I have a set of brown leather explorer seats you can have. Not perfect, but they're free for this project.
Post a pic if you can
I'm anxious to start working on this, but it probably won't happen until around March. We get warm days here in Texas, but the truck is in Ohio. It's a two day drive from here to where Bobby has the truck in Ohio. I really don't want to make a 4-day round trip just to work on it for a weekend. I need Bobby to put up with me for a week, so I can get some work done, and justify all the drive time and miles.
The bed sides are in rough shape. They've been beat on and straightened, but need replaced. I plan to replace them with these:
The left front fender has a crack in the fiberglass, and it keeps cracking every time it's fixed. If I'm replacing the front fenders, then I'm also updating the look:
That means I need a header panel, grill, hood, and headlights to convert this from a 1996 to 2011.
I'll also need some 2010 Ford Raptor tail lights.
As I've mentioned, the drivers seat is broke. I need to replace the buckets, and would like to find some leather ones. I'd really like to find some brown ones to see if I could mimic the look and feel of a King Ranch with brown leather interior.
Right now, I think the biggest thing I need to hunt for is bucket seats, and the hood, grill, and header panel for the last generation Ford Ranger.
When I arrive in March, I hope to strip the truck down, clean the frame, inspect, repair or replace any bad suspension bracket, leaf spring mount, or coil bucket. I need Bobby to take a look at the coil buckets and leaf spring mounts to see if they look like they need replaced.
I'm hoping in that first week to get the frame cleaned up and painted, the axles rebuilt, and the suspension all back together. Basically I want everything that needs done from the frame rails down completed. It already has a lift, gears and lockers, so hopefully I can just overhaul everything (bearings, seals, etc). I also need to do a complete brake job, and add the parking brake components to the Explorer 8.8.
As you can see, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done during that week. I also need to take the wheels to Discount Tire and have them mount up new tires for me. I'm using them so I can pay the tires off over time, to free up money for other parts that I need.
If I can get that all done, then the following trip I'll work on hanging fiberglass and getting the body ready for paint. I'm also hoping Bobby has a welder and can help me put together some sliders. Not that I'm going to do any rock crawling, but the drivers side rocker panel was damaged dropping down a step on a trail at Attica, so you never know.
It's going to need the interior done, and the air conditioning fixed because it gets fricken hot here in Texas.
So even though I'm basically refreshing this truck, it needs a lot of work.