind the explorer was a build just like Jesse's bless jr. Simple, sleeper and something that just works.

Day 1



Scored some freebie Mojave Teflon's
Added a skyjacker lift coil and a freebie shackles, complete piece of shit light and a radio to communicate with the boys. At this point it was cool and somewhat usable.









Any how. Started saving money. Did a ton of maintenance and attempting to make it reliable. In March 2021 I took it to Mikey over at the fab lab for cut and turn beams.






Sick! Got it home, called Bobby at solo and ordered G50E's like an idiot instead of a 62" spring. Oh well. Went up to 33x10.5 and ar23's. Pulled a 2nd gen 8.8 from the junk yard, had it completely gone through and added 4.56 gears, truetrac, new axles, welded axle toobz and plugs.. Cheaped out up front, only gears.

By now we've got a bond and alot of trust going on. Me and the girlfriend started taking it out on solo trips, camping out of it and just enjoying the hell out of it.











I've been sitting on smooth body's for the thing for a while now. They'll make it on one day.

That's all for now

 

[theerandyg]

And the old truck

 

[theycallmeWALLY]

Thanks for posting up dude! Always loved Jesse's and this one looks like a super clean start to a build

 

[Baconcreekmetal]

I love my Sploders. That's a nice looking 1st gen.

 

[KaiserJ]

Dude this thing is perfect. What more do you need really?

 

[theerandyg]

Me and a group of friends decided it was a great time to take a bunch of beaters and drive mojave road. The forecast showed nothing but 100 degree weather..

We left Long Beach a little before 6 am, grabbed fuel in Barstow and was in the dirt by 9:30. We dropped into Afton Canyon to check if the water crossing was do able. We sent the jeeps through and everyone followed. By the time we made it to the trestle the XJ caught a rock from my expo and blew out the rear passenger quarter window.. A little unfortunate. Made our way through the wash, made a quick restroom stop, tightened a few ratched straps grabbed an Un-crustable and one of the explorers dnf'd a battery. Whatever, we all had jump packs and cables. Jumped it for the remainder of the day. Hit travelers monument and carried on. By now its about who knows what time but it was warming up. Stopped again a few miles from kelbaker road, the black explorer was misfiring. Stopped to cool off and do a once over. In that amount of time another explorer optima popped. So now both white expos are on bad batteries. My AC that hardly worked when it's 69 degrees let out what it had. The XJ is loosing it's muffer so we fixed that. Anyway, I scanned the black one and came up with a bad MAF. Hit it with break cleaner and it continued to run like shit, whatever. Carried on to the Lava tube area and checked that out. Coming out of there the black expo lost a radius arm bushing, great.. Carry on. Next up was the mailbox and then camp. Hit the mailbox, did our thing, hydrated and the black explorer puked out its coolant, AWSOME. Found the crack up high, and started topping it off as needed. Eventually we made it to the Mojave Road marker at kelso-cima and scored some service to reach out to a buddy that was meeting us at camp and sent him on a wild goose chase. Parts and more beer. Set up camp, dinner, beers, and repaired the cracked radiator incase josh wasnt able to find us a replacement. Josh arrived with the order and a few extra gallons of gas at midnight. In the morning we got to work fixing what we could. 2 new batteries and spare alternator and the radiator. Rolled out of camp at 9 and made the hike to the Avi. Fortunately day 2 was alot better of a day problem wise. Push hard had fun and raced our fuel gauges flawless run up until we came out of Lainfair Valley. My buddy in the smaller white expo infornt of me gets on the radio and says he's lost power. He came to a stop and smoke was billowing from under the hood! The battery hold down for the optima didn't agree with the Walmart battery. The positive was pinched between the intake and the hold down. It finally wore through the jacket on the wire, shorted and caught fire. Got the fire situation under control quickly before everyone could get turned around and back to us. Wrapped the melted wires in electrical tape, secured the old bad battery out of the other expo better because the fire melted a hole in the new battery. Wouldnt ya know, hooked up the battery and jump pack and the thing fired up and we carried on. Crossed the 95 and the bronco lost brakes. Come to find out his rear shock shaft either un-threaded or pulled out of the rod end and smashed the brake line. Finally made it to the Avi and some dude in a Nissan juke flew into the rear bumper of the white jeep, jeep won and we carried on to my buddy's house to wrap it up and spend the weekend at the river. Good times!

 

[theycallmeWALLY]

Dang bro... Fires, dead batteries, car crashes, and shrimp on the barby... Sounds like you girls had one hell of a weekend.

Let me know when the next one is!

 

[theerandyg]

Pulled the headliner a few months ago. In the process i had some wind try and rip it out of my hands and deamn near break the front of it in half. Anyhow.. Used some sweet suede fabric from the local Joann fabrics.. Once I had it all fixed up it eneded up falling over night. Go figure. Either fabric too heavy or the glue I used sucked. Pulled it back out and re did it with regular ole headliner material.

Added some kilmat, blasted a hole in the roof and ditched the magnet mounted antenna and finally got it all back together. I lost interest after I fractured the headliner so the job took a couple of months... Satisfied though

 

[WW_RANGER_X]

Glad to see my old FOAs still holding up!

 

[Baconcreekmetal]

My headliner looks like Edward scissor hands went for a joy ride.
Yours looks really good