Seems it was about 12 years ago this month that a group of listserver stragglers founded this newsgroup. I'll speculate that more than twenty-seven Explorer owners have visited the group since then, for support, advice, sharing misery and joy regarding their cars.
Hats are off once again to Mike Shirley and his group, who put the idea into action those years ago.
Here here!
dr bob
Happy Birthday, R.A.M.F.E. and "hello" Dr. Bob....good to see you again
dave
Was there an Explorer-related newsgroup before rec.autos.makers.ford.explorer? This newsgroup started around Jan 8, 1996 from what I can tell using the Google archives.
Mike Shirley owned an Explorer email list. I started getting the digest back in 1994 when I got a 94 Navajo, but don't know how long it had been around before that. The list grew, and Mike did the work to initiate R.A.M.F.E.
Lee
-- Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts:
"What, sir, is the use of militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. . . Whenever Government means to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise a standing army upon its ruins." -- Debate, U.S. House of Representatives, August 17, 1789
My '92 is still on the road, but it's starting to get the need for a new trans I suspect. At close to 200k on the original, maybe I've gotten my money's worth out of the original.
Some answers--
Google archives only go back to '96, so most groups seem to have "appeared" at that time. Google bought up the archives from the old 'Deja News' operation. Meanwhile, the predecessor to this newsgroup was a private for-a-small-fee listserver operated by a small group in San Diego. Moderators there spent way too many hours researching problems and solutions. I continued that tradition for a while after we migrated to Usenet. But after a few years of answering the same questions over and over, I recognized the time and effort that was going into it. Instead, I focused on my business for a while and was able to semi-retire. Many of the early usenet listusers are still on the board all these years later. Jim Warman has picked up the reins, and it's obvious that he has a much greater knowledge of the cars than us 'amateurs' did in those early days. Hey, back then we were focusing on keeping the 4WD systems alive, keeping the rubber plugs in the tops of the manual gearbox shift covers, stuff like that. The cars have since become much more sophisticated and complex, qnd I still have my old one so not much to share with the group anyway.
My wife (yeah, I finally got married a couple years ago...) just bought a new 4Runner last week to replace the absolutely trouble-free
1997 4Runner she's owned since new. It's nice. She bought the extended warranty for it so I won't have to do anything to it at all, she says, except wash it for her. Is that true love or what? One of the groups I do some consulting to offers me their X-plan pricing on a new Explorer, but I have to look pretty hard at one of those vs what her 4Runner does. Plus I'm thinking more along the 'fast sedan' line than another SUV. Maybe a BMW 5 or an Audi S4, or a kompressor S55. Or it may just be a Grand Marquis, I don't know yet. I use the Explorer for utility stuff, otherwise use the 928 for going places anyway. I'm not hurting for choices in wheels these days.Anyway, hello to all new and old, keep up the good work!
dr bob
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