BlacTrac71
New Member
- Joined
- January 5, 2010
- Messages
- 1
- Reaction score
- 0
- City, State
- Piscataway, NJ
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- '01 Sport Trac
Hello all,
On New Year's Eve I got bit by the Explorer Bug so I found myself an '01 Sport Trac. I've been eyeing them up for a few months and finally decided to pull the trigger. I'm loving the fact that it's a jack-of-all-trades and can't wait for Mother Nature to dump a load of slushy crap on the ground so I can twist the drive control knob to "4X4 High."
Here's the part where I prattle on about the cars I've owned so unless you're extremely bored, you should probably head over to that excellent post about LED dome lights.
I've been bouncing back and forth between Detroit iron and Japanese steel for most of my life, so I truly appreciate both types of cars. My first ride was a '78 Mercury Cougar with a hood so long you could launch F-16's from it. Less than a year after I got it, my dad gave me his 4-speed manual '77 Datsun pick-up so that we could give the Cougar to a friend who was in a pinch and needed a car with an automatic. The Datsun was a rust bucket -- and that's being generous. Back then I thought it was completely normal to have to cover a giant holes in the driver's footwell by pop-riveting pieces of metal over them. Surely every car got repaired with $.11 rivets and a flattened galvanized trash can lid?
When I got up some cash, I bought my dream car, a '68 Mustang convertible with a 289, a power top, and Stage II cancer of the torque boxes. Didn't matter though, I loved that car and drove it all over the North East. After the Mustang got smashed by an idiot (who didn't realize that license plates can be used to actually locate a vehicle's driver after an accident occurs), it took a long, slow recovery in a second-rate body shop. During that time I procured a temporary beater... and thus began my love-hate relationship with a $500 '68 Mercury Colony Park wagon. Nothing could beat "The Living Room on Wheels" in terms of comfort and effortless Parkway cruising, but I'm convinced that its enormous 390ci engine only ran on only 7 of its 8 cylinders. It got 9 mpg. It ate gas stations. Still, it was not without its redeeming qualities. My favorite parts of that car:
After a series of misunderstandings with the Merc (I wanted it to be a reliable means of transportation, it wanted to be a mausoleum) I decided I needed something more reliable for the commute to my first "real" job. Naturally I went to the 'dark side' and bought my new first new car, a weird-green '95 Honda Civic. It was efficient, functional, and reasonable... in other words, it wasn't going to last long. Having been reared on stupidly big American cars I couldn't stay away from The Blue Oval: in 1998 I traded the Civic hatch for a '97 Cobra convertible, a 4.6L screamer with a live rear axle and 300 angry ponies. Glorious.
A year later gas prices shot up so I went back to a gas-sipper, a '96 Acura Integra GSR, and when that got boosted by some NJ lowlifes I replaced it with '01 RSX. Now there was a neat little car: 200 hp and 28 mpg. but I knew its days were numbered when I saw the new Mustang concept car at the NY Autoshow in 2003. Sure enough, in Oct of 2007 I traded the RSX for a brand-new 2008 GT convertible, which is now my primary vehicle. The prodigal pony has returned.
But there was no way I was going to ride that horsey in the winter muck, so through the miracle of Craigslist I found a blue-green '91 Civic Si hatch with a 5-sp manual that hadn't yet been beaten with a pimp stick: it was unmodified, unmolested, and un-"riced". "Teal Thunder" (as it would come to be called) was the perfect complement to the ground-pounding candy apple red muscle car that I'd just bought.... until my neighbor's friend crushed the beer-can Honda to death with his Suburban back in March '09.
To end this waaaay-too-long story, I've been driving the Mustang full-time since the Honda met its doom but got fed up when the foot of snow fell here around Christmas. Explorer Sport Tracs had been on my mind since the early 2000's when a co-worker had one; for reasons I can't explain, the design just makes sense to me. When an '01 went up for sales at a Ford dealer near me, I knew it was my destiny. It speaks to me. So... anyone know how to change a busted map light?
Thanks for reading and Happy Exploring!
On New Year's Eve I got bit by the Explorer Bug so I found myself an '01 Sport Trac. I've been eyeing them up for a few months and finally decided to pull the trigger. I'm loving the fact that it's a jack-of-all-trades and can't wait for Mother Nature to dump a load of slushy crap on the ground so I can twist the drive control knob to "4X4 High."
Here's the part where I prattle on about the cars I've owned so unless you're extremely bored, you should probably head over to that excellent post about LED dome lights.
I've been bouncing back and forth between Detroit iron and Japanese steel for most of my life, so I truly appreciate both types of cars. My first ride was a '78 Mercury Cougar with a hood so long you could launch F-16's from it. Less than a year after I got it, my dad gave me his 4-speed manual '77 Datsun pick-up so that we could give the Cougar to a friend who was in a pinch and needed a car with an automatic. The Datsun was a rust bucket -- and that's being generous. Back then I thought it was completely normal to have to cover a giant holes in the driver's footwell by pop-riveting pieces of metal over them. Surely every car got repaired with $.11 rivets and a flattened galvanized trash can lid?
When I got up some cash, I bought my dream car, a '68 Mustang convertible with a 289, a power top, and Stage II cancer of the torque boxes. Didn't matter though, I loved that car and drove it all over the North East. After the Mustang got smashed by an idiot (who didn't realize that license plates can be used to actually locate a vehicle's driver after an accident occurs), it took a long, slow recovery in a second-rate body shop. During that time I procured a temporary beater... and thus began my love-hate relationship with a $500 '68 Mercury Colony Park wagon. Nothing could beat "The Living Room on Wheels" in terms of comfort and effortless Parkway cruising, but I'm convinced that its enormous 390ci engine only ran on only 7 of its 8 cylinders. It got 9 mpg. It ate gas stations. Still, it was not without its redeeming qualities. My favorite parts of that car:
- the vacuum-controlled wipers;
- the "Engine Cold" warning light. No joke! A green light that said "Engine Cold" would stay on until the thermostat opened up. Handy feature in the winter when you wanted to know when the blast the heat!
- the jury-rigged, made-with-a-household-extension-code ignition cut-off switch under the driver's side of the mile-long, electrically-powered front bench seat. Note to new drivers: do not flip mysterious toggle switches you find under the driver's seat of your 6,000-pound station wagon while looking for the toll money you've just dropped. At 50 mph.
After a series of misunderstandings with the Merc (I wanted it to be a reliable means of transportation, it wanted to be a mausoleum) I decided I needed something more reliable for the commute to my first "real" job. Naturally I went to the 'dark side' and bought my new first new car, a weird-green '95 Honda Civic. It was efficient, functional, and reasonable... in other words, it wasn't going to last long. Having been reared on stupidly big American cars I couldn't stay away from The Blue Oval: in 1998 I traded the Civic hatch for a '97 Cobra convertible, a 4.6L screamer with a live rear axle and 300 angry ponies. Glorious.
A year later gas prices shot up so I went back to a gas-sipper, a '96 Acura Integra GSR, and when that got boosted by some NJ lowlifes I replaced it with '01 RSX. Now there was a neat little car: 200 hp and 28 mpg. but I knew its days were numbered when I saw the new Mustang concept car at the NY Autoshow in 2003. Sure enough, in Oct of 2007 I traded the RSX for a brand-new 2008 GT convertible, which is now my primary vehicle. The prodigal pony has returned.
But there was no way I was going to ride that horsey in the winter muck, so through the miracle of Craigslist I found a blue-green '91 Civic Si hatch with a 5-sp manual that hadn't yet been beaten with a pimp stick: it was unmodified, unmolested, and un-"riced". "Teal Thunder" (as it would come to be called) was the perfect complement to the ground-pounding candy apple red muscle car that I'd just bought.... until my neighbor's friend crushed the beer-can Honda to death with his Suburban back in March '09.
To end this waaaay-too-long story, I've been driving the Mustang full-time since the Honda met its doom but got fed up when the foot of snow fell here around Christmas. Explorer Sport Tracs had been on my mind since the early 2000's when a co-worker had one; for reasons I can't explain, the design just makes sense to me. When an '01 went up for sales at a Ford dealer near me, I knew it was my destiny. It speaks to me. So... anyone know how to change a busted map light?
Thanks for reading and Happy Exploring!
