Well I guess I’ll give my side of the story for the desert hot springs to big bear trip with tree trunk, Turboyota, bromainia, and whitetrashkyle, mines a little shorter!
Made it to the trail head in the am, and stopped to take a leak. Everyone was ready to take off and the explorer decided it didn’t want to start, after some poking around and beating on the fuel tank it fired right up. Figured my fuel pump was going out, but pressed on anyways. Made it probably 6.9miles up the trail which was a blast everything was working great, until it died…
Tried checking a few obvious things like fuses and relays, went to pull the fuel filter off and realized I didn’t have my fuel line tool and ended up making one out of a hose clamp that I cut off. Everything seemed good so at this point it was down to the fuel pump. Eventually the rest of the group back tracked and the explorer went on the strap for the first time.
Treetrunk was gonna drag me the rest of the way up the hill, he said he was worried about a couple of switch back corners. Once we got up to them I understood his concerns lol at one point he was so for out the corner it started pulling the explorer over, front tire was of the ground and thankfully popped up over the obstacle. Pretty smooth sailing from there, started making phone calls to see if a parts store had one, thankfully orileys did.
At this point we dropped the tank and swapped the pump. I had a nice bath in gasoline. Turboyota got curious of the creature comforts of a 1995 explorer and proceeded to have a seat in it, little did he know my head was between the diff and the floor I yelped like a little girl and he promptly jumped out
so thinking I was home free everyone headed for the gas station and then the explorer died again. I told the rest of the group to press on and I was gonna try to limp it home.
Made it down the highway to morongo valley and realized there was no way I could make it down the 10 freeway. My buddy and I pulled over and called the chase truck (AAA) they said it would be a few hours which was fine because we were well stocked on frosty cold coors lights. In our down time we continued to brain storm and try different things to get it running. Went to bleed some air that was trapped in the fuel rail and told my buddy to try and crank it over. Immediately it caught on fire with my hand in the middle of it, thankfully I had a fire extinguisher in the back and got it out quick, and only had a small burn on my middle finger. Gave up at this point and proceeded to drink beer until the tow truck showed up.
So moral of the story, have a fire extinguisher close and easily accessible. Also have two of them it’s cheap insurance.
Grungy brake calipers for the win!
Next on the list is the rear suspension, hopefully in the next few weeks.
Shortly after this trip I pulled it in the garage and got started on the rear. Going along with the trend of being a cheap ass I acquired some leaf springs from tree trunk that for a lifted Cherokee to splice into the stock leafs and of course bought another set of foa’s (raptor shocks are hard to find or just to damn expensive) got all the old shock mounts and spare tire mount cut out and started mocking things up. As expected the shocks are a dumb angle but I don’t care, knowing I can sleep in the back is worth it. 
After this limit strap mounts were pretty quick then had to figure out how to mount the evap canisters. Made a tray for them and attached it to the bottom of the body. Also picked up some ruff stuff lower spring plates and 5/8” u bolts and everything to change over the brake lines to -3. For some reason no one makes an extended brake line for 2nd gen’s or at least I couldn’t find it. Everything went back together quick and hopefully it works better then the blown out rancho 5000’s
Next on the list is build a tire swinger into the stock bumper. Hoping to start on that this weekend
I also picked up some MasterCraft seats for it, the stock driver seat was blown out and pretty sitting on the metal framing. Got them installed which was a pain, had vertical tabs and ended up having to cut them off and weld horizontal tabs since they were sitting up to high. Not sure how I feel about the seats, the backs are a little shorter than I expected with me being 6’2” they almost feel like low backs. Time will tell though. 
