Well, the roof rack and tire carrier money got put to other use... I was headed from Baton Rouge to Mississippi for a weekend with dual sport friends for some camping & shooting when I busted a radiator. I was cruising in the excursion and saw a 2x4 in the road, but I thought "I'm in a big excursion, I don't need to dodge a little ol 2x4!". Well, the front tire kicked it up and I heard a loud bang. About half a mile later, I noticed that my ECT went from 195ish to 230 or so!! Killed it and pulled into a country store. Busted seam on the plastic to aluminum crimp on the radiator. Once I changed that, I found that the one month old NAPA water pump was pouring coolant now for some reason. I swapped in a factory motorcraft one, and when flushing everything with Restore flushing agent, I found that my degas bottle had also sprung a leak and was spraying coolant onto the motor!
After a lot of parts runs, and too much money, the only thing left in the coolant system that I didn't change last weekend is the oil cooler. Hopefully I'll be able to recuperate some funds and be able to get back to getting this thing setup how I want!
