Greetings,
Just wanted to say hi.
I am a hobbyist mechanic, been wrenching on my own cars for 12+ years.
Purchased the car several months ago. Then I fixed it up slowly on the side. Now, I sold my other car, now this Ford is used as my daily driver. I can say upgrading from a small 1.8 4 cylinder engine is a huge stress reliever, especially going uphill, and over-taking slow drivers. I bought it with 216k miles on it, from a guy who was selling it after owning it for less than a year. Apparently the SUV was at some mechanic shop, and the client never came to pick up. I think the old gentleman passed away sadly, as I found his ID and photo in the sunglass visor 2 months after I bought the car from the younger guy. The younger guy replaced the radiator. When I bought it, the car had bad brakes, shot liftgate struts.
So far I've done:
- New calipers (only reason I decided to do it was RockAuto had good deal, wanted to test out caliper painting for first time)
- I had some G2 caliper paint laying around that I was planning to use on my former car (BMW that got totaled in a wreck sadly), decided to give it a go, although the paint had sat in a cold storage for 1+ year and I don't think it came out right.
- Replaced brake master cylinder (old one had sticky gooey residue) and old fluid, decided to replace just to be safe
- Bled brakes well, stops on a dime
- Sport rotors, slotted, from Detroit Axle
-Fixed the shot liftgate struts, bought some BLOX struts off eBay - great
- Restored yellow headlights and changed low beams to LED (ebay)
To do next:
- Needs tires. May get some rims, to change out the hideous chrome ones. I don't know if 18 in rims will fit with my brake package being the larger ones that come on AWD models. Does anyone know if 18inch rims will work safely? I can see some models came with 18 in rims, not sure if with the AWD model though, cause my front brakes are a bit larger in diameter than FWD rotors.
