“Im interested in buying your Tunrdra, but only if you’re interested in taking my 2007 Ford Explorer Limited on trade”.
This was told to me last week while showing my recently-repaired and refurbished Tundra to a prospective buyer, on a beautiful late spring afternoon, in the parking lot of Legion Stadium, in Wilmington, North Carolina, at the heart of The Cape Fear: the place I’ve called home for the past 28 years. I know that’s a lot of sentence, but Wilmington is that great.
I had bought the Tundra about a month or so ago from the tenant of the same person that sold me this wicked intelligent purchase a few years back. That tale of woe made more than a few of you chuckle at my misfortune in the comments and was a moment of humility for this guy. I’d suggest reading it for a good laugh and refresher if you have the click in you and the time.
The landlord seemingly has a history of money-challenged tenants leaving broken cars on his property after they vacate. Knowing an Autopian like me that is less scared and more willing to approach a vehicle in that state was apparently important enough for the guy to save my number for the last 2.5 years (since the above piece was published).
He called me up and offered it to me to quite broken but also for a wicked killer price. Not completely sure if I should pull the trigger, I posted it in our Autopian Editorial Slack channel to run it by the team and received this from my buddy (and Editor-in-Chief) David Tracy:
“It’s a Toyota truck. Buy now and think later!”
Anyway, this story is about an Explorer, and not about that Tundra, but how things come to be is important for background setting. The Tundra Tale is up next on The List Of SWG’s Wicked Evil Autopian Wrenching Adventures, to keep your eyes peeled in the upcoming weeks. Now, back to that moment in the parking lot at Legion Stadium.
Another Ford “Exploder?”
When you know a little bit about fixing them, it leads to owning them. I’ve had 162 cars over the past 31 years and 2 of them were Ford Explorers. Interestingly, both of my previous Explorers were the 2-door “Sport” models from the late 90s, which is the lower volume model when compared with the garden variety four door model.
Outside of wrenching on both of my Explorers, I also documented my wrenching experience on my neighbor (and one of my best buds) Thomas’ “Portofino Blue” 1997 Explorer in this wicked fun piece from three years back. It’s also pretty funny so I’d also recommend checking it out if you were busy on June 12th, 2023 and happened to miss it.
I love everything on four wheels which means you have to be choosy about which vehicles to allocate your time to; they have to be special and evoke an emotional response every time. There’s that old saying that if you don’t turn around to catch one more glance at your lover or your car while walking away from them/it, you’re dating the wrong person and driving the wrong car. This is true.
Explorers are to me, as my friend and Autopian Publisher Matt Hardigree says, “fine”. Matt uses that term in that manner when something is not at all, or in any way bad, but is also nothing special to write much more than that single word about. Those trucks are handsome and serve their intended purpose very well and make millions of owners happy around the world. Do they elicit an emotional response from me? No, they don’t. And that’s ok.
Considering the above lack of emotion and compounding that upon the fact that I already have 15 cars of my own that I can barely keep up with (and find parking for), taking what would be my third Explorer on trade didn’t seem like all that great of an idea. My initial response to the buyer was that I wasn’t that interested in taking his 2007 Explorer on trade. Lucky, he doubled down.
“Ok, Tell Me More”
“You sure, man? I just got it from the original owner and it only has like 60K miles on it,” I was told next. Any Autopian worth their key rings knows that hearing the above words on low mileage and on 19 years of original ownership is something quite notable.
Apparently the guy that wanted to buy the Tundra does home kitchen and bathroom remodeling and had recently done some work for an older lady on her beach house. He pulled out his phone and showed me a few pictures of it under a car port, in what looked to be a neighborhood that I couldn’t afford to live in.
Apparently, the beach house owner had purchased the truck as a beach runaround and had not really used it (nor the two Mercedes that were next to it) very much over the past 19 years. Only 60K miles. An extra set of floor mats on top of the factory floor mats. A super clean interior. No wear on the outboard edges of the driver’s seat. These are prime Little Old Lady Ownership tells to my trained Autopian eye.
Living in Coastal Carolina for my entire adult life, you immediately know that if someone has a beach house, they have some money. You really can’t get anything near the water for under a cool million these days (which is sad). People with money can afford maintenance and more usually than not, are better set up to take care of a vehicle (garages, car covers, full detail jobs, ceramic paint coating, “Suggested Maintenance”, etc).
He said he took the truck on trade for a discount on the beach house upgrades after his truck was rear-ended midway through the job. The beach house owner said she didn’t really use it, need it or want it any longer (she said the same about the two Mercedes next to it – their fate remains unknown).
The prospective Tundra buyer drove the Explorer for a few weeks as a temporary measure until he found a replacement truck (he’s in construction after all), which brings us up to speed on the Tundra sale/Explorer trade in the Legion Stadium parking lot that afternoon.
I agreed to buy it from him for $2K (his full asking price – he was definitely aware of the below issues – read on!) without any haggling and handed him the title and keys for his new Tundra. I was now the owner of my third Explorer; a car that I really didn’t want, nor need, but a car that was remarkably clean.
Let’s Wrench! Rear Suspension Noise
Upon getting in my new Ford, I was greeted by a nice-smelling interior in great shape, some cold AC, soft leather and…a loud clunk from the rear when I hit my first road imperfection while driving it home to my Evil Wrenching Lair (underneath that volcano in Wilmington, NC). Dammit.
Laying on my back under the rear of the truck, there is more than enough ground clearance to clearly see most of the rear suspension and it was very obvious that the rear sway bar link bushings had decided they no longer wanted to be involved with this truck.
That was actually a really great discovery! Out of all the difficult and expensive things that can cause a clunk in a rear end/rear suspension, those sway bar link bushings are probably the easiest and cheapest to fix.
Let’s Wrench! When Your Door Is Not A Door
The next item that was immediately noticeable as broken was the red “Door Ajar” message and light on the gauge cluster that was communicated and illuminated even when the door was closed.
A quick Google search showed that this is a hyper-common problem with this generation of Explorer and repair videos and parts are plentiful. Cheap parts and common knowledge on repairs are the classic hallmarks of Chevy/Ford/Dodge. Score one for the home team.
One $15 “Door Jamb Sensor”, one quick 10-min video watch to get myself up to speed on the repair, and about 45 minutes in my driveway pulling the door panel, latch and bad sensor and it was fixed!
Wicked, wicked easy and a great feeling when a repair goes so smoothly and exactly according to plan.
Let’s Not Wrench! Third Row Seat Motor
I also noticed that one of the electric 3rd row seat motors that are used to raise and lower the seats did not work and was stuck in the “down” position.
Not a hard fix, but I wasn’t going to keep this truck and the next owner may or may not need/use the 3rd row. I’ll leave the repair choice up to them. No need to fix a seat that may never be sat upon.
Exploring New Ownership
After vacuuming out all the beach sand from over the years, filling it up with fresh gas and oil and cleaning it up a bit, I posted it for sale. The truck immediately garnered massive attention due to its low mileage, great interior, excellent presentation and three-ish rows of seats from a good number of shoppers.
Unfortunately also from all the usual seemingly-unintelligent, mean-spirited, lowballing jerks with poor reading skills on Marketplace.
The above guy was just weird and kind of funny in hindsight but not mean-spirited or such. I’m mostly just so over the kind of person who offers less than half of the asking price even though the ad states that the price is firm then continues to berate you to lower the price while disparaging the car after you tell them to actually read the ad/the price is firm. I received a few messages from that crew as well. I cannot stand that guy!
Ok, I’ve recomposed myself and apologize for being saucy. I’m good now, promise. So, back to the story. A few hours after it was listed, I received a message from a guy that wanted to see it that evening. Fantastic! That was wicked fast. People love them some Ford Trucks.
I went to move the truck from my driveway (where I was vacuuming it) to street parking for a few hours before the showing. I hopped into the driver’s seat, turned the key, heard the smooth ignition of the 4.0V6 engine, hit the accelerator and…nothing. The gas pedal did nothing. The tachometer stayed at idle; the Check Engine Light came on with a taunting “ding!” Dammit.
I now had about 2+ hours before the showing and a truck that only idled. Greeeeeaaat.
A quick check of the OBDII system with my cheap-ass Wal-Mart scanner showed a throttle body code – of course! That explains the dead throttle response! Another example of how moving to electronic throttle from a wire/cable is tech making cars worse. I’ve only once, in 31 years and 163 cars had an accelerator cable snap (and that was in Miami in an ‘87 Escort Wagon), but that’s another story for another time, my homies.
Let’s Wrench, Again! Electronic Throttle Body
A quick search on the mobile apps of my local parts retailers shows that Advance Auto had a replacement throttle body about 2 miles from my house for about $230. I normally would go to the local Pick n’ Pull and grab one of one for ~$45 off one of the many Explorers they always have in stock, but there’s a chance that you grab a bad unit and the clock was ticking before the showing! I decided to not take any chances and just pick up the new unit.
The old unit was carbon-baked and electronically fried. It was also super easy to remove (air intake tubing, 2 electrical connectors and 4 8mm bolts) and I had the job done with more than enough time to shower, change and make the showing – thanks Ford Engineers from 2006!
Put Up & Show Up
I arrived at the showing with my now fixed-up “Grimace’d Out” purple Explorer to meet the buyer with a good feeling about the machine I rode in on. He lived close by and told me that we had a bunch of mutual friends on Facebook when he arrived. Nice guy.
He took it for a quick spin and remarked that he used to have a Mazda Navajo in high school and loved it as one does a first car. That’s when I knew that he was probably going to buy it and that he was also the perfect buyer for this truck; someone that would appreciate it for the low-mileage, barely-used machine that it was.
He said that he was looking for a low-mileage, 3-row SUV, and that he didn’t care about 4WD (it’s flat and doesn’t really snow here) and he said also that he loved it. He was the perfect person/ideal buyer for this specific truck in this spec.
He did say that he needed that rear motorized seat to function, so we struck a deal where I’d buy the part and deliver it to him for install when it came in 5-10 days after the sale.
He enthusiastically agreed.
Two-Wheel Driving Away (with AdvanceTrac RSC)
I couldn’t help but smile as I waved goodbye (while trying not to spill my celebratory Stanley Tucci Negroni) to the new owner and to that Explorer for the last time after delivering it to his house. It felt really, really good leveraging all the amassed Autopian /automotive knowledge and skills that I have spent 31 years culminating, curating and focused-upon (daily) to fix this truck up so quickly and to have it repurposed and pointed towards a brighter future.
Every article you read on this site brings a little automotive knowledge. To read every article, every day brings more. I try to read every one that I can. For example, Editor-In-Chief David Tracy’s latest eBay WW2 Jeep Build series is a treasure trove of wrenching knowledge, presented with that classic DT style alongside our own Aussie wrenching hero Laurence Rogers.
Learning brings a feeling of power. Putting it into action brings a feeling of accomplishment. Doing so efficiently, quickly and without any of your past wrenching hangups/mistakes makes for a feeling of advancement in the craft. I felt good about the rapid-fire resuscitation of this truck.
Yes, the door sensor, throttle body and sway link bushings weren’t hard jobs, but they were jobs that I was familiar with due to trial and error in years past. Jobs that I now know the parts costs, the time involved, the tools involved, the potential pitfalls involved and what each repair would add to (if completed) or detract from (if not completed) the sales value of the truck.
These items come from time invested and from experience.
I didn’t need nor really want this truck and had zero space for it, but fortune favors the brave and also favors those that show up and put in the effort. Those that try. There are so many opportunities out there to make a certain car a little bit better, or to give a car a better future with a new owner or set of circumstances.
If I hadn’t bought it, this Explorer may have been sold with the rear-end clunk, the about-to-die throttle body and the door that constantly dinged at you while driving to someone that didn’t have the ability or resources to fix it properly. They may have taken t to a predatory independent shop or worse and received a massive repair quote and decided that fixing it just wasn’t going to happen.
The truck may have met a much earlier end as a half-busted beater after a short life. I’m so glad that it didn’t.
I will always look back with a smile at the week that I owned my third Explorer. That one week when I felt really proud about showing up, putting up and about making something just a little bit better.
That’s what we, as Autopians, do.
Until next time, my Autopian Friends.
88mph into the future.
All images courtesy of Stephen Walter Gossin
- I Took On A Bad GM Design In A Hail-Mary Attempt To Fix My Friends Broken Suburban But It Was Too Little Too Late
- Sparking Joy And Plugs: How To Repurpose A 31-Year-Old Junk Buick
- What I Learned Restoring A $600 Dodge Ram With A Burned Up Transmission And Ruined Interior
- How I Bought A Broken Version Of My Dream Car For $300, Then Nursed It Back To Glory And Let It Free
- Proof That A $700 Car Saved From The Junkyard Can Make Someone As Happy As A New Lambo Can
- How I Saved My Buddys’ SUV After It Died At The Most Embarrassing Possible Time
- Rescuing A 75-Year-Old Car From An Older Car Enthusiast Reminded Me How Important Every Minute We Get Doing This Truly Is
- How I Rescued A Long-Neglected Citroen 2CV Covered With Bullet Holes
- Kumho Flew Me To The Mojave To See If Their New ‘R/T’ Tires Are As Good As They Claim
- How Learning Saxophone in 1990 Led Me To Rescue A Dead Xterra From A Bouncer’s Driveway
I’ll never not click a SWG auto resurrection. Keep racking up the good karma!
Oh man, story time. Back in my early automotive days one of my high school buddies had a Firebird*. He insisted it was a Trans Am, no one believed him. It had a similar rear end clink also diagnosed as a sway bar problem; but we were far too young and ignorant to understand how to replace those end links once he got the parts. Couldn’t even find them when lying under the car.
Fast forward to 2007 and I’m doing Sway bar Mods on my Scion, flash back to those early days and realize how undereducated I was.
*It had many maladies, one of which was a propensity to diesel at shut off, which he would resolve by flooding the carburetor. The expected outcome happened one night when the hot engine ignited the overflowing gas and turned it into a literal Firebird. We DEFINTELY never called it a Trans Am again.
How do you get those away bar links torqued properly? Just replaced the front ones on my 97 F150 and they look pretty much the same. Factory torque specs are 15ft-lbs but I can’t even get that on them before it absolutely crushes the bushing. I loosened them up a bit and I’m going to tighten them up a bit at a time till they stop making noise, but surely there’s a better way.
My approach is to torque them right until the bushing begins to bubble-out from the pressure. Any needless flattening of the bushing will cause a short lifespan and any less would lead to future rattles.
Thanks for reading and for joining us in the Comments, Clark!
Thank you for calling it the ‘Exploder’.
You kinda have to, right?
They don’t necessarily deserve that moniker, but it just works.
It’s nearly as fun as calling the Mercury Mystique the “Mercury Mistake“!
This brings back memories and makes me feel old. I was a Ford tech from ’98-’01 and remember when Ford brought in a test mule for the ’02 Explorer back in late ’00 and the whole rear suspension was camouflaged with the kind of bristles you see on the back of RV mudflaps to hide the upcoming independent rear suspension. I’ve also replaced probably dozens of those door switches in Explorers and Rangers.
I worked at a Mazda dealership when the B2500/3000/4000 were nearly ALL extra cab trucks with these sensors going bad every week. There were also like 8 or 9 different sensors to pick from, they were different left to right, and you were nearly guaranteed to order the wrong one.
I remember one particular truck that needed four different sensors to be ordered before we got the one that worked. All four had nearly the same part number, were for the same side, and only differed by the suffix digit on the part number.
The microfiche (yes, those) listed all of the part numbers, yet showed no distinction between them (like a VIN split or a ‘used for 2-door only’ notes).
We had PILES of unreturnable, wrong electrical switches for the B-Series on he backstock shelving. If we were lucky, we’d order the wrong one, but have the right one on the shelf…
I have been lurking in an out of The Autopian for some time (now member and avid reader and commenter) but had never stumbled upon one of your articles.
I absolutely adored it. <3
Thanks Albert! All the above hyperlinked pieces are from my history of writing for The Autopian the past 3+ years if you care to check out some additional adventures.
Your Membership and kind words mean a lot – thanks again.
Will do this weekend!
Looking forward to more articles im the future!
Nice save! I owned a second generation Exploder which had 151,000 miles on it when I acquired from a friend and 265,000 miles when I sold it. While it was thirsty and had a harsh ride it also gave me very few issues in the entire time I owned it. I’m hoping the 2015 F-150 I currently daily drive will continue past the current 157,000 miles with similar ease.
That’s Beautiful Man!
*single tear*
What was with that guy in the screenshot? I’d take it as a massive red flag if he only wanted to come to your house. Great read as always!
People are weird on Marketplace. I had one guy agree to meet me to buy something, then about 20 minutes after the time we discussed I went to message and ask if he was still coming, only to discover he had just left the chat completely.
I had another guy message me about a motorcycle I was selling. He made some comments that suggested he knew what he was talking about and sounded very interested. He also ghosted with no explanation.
I don’t know if it’s some people’s hobby to just screw with Marketplace sellers, but it kind of feels that way sometimes.
I’m getting to the point where I don’t want to use Marketplace for anything but giveaway items that I can stick out on the curb and say, “Come pick it up whenever.” Scheduling time to meet a buyer is infuriating.