Faults:

Transmission failure while driving!

General Comments:

At first I liked this vehicle; it ran smooth, everything worked.

Then the parking brake began to fail, and then it broke down while I was traveling in the middle of nowhere! :(

The engine still ran, but it just would not go into gear! The transmission is basically broken, which will cost $$$$ to fix.

Had to have it towed, stored and finally removed, costing me $$$.

As this is miles and miles from a city and the mechanics nearby are charging mega-dollars, it is now being used for storage.

Will not buy a vehicle of this type again.

PS the transmission fluid was kept topped-up and all levels for the oil etc were fine, and it just had new tyres on it as well! :(

Faults:

Very little. This was an unusual purchase, so please see the general comments.

The automatic actuator to go into 4x4 when the rear wheels slip was broken when we took it home, we think. It went back and was covered under warranty.

The right front caliper froze early on, which I replaced.

The oil sending unit is flaky right now, and like another poster said, the oil gauge is not a gauge... if the sender says OK, the meter pegs to 2/3, or the sender to NOK, the needle drops to 0. It might as well be a light. Other than this, it has only needed fluid changes.

General Comments:

This was an unusual purchase. Visiting a dealer in 2008, shopping for a car for someone else, I saw this immaculate 2001 being "liquidated". Story was it was another dealer's shuttle vehicle who went out of business. My dealer allegedly picked it up off of Ford at a company auction. The kicker: it had less than 5K miles offered for $10999. The wife wanted a 4x4 very badly, having had to weather blizzards with a G20 van for years. Could not pass it up. The risk was possible service issues due to such light use. Got a drive train warranty to mitigate that. The early service problems I had were probably due to the age with light use, ie: sitting, not necessarily quality.

As others has said, the ride is rough. I guess it is due to the non-independent rear suspension. If you roll over a speed bump at an angle, you better be holding on tight.

Visibility is good.

Engine is running strong and proper. No tranny problems.

Gas mileage is particularly bad. We drive mostly around town, and get not much better than 12mpg.

We fell in love with the ride of later Explorer model years that we tried, so we hope to trade up at some point.

Faults:

Driver's side auto door lock.

General Comments:

This Explorer turned out to be one of the most reliable cars I have ever owned. I thought about selling it more than a few times, but the car was so reliable I could not part with it.

I kept up with all the scheduled maintenance such as coolant flushing, transmission flush and filters, fuel filters and sensor cleaning, tires and rotations, oil changes, brakes, spark plugs; all the routine stuff..

This Explorer just keeps going. Even with 150k on the odometer, it uses no oil, has good oil pressure and still runs excellent. If it got better gas mileage, I would probably keep it forever.