Been a week without my beater. Last Sunday I stopped for gas ($1.31/liter - a liter is a quarter gallon, btw) then when I go to leave click, click (followed by several expletives.) Replaced the fender solenoid at the gas station and I still got click, click and more expletives.
Towed it home.
Turns out the starter in a 5.0 Explorer is expensive and I was between paydays.
Decided to replace the wear parts in the starter. The solenoid on the starter has to be ordered and none of the parts places could say for sure if they could get the correct one and eventually I ended up at a mom & pop starter and alternator place. He had never seen the housing on mine before so he swapped my housing onto a rebuilt but otherwise similar starter. ($162.xx taxes in)
Moral of this story: at my earliest inconvenience I should pick up a wrecking yard starter for one of these and maybe get it rebuilt or possibly look into the hi torque mini starters from companies like Powermaster.
https://www.summitracing.com/int/parts/pwm-9162/overview/
The Canadian Tire "Champion" brand starters were $169 before taxes and core charge and half the reviews for it had it breaking on install or failing within 3 months.
Lesson learned. Have spares.
Edit: while under this thing I located the tranny leak. Its dripping out of the bellhousing.