UltraHDGames
Adventurer
Looks like a pretty decent to a sweet rig! I've always liked escapes and thought they'd make a cool overland rig, defiantly subd
Ford Escape e/x Build
- Thread starter OuterLimits
- Start date
OuterLimits
I control the horizontal and the vertical
Factory skids are a real bonus. That makes them affordable and available (be it dealer or salvage).
And you are not alone:
http://www.jeeppatriot.com/forum/26...d-plate-installation-compass-fd1-patriot.html
http://www.jeeppatriot.com/forum/37-exterior/5114-mk-skid-plates.html
http://www.jeeppatriot.com/forum/37-exterior/210146-mk-skid-plates-installation.html
http://www.jeeppatriot.com/forum/37-exterior/839-skid-plates.html
http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f98/skid-plates-529161/
Post it up when you get your skids sorted out
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OuterLimits
I control the horizontal and the vertical
Thanks for the support. Glad to have you along for the ride.
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OuterLimits
I control the horizontal and the vertical
Thank you for your input
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OuterLimits
I control the horizontal and the vertical
Front row seats for you my friend...Just because!
Oh once I get everything sorted out I will add to my build thread in the jeep section. I need to gather everything up and go to town. I am not allowed on Jeeppatriot.com. I called out one of the members for being a wack job racist and got permabanned for it. He thought he was going to race the Baja 1000 in his patriot and was going to get a one off CVT transmission, suspension, etc built for it for free. I called him out on that, then I see a photo of his awesome rig....has the confederate flag on the roof....so I called him a racist as well. just because!!!! Anyways...long story short, the buttmuncher has not gotten any farther along with all the free one off gear, and has not competed in the baja with his patriot. Me however, I have built and raced in the targa newfoundland tarmac rally. I have helped on a bunch of cars for that. I know what it takes to get something built worthy of racing, and in the beginning I was giving said buttmuncher advice on what to do....and told him NOT to use his daily driver as a racer...that always ends bad....but no dice. He started getting lippy with me so I fired a few shots across his bow. Then the final death knell was the rossoracist comment. Oh well...bunch of whiners over there...btw CVT in the patriots suck donkey balls. I owned one. I own the 6 speed now, and it's 10 times the rig a cvt equipped patriot is. Back to your regularly scheduled program. LOVE THE ESCAPE!
OuterLimits
I control the horizontal and the vertical
The CVT is an interesting solution to enhanced locomotion, but I think I'd wait a few years to allow the manufacturers to get the suck properly sorted out.
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OuterLimits
I control the horizontal and the vertical
Jsweezy, Thank you for the kind words.
Every so often I'll do some vehicular window shopping and kick a few tires, but the options almost always have a stupendous show stopper for me (Too expensive, unreliable, no head room, crappy ride, gas guzzler, tiny windows, too many computers, too many nanny controls, shifty sellers, etc). For now, the Escape is still gitten' 'er done.
Glad to have you join the ride.
P.S. Diggin' what you are doing with the Tan Hot Dog!
P.S.S. D'oh! You sold it!!!
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It's been out LONG ENOUGH to get the suck sorted. The CVT in the patriot was weak, poorly engineered, and created LOTS of problems. Therefore, they removed it from service. Mine started acting up at 20,000 kms....and was never fixed to acceptable ever. I traded it in 1 year later on my JK. It was so nice to have a regular transmission again. I have a 2003 audi A4 cabrio with the CVT and guess what...NOTHING but TROUBLE with that one too. I will never buy a car/truck/SUV with a CVT. They are terrible solution to a non existant problem.
CVT been out since 2007 in the patriot, and if you look at the stats regarding issues and complaints with patriot and compass owners alone, the transmission and drivability issues were 100 times of what they were from 2014 onward when they put a new 6 sp regular transmission in it.
Yeah, the escape is an awesome rig. My dad has a gen 2 as a flat tow vehicle for behind his motorhome. drives great and is reliable.
ihatemybike
Explorer
Reading about your issues with the CVT is what set our age limit to 2014 and not FDII when we went shopping for our Patriot. Must say that we are quite happen with the 6 speed.
OuterLimits
I control the horizontal and the vertical
SKID PLATE INSTALLATION
The provided instructions were in Mandarin. I don’t speak or read Mandarin. No worries, what red blooded male reads instructions anyway? Who needs ‘em?
Plus there were pictures! Guys like pictures! Time to bust out the tool kit and get started!
First, remove the front cross member and sandwich the rear of the support bars. Next, secure the front of the support bars to OEM bolt locations under the front bumper. Then cinch it all down.
The steel mounting bars came up just a tad short on the front, just barely getting by the mounting bolts under the bumper. The bars have a slot, not a hole and I was worried they might pop loose under stress.
I remedied this by placing 2 large diameter washers on the head of each mounting bolt. (not shown) This seems to relieve any concerns of it coming off.
The rear of the bars bolted up nicely, sandwiched between the cross member and the chassis. Well, not so nicely. The cross member utilizes 2 bolts on each side to secure. The bars only use one bolt on each side. This creates a bit of an air gap on the other two bolts, between the cross member and the chassis.
This was a simple fix. A few stainless washers stacked on the other bolts to match the thickness of the support bars. Now the bolts can be torqued down without tweaking the cross member.
The front skid was a simple fit and bolted right up. The rear skid was OK on the front edge, but seemed to have no means of attachment for the rear end. There was a black steel plate included that bolts to the rear for the skid (mysterious part #3), but I could see no way to bolt the rear of the skid to the mount bars or the chassis with or without mysterious part #3..
I would crawl under the Escape with the pictures and the strange steel plate, and just stare at it all for extended periods. I even cut up part #3 trying to come up with some way to secure or support the rear of the skid. I just could not come up with any solution using the provided instructions, pictures, or hardware.
Time for a workaround. On each side of the chassis sub-frame there is a pattern of 3 holes. One of the holes on each side lined up nicely with a potential bolt location on the skid. Now how to utilize the holes? I decided to weld a nut over two holes (one on each side), then drill a bolt hole in the rear of the skid. The bolt goes through the skid, screws into the nut, and uses the hole in the chassis for bolt clearance. Simple!
I found a local 4x4 shop that was willing to weld the nuts on the sub-frame. They put the Escape up on a lift and I pointed to the hole on each side to weld the nut. They finished up and I headed home. Arriving home, I primed and painted the steel that had been wire wheeled before welding.
I bolted up the front of the skid, then pushed the rear of the skid up to mark the two holes for drilling. WTH?
When I was crawling around under my Escape, I picked what seemed the best location for the nut. Rather than marking it ahead of time, I trusted my feeble memory. Upon arriving at the welding shop, they pop the Escape up on a lift and asked me to point to the location. Well, there are three holes there and standing under the lift (as opposed to laying the opposite way under my Escape), I confidently pointed to the wrong holes. Arriving home, I smugly bolted up the two skids only to discover the freshly welded nuts lay beyond the end of the skid plate. D’oh!!!
I drove back down to the shop with a box of doughnuts and an apology. They scarfed the treats and welded on two fresh nuts in the proper location.
The pics show the bolts screwed into the nuts, welded in the correct location. Careful viewers will notice the 2 now superfluous nuts, welded in a pointless and silly location.
Passenger side looking to rear.
Driver’s side looking toward rear
Now just push the plate up to the nuts, mark the skid plate, drill two holes, then bolt up the skid. Sweet!
I was really happy with my solution, but was still baffled by the purpose of the black rear plate. I did a bunch of web surfing and finally found another Esacpe with these skids. These pics clearly show that the rear of the transfer case skid doesn’t bolt to the vehicle at all. The black plate (mysterious part #3) seems to be there solely as reinforcement for the rear of the skid plate. Case solved.
I prefer my solution of bolting up the rear of the skid, and not just have it potentially flapping around. Unfortunately in my zeal to attempt some possible way to use the steel plate (mysterious part #3) to secure the rear of the skid, I cut the ends off mysterious part #3. It is now quite useless. I still need to fabricate a solution to reinforce the rear of the skid. I may just bolt on a length of angle steel and call it good, but that is still pending.
Installed skids.
The small front air dam almost perfectly covers the front of the skid for a stealthy look. Nobody knows it is a lean, mean, off-road machine!
Another look from down under (not to be confused with Australia).
While the proper tires improve capability, Skids provide peace of mind.
Skid selfie in the Las Padres Forest.
When I’m foolin’ around, I always wear protection!!!
The provided instructions were in Mandarin. I don’t speak or read Mandarin. No worries, what red blooded male reads instructions anyway? Who needs ‘em?
Plus there were pictures! Guys like pictures! Time to bust out the tool kit and get started!
First, remove the front cross member and sandwich the rear of the support bars. Next, secure the front of the support bars to OEM bolt locations under the front bumper. Then cinch it all down.
The steel mounting bars came up just a tad short on the front, just barely getting by the mounting bolts under the bumper. The bars have a slot, not a hole and I was worried they might pop loose under stress.
I remedied this by placing 2 large diameter washers on the head of each mounting bolt. (not shown) This seems to relieve any concerns of it coming off.
The rear of the bars bolted up nicely, sandwiched between the cross member and the chassis. Well, not so nicely. The cross member utilizes 2 bolts on each side to secure. The bars only use one bolt on each side. This creates a bit of an air gap on the other two bolts, between the cross member and the chassis.
This was a simple fix. A few stainless washers stacked on the other bolts to match the thickness of the support bars. Now the bolts can be torqued down without tweaking the cross member.
The front skid was a simple fit and bolted right up. The rear skid was OK on the front edge, but seemed to have no means of attachment for the rear end. There was a black steel plate included that bolts to the rear for the skid (mysterious part #3), but I could see no way to bolt the rear of the skid to the mount bars or the chassis with or without mysterious part #3..
I would crawl under the Escape with the pictures and the strange steel plate, and just stare at it all for extended periods. I even cut up part #3 trying to come up with some way to secure or support the rear of the skid. I just could not come up with any solution using the provided instructions, pictures, or hardware.
Time for a workaround. On each side of the chassis sub-frame there is a pattern of 3 holes. One of the holes on each side lined up nicely with a potential bolt location on the skid. Now how to utilize the holes? I decided to weld a nut over two holes (one on each side), then drill a bolt hole in the rear of the skid. The bolt goes through the skid, screws into the nut, and uses the hole in the chassis for bolt clearance. Simple!
I found a local 4x4 shop that was willing to weld the nuts on the sub-frame. They put the Escape up on a lift and I pointed to the hole on each side to weld the nut. They finished up and I headed home. Arriving home, I primed and painted the steel that had been wire wheeled before welding.
I bolted up the front of the skid, then pushed the rear of the skid up to mark the two holes for drilling. WTH?
When I was crawling around under my Escape, I picked what seemed the best location for the nut. Rather than marking it ahead of time, I trusted my feeble memory. Upon arriving at the welding shop, they pop the Escape up on a lift and asked me to point to the location. Well, there are three holes there and standing under the lift (as opposed to laying the opposite way under my Escape), I confidently pointed to the wrong holes. Arriving home, I smugly bolted up the two skids only to discover the freshly welded nuts lay beyond the end of the skid plate. D’oh!!!
I drove back down to the shop with a box of doughnuts and an apology. They scarfed the treats and welded on two fresh nuts in the proper location.
The pics show the bolts screwed into the nuts, welded in the correct location. Careful viewers will notice the 2 now superfluous nuts, welded in a pointless and silly location.
Passenger side looking to rear.
Driver’s side looking toward rear
Now just push the plate up to the nuts, mark the skid plate, drill two holes, then bolt up the skid. Sweet!
I was really happy with my solution, but was still baffled by the purpose of the black rear plate. I did a bunch of web surfing and finally found another Esacpe with these skids. These pics clearly show that the rear of the transfer case skid doesn’t bolt to the vehicle at all. The black plate (mysterious part #3) seems to be there solely as reinforcement for the rear of the skid plate. Case solved.
I prefer my solution of bolting up the rear of the skid, and not just have it potentially flapping around. Unfortunately in my zeal to attempt some possible way to use the steel plate (mysterious part #3) to secure the rear of the skid, I cut the ends off mysterious part #3. It is now quite useless. I still need to fabricate a solution to reinforce the rear of the skid. I may just bolt on a length of angle steel and call it good, but that is still pending.
Installed skids.
The small front air dam almost perfectly covers the front of the skid for a stealthy look. Nobody knows it is a lean, mean, off-road machine!
Another look from down under (not to be confused with Australia).
While the proper tires improve capability, Skids provide peace of mind.
Skid selfie in the Las Padres Forest.
When I’m foolin’ around, I always wear protection!!!
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Awesome....mini utes unite! ha ha......Awesome. This rig keeps getting better! When or what is the suspension....and when is it going in????
ihatemybike.....The 6sp is a million times better than the ******** CVT....I love reading posts on JP.com from a certain baja racer that touts the Cvt as the second coming...quite funny to because his such a religious guy.
ihatemybike.....The 6sp is a million times better than the ******** CVT....I love reading posts on JP.com from a certain baja racer that touts the Cvt as the second coming...quite funny to because his such a religious guy.
OuterLimits
I control the horizontal and the vertical
Thanks, She is coming along slow, but sure.
Good tires and skids do much to extend capability. The suspension is still a week or two till installation.
A bit longer after that for the write up. Have patience.
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