Best Shop Manuals for '94 Explorer?

Ulysses wrote:
>
> Great. BTW did you pay $1600 for your "new" Explorer? If so, wow. It
> makes me think mine are not worth anything any more though :-(
>

No, $2300. I didn't buy that brown '92, I bought a green '94. They had
to put $600 into it to get it to smog, which was a condition of the
sale. So they only netted $1700. It was the MAF thing- I coulda fixed
it with a spritz of brake cleaner.

> Since it's a manual (trans) is it a 2-door Sport or the 4-door? I was
> looking at a 2-door the other day and they look shorter which could be
> advantagous under certain circumstances.

I needed a 4 door. I have two Labradors. I wanted 4 doors and electric
windows for them. One of 'em has already figured out how to roll the
window down by stepping on the switch!

I'm not going to do any off-road stuff, just bad roads. I bought a
minivan a couple of months ago, and it doesn't have as much clearance
as the old one. So we'll take the Explorer whenever we'll be driving on
gravel or worse. That'll make the minivan last longer too.
-Paul

> wrote in message
oups.com...
>
> Ulysses wrote:
> >
> > Great. BTW did you pay $1600 for your "new" Explorer? If so, wow. It
> > makes me think mine are not worth anything any more though :-(
> >
>
> No, $2300. I didn't buy that brown '92, I bought a green '94. They had
> to put $600 into it to get it to smog, which was a condition of the
> sale. So they only netted $1700. It was the MAF thing- I coulda fixed
> it with a spritz of brake cleaner.

Is throttle body cleaner OK to use on them?

All that was left on the web site you mentioned was the price so that's why
I asked if that was what you paid. Green is a good color for Explorers.

>
> > Since it's a manual (trans) is it a 2-door Sport or the 4-door? I was
> > looking at a 2-door the other day and they look shorter which could be
> > advantagous under certain circumstances.
>
> I needed a 4 door. I have two Labradors. I wanted 4 doors and electric
> windows for them. One of 'em has already figured out how to roll the
> window down by stepping on the switch!

One of my dogs knows how to roll the windows up and down. The first couple
of times she did it by accident and got her head stuck in there while
rolling it up!!! Now I know why they have the window lock in the cockpit.
She now does it with a bit more control.

>
> I'm not going to do any off-road stuff, just bad roads. I bought a
> minivan a couple of months ago, and it doesn't have as much clearance
> as the old one. So we'll take the Explorer whenever we'll be driving on
> gravel or worse. That'll make the minivan last longer too.
> -Paul
>

Yea, my Explorers are mainly for bad roads too but I've found that mountain
trails are very nice to get away from most of the people. We like to go up
and play in the snow and find a place where the dogs can run around without
getting run over.

Last winter the roads here were almost unpassable--the only cars/trucks that
made it were my Explorers, one F250, 2 raised minitrucks, and a front-wheel
drive minivan. I think it was a Chrysler. I don't think it occured to the
driver that not making it was an option so he perhaps was succeeding via
conviction ;-) There is also a white Jeep Grand Cherokee that I saw drive
back and forth and never stuck in the mud so I guess they made it too. The
road is alongside Tucalota Creek and we started calling the road Stuckalotta
Road. It was so bad that people at the top of the hill were cheering when I
made it without getting stuck!

Ulysses wrote:
>
> Is throttle body cleaner OK to use on them?
>

OK, ya caught me BS'ing. I do my homework before actually doing the
job, here's what the voice of experience says:

"The safest way to clean them is Denatured-Alcohol and a swab. Never
soak the sensor or spray anything directly on it. Wet the swab with the
alcohol and gently rub the filaments on all exposed sides."

The article:
http://tinyurl.com/9c25z

Denatured alcohol... is that when they take the worm out?

-Paul

> wrote in message
oups.com...
>
> Ulysses wrote:
> >
> > If this is the actual Ford shop manual then I'm definately interested
too.
> > Where did you get it and how much was it? I've seen some on eBay for
not
> > much $$ but figured they might not have any more information in them
than my
> > Hayne's manual.
>
> Yes, it is supposed to be the official shop manual, and it says it
> covers a bunch of other Ford models too- the Ranger, Bronco, F-150,
> F-250, etc.
>
> When it gets here I'll take a look at it and post a review.
> -Paul
>

Drat, I hope you see this old post. I just wanted to know if you got your
shop manual CD yet and which one did you get and how much and where. I'm
beginning to run into things that my Hayne's manual does not cover. Thanks.

BTW I could not reply to your post via email cause Netscape won't let me.
I'm not even using Netscape.

Ulysses wrote:
>
> Drat, I hope you see this old post. I just wanted to know if you got your
> shop manual CD yet and which one did you get and how much and where. I'm
> beginning to run into things that my Hayne's manual does not cover. Thanks.
>

Yes, I did get it, and poked around in it a bit. It cost me $10,
including shipping. I just did the "buy it now" thing. It comes as a
disk image, and uses some disk image mounting software to mount the
disk image in WinXP. It requires WinXp, btw. Then you can run the Ford
program and go thru the menu. It's not very easy to use, you have to go
thru multi-levels to get to the info you're after. As a test, I tried
to look up the procedure for replacing the radius arm bushings. The
section for the 4WD did not have it. I finally found it in the 2WD
section. I also expected to find a lot of detail on overhauling the
engine, though I'm too lazy to do that. I couldn't find anything on
that.

The search function is pretty lame, it only searches the page you are
looking at, not sub-menus. So searching for "radius" was never going to
find "radius arm bushing" while in the 4WD front suspension section.

It does have good info on reading the engine codes and so on, which is
the stuff I'm most likely to need. So for $10, it was an OK deal. There
are many people selling these disks on EBay, so it's possible that
others are better.

> BTW I could not reply to your post via email cause Netscape won't let me.
> I'm not even using Netscape.

Yeah, sorry, that isn't a valid email address any more. It was a free
one I was using as a spam deflector, and the site went under.
-Paul

> wrote in message
oups.com...
>
> Ulysses wrote:
> >
> > Drat, I hope you see this old post. I just wanted to know if you got
your
> > shop manual CD yet and which one did you get and how much and where.
I'm
> > beginning to run into things that my Hayne's manual does not cover.
Thanks.
> >
>
> Yes, I did get it, and poked around in it a bit. It cost me $10,
> including shipping. I just did the "buy it now" thing. It comes as a
> disk image, and uses some disk image mounting software to mount the
> disk image in WinXP. It requires WinXp, btw. Then you can run the Ford
> program and go thru the menu. It's not very easy to use, you have to go
> thru multi-levels to get to the info you're after. As a test, I tried
> to look up the procedure for replacing the radius arm bushings. The
> section for the 4WD did not have it. I finally found it in the 2WD
> section. I also expected to find a lot of detail on overhauling the
> engine, though I'm too lazy to do that. I couldn't find anything on
> that.
>
> The search function is pretty lame, it only searches the page you are
> looking at, not sub-menus. So searching for "radius" was never going to
> find "radius arm bushing" while in the 4WD front suspension section.
>
> It does have good info on reading the engine codes and so on, which is
> the stuff I'm most likely to need. So for $10, it was an OK deal. There
> are many people selling these disks on EBay, so it's possible that
> others are better.
>
> > BTW I could not reply to your post via email cause Netscape won't let
me.
> > I'm not even using Netscape.
>
> Yeah, sorry, that isn't a valid email address any more. It was a free
> one I was using as a spam deflector, and the site went under.
> -Paul
>
I found one (actually two) on eBay for $11 each but it didn't say it
required XP so I guess I'll find out. It would be good if I could stick it
in my Win 98 laptop and take it under the car with me ;-) I found one for
my '78 F350 that says it'll run on any old computer pretty much (well, maybe
not my 286).

Since I bought two ('92 and '97) they ended up only costing me $9 each.
Lately I keep running into "take it to a professional" in my Hayne's manual.
It would be cheaper to buy a new Explorer than to have someone else fix my
old ones.

Since this is the second time you mentioned radius arm bushings I just want
to make sure you know that you don't have to remove the coil springs to do
it--you can remove the radius arm bracket instead.

I don't know what you mean by "disc imaging mounting software." Sounds
complicated.

Ulysses wrote:
>
> Since this is the second time you mentioned radius arm bushings I just want
> to make sure you know that you don't have to remove the coil springs to do
> it--you can remove the radius arm bracket instead.
>

Yeah, when I was researching what to buy and what to look for I noticed
that there were a lot of complaints about radius arm bushings, so I
read up on them. They look solid on the one I ended up buying, so I
shouldn't need to deal with it.

> I don't know what you mean by "disc imaging mounting software." Sounds
> complicated.

I don't know why they are using that method, but it's a way to have the
whole works on your hard disk, but make it think it's running from a
CDROM. It shows up as a drive letter and runs exactly as if it were on
a physical CDROM.

I suppose if you have a shop and need this for many years and models
it's more convenient than changing CDROMs.
-Paul

> wrote in message
ups.com...
>
> Ulysses wrote:
> >
> > Since this is the second time you mentioned radius arm bushings I just
want
> > to make sure you know that you don't have to remove the coil springs to
do
> > it--you can remove the radius arm bracket instead.
> >
>
> Yeah, when I was researching what to buy and what to look for I noticed
> that there were a lot of complaints about radius arm bushings, so I
> read up on them. They look solid on the one I ended up buying, so I
> shouldn't need to deal with it.

Good. It's not really my idea of fun. I've changed mine 3 times on 2
Explorers with a total of 275,000 miles (since they were first changed) so
that's about every 90,000 miles they need to be changed, more or less.

I've been reading a lot about ball joints but so far I have not determined
how you know when you need to replace them. They must go bad often though
judging from all the posts.

>
> > I don't know what you mean by "disc imaging mounting software." Sounds
> > complicated.
>
> I don't know why they are using that method, but it's a way to have the
> whole works on your hard disk, but make it think it's running from a
> CDROM. It shows up as a drive letter and runs exactly as if it were on
> a physical CDROM.
>
> I suppose if you have a shop and need this for many years and models
> it's more convenient than changing CDROMs.
> -Paul
>

OIC I have a poster catalog at my store that works like that and it's a
PITA. It's also hard to search. Makes a nice screen saver though...