Thadigus
Active Member
- Joined
- March 27, 2017
- Messages
- 59
- Reaction score
- 0
- City, State
- Goshen, IN
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 2001 Explorer Sport Trac
Howdy, I've been around this forum for a while. Long enough that I think it's time I start a thread for my build. Right now I'm a 17 year old in high school. I always been into cars. I've pulled motors, rebuilt them, and worked on cars for years with my dad. Right now I have some issues with the truck which we'll get into but this is kind of just my baby that I'm forced to love.
Origin: I got this truck my freshman year. It had a trans that wouldn't go over 2nd gear and had the TCC solenoid problem (super common as I'm sure you all know) and an engine that missed so bad I'm surprised that it could idle XD. We got it for a great price and it came with a couple things like a four inch lift (my favorite feature of the truck), a bull guard (as pictured), a summer and winter set of tires, a crappy Boss after market radio installed and an amp that was waiting to be installed. My dad bought it because he knew I was okay with getting a project truck that needed a little work before it ran. He got this for me my freshman year in the fall with the intention of rebuilding the motor and straight up replacing the tranny with a nice one.
Cut to last winter, my brother drove a red sport trac, but he ended up putting it on it's side (it was totaled obviously). It had a good drive train, so it was practically a match made in heaven. We ripped the motor out of that, rebuilt it, and threw it, alongside the transmission, into my truck. But it only drove a week until a valve actually came apart during operation and destroyed half of the engine (the picture below is the intake port. You can see the valve straight up came apart).
I guess in the crash there was a hairline fracture or something in that valve causing it to come apart after a bit of use. It was a dumb mistake but not really one we could've prevented. Either way, back to the drawing board. We diagnosed the original motor to the truck by this time and found that the reason it was so rough was because the timing tensioners were gone (again another super common problem with these). We decided to rip the motor back out, use the perfectly new timing parts from the now destroyed motor, and do a little timing rebuild on the original motor.
We threw it back in and now that's what it's running on today. It's still got a couple of problems but I have some pretty decent sized ideas for this truck.
Origin: I got this truck my freshman year. It had a trans that wouldn't go over 2nd gear and had the TCC solenoid problem (super common as I'm sure you all know) and an engine that missed so bad I'm surprised that it could idle XD. We got it for a great price and it came with a couple things like a four inch lift (my favorite feature of the truck), a bull guard (as pictured), a summer and winter set of tires, a crappy Boss after market radio installed and an amp that was waiting to be installed. My dad bought it because he knew I was okay with getting a project truck that needed a little work before it ran. He got this for me my freshman year in the fall with the intention of rebuilding the motor and straight up replacing the tranny with a nice one.
Cut to last winter, my brother drove a red sport trac, but he ended up putting it on it's side (it was totaled obviously). It had a good drive train, so it was practically a match made in heaven. We ripped the motor out of that, rebuilt it, and threw it, alongside the transmission, into my truck. But it only drove a week until a valve actually came apart during operation and destroyed half of the engine (the picture below is the intake port. You can see the valve straight up came apart).
I guess in the crash there was a hairline fracture or something in that valve causing it to come apart after a bit of use. It was a dumb mistake but not really one we could've prevented. Either way, back to the drawing board. We diagnosed the original motor to the truck by this time and found that the reason it was so rough was because the timing tensioners were gone (again another super common problem with these). We decided to rip the motor back out, use the perfectly new timing parts from the now destroyed motor, and do a little timing rebuild on the original motor.
We threw it back in and now that's what it's running on today. It's still got a couple of problems but I have some pretty decent sized ideas for this truck.
