At that time, I had a ‘68 Jeep Gladiator  (I don’t know if you know it as a “Gladiator” but it’s similar to your Jeep J20.

Then, imports of SUVs from USA and Japan started. As I am a Ford fan, I bought my new Explorer XLT with a manual transmission in 1994. For six months my stock Explorer remained the same, I drove it daily in the city and sporadically on light off road trails. Afterwards I started to modify it, coming up with a more extreme off road vehicle. 

In this country, substantial modification of SUVs with imported equipment and/or spare parts is unusual.
Moreover, there are few qualified mechanics to do so, and their fees are expensive. Therefore, I managed to do it myself helped and guided by specialized magazines as well as your web site.

I have driven my Explorer through the Andes mountains, on the Patagonia snow, on the sand –all along Argentine, Uruguay and Brazil Atlantic Coast- and I have also done almost all our best know trails, but I hope to do a "Serious Exploration" on some of your famous trails there in the USA. 

There is one little problem I have to solve: since I drive into deep water and mud frequently, the ball bearings of front wheels are usually broken down and they have to be replaced.

I had one  serious problem six months ago when I was driving across a small river and my Explorer dived down. I had to disassemble the interior in order to dry it out –it took two weeks of work-.

At this time, I also had to repair the front floor at the union with the firewall, since the frame suffered too much torsion in the mountain trails.

In the near future I will install Borla headers, larger MAF and throttle body, aiming to improve the performance of the engine. I’m not sure about installing a supercharger since I think it is not necessary according to the offroading that I practice
 

Pinamar (Buenos Aires - Argentina)

Gualeguay  (Entre Rios - Argentina)