Thanks for the good word!
Living in the sticks, it's all about Amazon with their good delivery and returns.
Here ya go.




Everything went in as it should. No real install nightmares other than being cold outside....and yes, coming up the ridge from town after dark this evening, it was a nice improvement with my old eyes....

 

Thank You! Happy New Year

 

Had to get the matching taillights. Oh and I added a new interior option. More like she always adds herself.

.

 

Well I picked up my explorer 8.8 rear end with 4:10 gearing. Its an open diff tho, ill have to swap it out with a locker soon. Also got new front shocks, and realized they were too long and only allowed about 2 inches of travel before the shock tower hit the top of the shock cylinder. Also swapped out my power window window regulators for manual ones. Took out all of the electronics in the door, so I can take them off when the weather gets warmer. Now I have to fin d a new spot to mount my front speakers.

 

I felt it was in desperate need of some pinstriping. Here's some before and afters. Got lucky on the stripe




color ordering online. Ya never know....

 

^ The pinstriping addition is very nice.

 

For the last 2 weeks I have been doing what started out as a front brake job and turned into almost a full front suspension rebuild. My 2003 2WD Ranger LX needed front brakes as I was getting the steering wheel vibration during braking.

Ordered a set of rotors, pads, inner and outer bearings and seals. Upon removal of the rotor I noticed that my spindles (both sides) had grooves and one of them had a cut length wise a sign that someone used a cut off wheel to cut a possible seized bearing. So this turned into more parts as I placed an order for both spindles. Once I removed the spindles I realized that the upper and lower ball joins are worn as well as the outer tie rods.

I ended up replacing inner and outer tie rods, the upper control arms, the lower ball joints and new rotors and pads, now time to make an appointment to get the front end aligned.

 

Today I contemplated all the postings of ambitious and motivated posters who not only did one, but two and three separate jobs on their trucks. While in Wisconsin, I’m on day three of a three hour job struggling with rust rust rust.

 

I'm in the process of doing the same thing to my 2002 Edge Plus 4x4 SC. I am curious to know how your alignment goes. Where did you buy all your parts from? I have everything in a cart at Rock Auto...cheapest place I found and they are offering a discount until late February.

 

Those seats look more comfortable than my 2002 Edge Plus seats. Are they OEM seats? What sound deadening do you have rolled up in the picture? How much did the center console cost you and how was the install?
Thanks

 

We are neighbors...I'm in Bonney Lake as well. White 2002 Edge Plus 4x4 SC. I'm sitting at 145,000 miles so it will be awhile before I can post something similar.

 

I ended up shopping for Ford Factory parts online and found the dealer that had the lowest price and purchased all of the Motorcraft/FOMOCO parts for the job. I did find that the Rock auto prices are very competitive with the dealers for the Motorcraft parts. I just didn't want made in China parts on it.

However, I could not get all Motorcraft parts from Rock auto otherwise I would have.

 

The seats are out of a 1997 Ford Thunderbird. They are factory for that year of Thunderbird. They were not just a bolt in. I had to have someone do some welding to get them to fit. The center console came out of a Ford Explorer Sport. It cost I think around $50 at the junkyard. It was originally grey, but since my interior is tan, I ended up just painting it black. The only thing I had to do, besides removing the cup holder from the Ranger was to do some modification where the airbag shut off is for the passenger side airbag. They keyed switch is still there, but just underneath the console. I might figure something out to where the switch is in the console, so I can actually turn it off if I need to. Other than that, it fit just fine.

 

Did a complete interior/exterior clean, washed and waxed the daily drivers for myself and my wife. I let it go too long and it took the better part of an afternoon. Yes, I waxed a work truck :P

 

looks Great! What's wrong with having a clean work truck?

 

Did the driver side today. Wasn't sure if I was going to like the scheme I had in my twisted melon, so I did a side to side comparison. Thoughts? I'm really trying to avoid buying rims to spruce it up a little....



A before and after....

 

I definitely think the black looks better, if you could black out the whole rim even more so. Did you use plasti dip for the rims? If you end up deciding to go all black I'd highly recommend at least rattle can engine paint. I plasti dipped a bumper once and its impossible to keep clean. Looks rough in a few months of driving.

 

Which one do YOU like?
What style strums your twisted melon?

 

I'm liking the black so far. Probably do the passenger side tomorrow. Long process. Take off rims, scrub the crap out of them, dry, then start the dipping. 1/2 hour between coats. I go four coats and then hit them with "Glossifier/UV protectant". Two coats. Then the unnerving part starts. Take an X-Acto to the five holes in the rim and start to peel, praying to the gods that you cut the dip correctly and it doesn't peel the part you want to stay on. Fortunately I'm retired so time is currently burnable.
I just thought the gray rim holes would look good with the Ford factory Silver Front paint. Seems the rim paint is lighter in tone. That's got me a bit snowed on what to do.
I hang with a bunch of older car guys (average age is 76) in the evening for an adult beverage at out local store. One of them said (he has a beautiful '40 Chevy) that I should cut the dip off the outer bead around the rim to make some contrast. We'll see. I'm just having a little fun for now. Presently, I'm shopping a single in/dual out exhaust. Man....expensive. Thinking of buying a Flowmaster 1in/2 out 50 series and taking it to my muffler guy. This is way more than I'd like to spend......

 

Washed the Ranger this morning so I could try the heat gun on the 21 year old, faded plastic flares.
Did it work? Yep! Did it make them brand new??? Nope but dang, I can't complain....
The first pic is scrubbed and dried. The second pic is after the first pass with the Harbor Freight heat gun.
I let them cool, did a second pass and then hit them with protectant. I'll do the other side tomorrow.

 

^ Looks good, try using 303 Protectant on those flairs, You will see a big difference.

 

Scrubbed and dried them, then tried the heat gun trick on the plastic. Wasn't getting the results I hoped for so I painted them....

 

Looks very nice!

 

Got tired of the vinyl flooring. Bought a carpet set from Stock Interiors, made to order .
Laid down some Thermo Tec Sound Deadener and installed carper yesterday.
Big improvement as to interior and lowering road noise.

 

Nice! Was it difficult to do? What was the cost of the carpeting and the sound insulation?