Hey all,
I like to tell stories so here goes one for you. It starts back in kindergarten really. It ends with how I landed on these forums.
Growing up as a little kid in Montana my dad had two big unending, unfinished, hobbyish projects. Collecting cheap, sporty cars and breeding hunting dogs. He taught me a ton about dogs. To this day I love, love, love dogs. I now have 5 dogs of which 4 are rescues. Including a pit bull that happens to be the sweetest dog on the planet and a chihuahua that is the meanest dog on the planet. I had an English cocker spaniel for seventeen years. She got so old she was practically a zombie when I had to put her down.
I grew up with a couple of '60s Jaguars in our second garage, a '67 electric convertible cherry red Mustang, big ole blacked out Ford van, and a slew of Cadillacs. Only thing was my dad wouldn't let me work on the cars. Wouldn't let me learn about them. Wouldn't let me watch or ask questions. Wouldn't let me take auto shop as an elective in high school. He insisted that I never learn a lick about fixing cars and only ever pay someone else to do it. He was convinced that my life would be better if I got a high paying job let someone else waste their life away under the hood. He convinced me he was right. I spent the next 30 years paying others to take the time and effort to fix my cars.
Now I have two boys. Trevor age 11 and Tyler age 9. Something clicked inside my fatherly instincts that told me I didn't want them to be shunned from cars the same was I was. So I started watching Youtube videos, reading posts, and enaging with my own car repairs. I found myself fascinated with it. So I watched more videos and read more posts. Things have continued in this way since then. At some point about a year ago I decided I could do some of these repairs myself.
I started with my Expedition. It's a 1997 Eddie Bauer 4WD 5.4L with every option that could be selected back in the day. Except for a sunroof. Don't know if that was an option back then though. My old boss bought the vehicle new off the dealer lot. He put about 130k on it. Now it is around 205k I think. I bought this as a replacement to my wife's Bronco which was stolen. We got $11k from the insurance and handed it straight over to my boss October of 2004.
My wife drove the vehicle until 2010 when I bought her a Town and Country per her liking. She loved the idea of driving our boys around in a soccer mom vehicle. Admittedly I was a bit envious of her driving the Expedition while I was driving a Saturn SL2 sedan. When she asked for a new car I jumped on it so I could take over the Expedition.
There is one big thing i didn't like about the Expedition. Everything else was great. But the one big almost hated option was the full leather interior. I have never like leather interior. I don't care for the way it looks and I despise the way it feels. Not to mention by the time I took over the vehicle the leather had begun to crack. Which brings us to the first project I was a part of regarding the this truck.
I call it a truck. People ask me all the time why call it a truck. It's simple, when I was a kid there were no SUVs and I didn't see a reason to make up a title for something that was still a truck to me. Not saying I am the wizard of automobile terminology, but that is how I see it. It's a truck.
So I pulled the seats and started looking for options to make my butt a little more cumfy. I can't stand seat covers as they move around to much. But I knew that was close to what I wanted. My wife worked at a fabric shop and she told me people come in to buy fabric to work on projects like this themselves. So I decided to give it a shot. To add a little style I went for a two tone sporty look. It turned out great and now I love the seats. The are holding up super. The fabric is strong, the cushion is soft and steady. I couldn't be happier.
I don't know if they picture shows it well, but those are not seat covers. They are stitched in exactly where and how the leather used to be. It's a total leather replacement.
These seats turned out so great that there is no chance of me ever getting rid of this car. If nothing else I park it in my living room and relax in extreme comfort watching some Netflix.
Once I decided I was in, I jumped fully in. I have enjoyed the seat project, the telling and showing of it so much, that I knew I was ready for the next project. Living in sunny Arizona hood's and roof's clear coat doesn't last long. I looked in to doing my own painting. It wouldn't really be a project if I paid someone else to do it. I came to the conclusion that I wouldn't be able to do a good job of painting due to the demands of having the space and equipment required to do it well. The idea behind these projects is two fold. To enjoy it, but also to make it affordable. It would kill the point if I spent as much or more doing this stuff myself than I would spend paying someone else to do it. That would ESPECIALLY kill it for my wife.
So I shelved the idea of painting and started looking for other options. Then a friend told me about Plasti-dip. I started researching this form of painting. Watching lots of videos and reading lots of articles. While doing this I ran in to a lot of information about vinyl wrapping. I never even considered wrapping my vehicle let alone Plasti-dip. They both seemed temporary and a poor replacement to real paint. So I kept looking.
As I continued to be stymied by these options and the lack of other options I reconsidered my personal standards. So I started shopping Plasti-dip and wrapping. In the end I found a 3M 1080 metalic red on Ebay and pulled the trigger. Unsure of what I was buying I really hit the online training hard after the purchase. I am about half way done now. Here are some pictures of it. It's not perfect, but it is very good and I am quite happy with it.
As you can see there is a lot of prep to do and quite a bit more work left to be done. I have removed all the badging, molding, the roof rack, and the driver side interior door panels. Driver's side is the wrap. Passenger side is the original color. Those gleams are not photo shopped. Camera just happened to catch the sun just right.
The wrapping led in to the next project which has now become a simultaneous project with the wrap. These older Expeditions have lots of problems within their doors. The window rolls up very slowly, the door ajar doesn't work well, the child lock locks all the time even when you set it to unlock. The mirror doesn't work electronically, only manually. So here we go, meant to do this at a later time, but this is what the interior looks like now. I have the window, child lock, and door ajar working great now.
Then I figured, well, hell, I may as well work on the stereo now too. I have this door completely apart, no point in taking it apart again right after I finish the wrap. One thing I have been wanting to do and have finally done, is not just bypass the OEM amp but pull it all together and rewire everything. So that door led in to this amp, which was also intended to be done at a later time but is now happening all at once as well.
It's hard to see because it just looks like a ********* hole in the picture. Well, funny thing is that is exactly what it actually is. The factory amp was stuck back in the firewall area. I had to pull all kinds of dash panels and cut through some plastic and some wire harnesses. Being 49 it actually was becoming such a physically demanding job that I couldn't quite finish it. My buddy Geo is a demolition expert. He came to my rescue and finished pulling the amp for me. Now it's out and time to put the dash back together.
However, there is one thing left to do before I reassemble everything. The subamp and subwoofer still work and I want to use them. I am going to start another post in another forum regarding that. I will come back here and post a link to it after I post it.
To wrap up what is appropriate for this post versus asking for help in my other post, I will just end by saying my questions regarding the subamp and subwoofer ultimately brought me to this forum.
I had no idea a forum like this would exist. I had no idea other people had fallen in love with their Expedition the way I have. I thought that only happened to expensive cars and collectibles. I am very passionate about my Expedition. When I get this one where I want it to be I plan to buy one for my boys and work on it with them so it is ready to hit the road when they are 16 and driving.
I very much look forward to becoming a participating member of this online community. Thank you to those who have made it what it is. I hope I can add a little to it as well.
See you soon,
Direstorm
I like to tell stories so here goes one for you. It starts back in kindergarten really. It ends with how I landed on these forums.
Growing up as a little kid in Montana my dad had two big unending, unfinished, hobbyish projects. Collecting cheap, sporty cars and breeding hunting dogs. He taught me a ton about dogs. To this day I love, love, love dogs. I now have 5 dogs of which 4 are rescues. Including a pit bull that happens to be the sweetest dog on the planet and a chihuahua that is the meanest dog on the planet. I had an English cocker spaniel for seventeen years. She got so old she was practically a zombie when I had to put her down.
I grew up with a couple of '60s Jaguars in our second garage, a '67 electric convertible cherry red Mustang, big ole blacked out Ford van, and a slew of Cadillacs. Only thing was my dad wouldn't let me work on the cars. Wouldn't let me learn about them. Wouldn't let me watch or ask questions. Wouldn't let me take auto shop as an elective in high school. He insisted that I never learn a lick about fixing cars and only ever pay someone else to do it. He was convinced that my life would be better if I got a high paying job let someone else waste their life away under the hood. He convinced me he was right. I spent the next 30 years paying others to take the time and effort to fix my cars.
Now I have two boys. Trevor age 11 and Tyler age 9. Something clicked inside my fatherly instincts that told me I didn't want them to be shunned from cars the same was I was. So I started watching Youtube videos, reading posts, and enaging with my own car repairs. I found myself fascinated with it. So I watched more videos and read more posts. Things have continued in this way since then. At some point about a year ago I decided I could do some of these repairs myself.
I started with my Expedition. It's a 1997 Eddie Bauer 4WD 5.4L with every option that could be selected back in the day. Except for a sunroof. Don't know if that was an option back then though. My old boss bought the vehicle new off the dealer lot. He put about 130k on it. Now it is around 205k I think. I bought this as a replacement to my wife's Bronco which was stolen. We got $11k from the insurance and handed it straight over to my boss October of 2004.
My wife drove the vehicle until 2010 when I bought her a Town and Country per her liking. She loved the idea of driving our boys around in a soccer mom vehicle. Admittedly I was a bit envious of her driving the Expedition while I was driving a Saturn SL2 sedan. When she asked for a new car I jumped on it so I could take over the Expedition.
There is one big thing i didn't like about the Expedition. Everything else was great. But the one big almost hated option was the full leather interior. I have never like leather interior. I don't care for the way it looks and I despise the way it feels. Not to mention by the time I took over the vehicle the leather had begun to crack. Which brings us to the first project I was a part of regarding the this truck.
I call it a truck. People ask me all the time why call it a truck. It's simple, when I was a kid there were no SUVs and I didn't see a reason to make up a title for something that was still a truck to me. Not saying I am the wizard of automobile terminology, but that is how I see it. It's a truck.
So I pulled the seats and started looking for options to make my butt a little more cumfy. I can't stand seat covers as they move around to much. But I knew that was close to what I wanted. My wife worked at a fabric shop and she told me people come in to buy fabric to work on projects like this themselves. So I decided to give it a shot. To add a little style I went for a two tone sporty look. It turned out great and now I love the seats. The are holding up super. The fabric is strong, the cushion is soft and steady. I couldn't be happier.
I don't know if they picture shows it well, but those are not seat covers. They are stitched in exactly where and how the leather used to be. It's a total leather replacement.
These seats turned out so great that there is no chance of me ever getting rid of this car. If nothing else I park it in my living room and relax in extreme comfort watching some Netflix.
Once I decided I was in, I jumped fully in. I have enjoyed the seat project, the telling and showing of it so much, that I knew I was ready for the next project. Living in sunny Arizona hood's and roof's clear coat doesn't last long. I looked in to doing my own painting. It wouldn't really be a project if I paid someone else to do it. I came to the conclusion that I wouldn't be able to do a good job of painting due to the demands of having the space and equipment required to do it well. The idea behind these projects is two fold. To enjoy it, but also to make it affordable. It would kill the point if I spent as much or more doing this stuff myself than I would spend paying someone else to do it. That would ESPECIALLY kill it for my wife.
So I shelved the idea of painting and started looking for other options. Then a friend told me about Plasti-dip. I started researching this form of painting. Watching lots of videos and reading lots of articles. While doing this I ran in to a lot of information about vinyl wrapping. I never even considered wrapping my vehicle let alone Plasti-dip. They both seemed temporary and a poor replacement to real paint. So I kept looking.
As I continued to be stymied by these options and the lack of other options I reconsidered my personal standards. So I started shopping Plasti-dip and wrapping. In the end I found a 3M 1080 metalic red on Ebay and pulled the trigger. Unsure of what I was buying I really hit the online training hard after the purchase. I am about half way done now. Here are some pictures of it. It's not perfect, but it is very good and I am quite happy with it.
As you can see there is a lot of prep to do and quite a bit more work left to be done. I have removed all the badging, molding, the roof rack, and the driver side interior door panels. Driver's side is the wrap. Passenger side is the original color. Those gleams are not photo shopped. Camera just happened to catch the sun just right.
The wrapping led in to the next project which has now become a simultaneous project with the wrap. These older Expeditions have lots of problems within their doors. The window rolls up very slowly, the door ajar doesn't work well, the child lock locks all the time even when you set it to unlock. The mirror doesn't work electronically, only manually. So here we go, meant to do this at a later time, but this is what the interior looks like now. I have the window, child lock, and door ajar working great now.
Then I figured, well, hell, I may as well work on the stereo now too. I have this door completely apart, no point in taking it apart again right after I finish the wrap. One thing I have been wanting to do and have finally done, is not just bypass the OEM amp but pull it all together and rewire everything. So that door led in to this amp, which was also intended to be done at a later time but is now happening all at once as well.
It's hard to see because it just looks like a ********* hole in the picture. Well, funny thing is that is exactly what it actually is. The factory amp was stuck back in the firewall area. I had to pull all kinds of dash panels and cut through some plastic and some wire harnesses. Being 49 it actually was becoming such a physically demanding job that I couldn't quite finish it. My buddy Geo is a demolition expert. He came to my rescue and finished pulling the amp for me. Now it's out and time to put the dash back together.
However, there is one thing left to do before I reassemble everything. The subamp and subwoofer still work and I want to use them. I am going to start another post in another forum regarding that. I will come back here and post a link to it after I post it.
To wrap up what is appropriate for this post versus asking for help in my other post, I will just end by saying my questions regarding the subamp and subwoofer ultimately brought me to this forum.
I had no idea a forum like this would exist. I had no idea other people had fallen in love with their Expedition the way I have. I thought that only happened to expensive cars and collectibles. I am very passionate about my Expedition. When I get this one where I want it to be I plan to buy one for my boys and work on it with them so it is ready to hit the road when they are 16 and driving.
I very much look forward to becoming a participating member of this online community. Thank you to those who have made it what it is. I hope I can add a little to it as well.
See you soon,
Direstorm
