I just got hom so I won't be working on it tonight. I'll work on it tomorrow though.

Well, it's running. There are still wiring issues that I need to figure out though like the turn signals don't work, the tach reads way off, etc. It also has a weird noise that goes with the rpms when I turn left or right and get on it a little. If I back off the throttle and go easy it doesn't do it.

I've decided that instead of trying to rewire my dash harness that I would just get another one that matches the '97 engine harness. I figured that it would save me time since I was going to have to pull the dash to rewire mine anyways. So today my wife and I went to Pick-A Part and pulled a dash harness. Then tonight I started disassembling mine so that I can install the correct one. This is what it looked like when I quit tonight.

Change the heater core now...

:iagree:if you have not done it recently.

Too late, I put it back together yesterday but ran into a couple more issues. First, as soon as I hooked up the battery the right turn signal was on and it was solid. Since it was light outside I didn't notice and it ended up draining the battery. So I hooked up my charger and started tracing the wiring to figure out why it was on. Turns out that the harness on my steering column had two wires that were different than the '97 harness. So I switched those and now the turn signals work correctly. So I put the rest of the dash together and when I shut the door to take it for a test drive the interior light didn't shut off. So I need to figure that out. The final issue is that I converted the heater/AC over from the manual dials that I had to the climate control that the '97 had. Everything lights up but the heater wouldn't blow hot air. I'll start tracking down those issues this week.

Sounds like a vacuum problem. Might be digital controls but its still a vacuum system.

I drove the Explorer out to see a customer on Tuesday which was a 162 mile round trip and it runs great. Still have a bunch of little things to fix but I can at least drive it around now.

I also drove it the past two days to drop my girls off at school. This morning after dropping them off I was at a signal waiting to enter the freeway onramp when a 2002-2005 Explorer pulled up next to me. When the light turned green he punched it so I did too. By the time we entered the freeway I had him by about 5 car lentghs. It made me feel a lot better about my build because my 5.0 only had 211hp stock and the 4.0 SOHC had 210hp. Since all my porting was done and the exhaust side and I'm stuck with the stock exhaust headers I was pretty impressed that I was able to pull him. I figured that we would be pretty close but we weren't. A set of good headers should really help this engine on the top end.

You have more torque, gearing and less weight, get a good exhaust on there and you'll notice a huge difference.

More torque, yes. Gearing, maybe a little. I have 4.56's instead of 3.73's but I'm also on 33's, not 27's. The 33's are also heavier plus I have a bunch of tubing in bumpers, rock sliders, spare tire carrier as well as a full size spare so I think we would be pretty even there.