1st Ford I have owned - calling all 97 Exp Sport owners

Just purchased a 97 Explorer Sport without an owner?s manual. Other than getting in and pushing buttons for the cause and effect I am in the dark.

What gas mileage do you guys get?

Anyone willing to share info on their favorite feature of this vehicle?

Reply to
dottile
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Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

I have a 97 she's been great and now I'm about 10 miles from 100,000, the gas mileage is still very good and she runs beautifully. We get about 19 city and 22 hwy. Roughly about 390 miles til the check gage light comes on. I've replaced a few things on her such as a 4x4 sensor, a mass air flow and a thermostat. other than normal routine maintenance thats all. She gets driven all over the place from off road to hwy. Off road driving is about twice a week to my favorite fishing hole. WE tow a pop up camper about three times a month. Never gave me a lick of problem, goin up hills you can feel the drag but she'll just keep on going. I really have no favortie feature of the truck. I don't like the rattle on start ups but I have been told time and time again that this is OK for the truck and nothing is wrong. I didn't like the driving lights on the bottom cause they fill with water and the reflectors worn off, so I just took them out. Don't really need them they never did much! 4 wheel drive hasn't let me down even when towing the pop up through the roughest terrain. (The pop up had to be raised 6 inches to accomodate the terrain). If yours was maitained properly then you shouldn't have problems, the first thing I did was to change the fluids all to synthetic the oil to Mobile one. The air cleaner and oil filter to K&N. I changed the pulgs to splitfires but that was a mistake went back to the platinum that Ford recommends. I think you'll enjoy the truck

Searcher1

Reply to
Searcher1

"Searcher1" wrote in news:XmXCe.12402$ph1.9242@trnddc06:

Hmmm, I believe Searcher1 doesn't have a Sport model which the original poster mentioned. No way to go much more than 300 miles on the 17+ gallon tank in the Sport.

Otherwise, I agree with Searcher1 that the Exp gives reasonably good service. Although the start-up rattle is *not* normal and it should be repaired since the OHC is an interference engine. The last revision of the timing chain tensioners seems to fix about 99% of the start-up rattles.

Reply to
Clark

Ooops, Yes your right, mine is not the sport model, it is the XLT, but nonetheless shes still a great truck, and not much different than the two door sport. Yes my tank is a bit bigger at 22 gals. I did have the tensioner replaced as per recall, but I still get a rattling noise, could be I should take it back to the dealer to check the tensioner again? It wasn't too long ago that I had it done bout 9 months or so. I was told many times that the Ford Explorer sounds like that most of the time at high mileage. Which by the way she turned it over on the way to my fishin hole, good luck all around I guess, we had a great evening of cat fishin! Couple a monsters in the fridge.

Searcher1

Reply to
Searcher1

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