My wife and I have decided we need a bigger vehicle, kid number four is on her way We sold our Excursion last year, thought we would buy another. But after looking around my wife prefers the more modern look and amenities of the newer Expedition's. We won't tow much with it, I have a truck for that, so it will mainly be a grocery geter and family car.

Anyway, We have found a nice 08' EL. It is an XLT, pretty basic, three rows of bench seat, not much in the way of options, which I like - less stuff to break. The truck has 137k miles on it, one owner, clean carfax but no maintenance records on the carfax. The truck is in excellent condition with the exception of needing new tires and it has some ghetto looking after market headlights.

I'm not very familiar with these trucks, anything in particular I should look for on this vehicle before making a purchase commitment? Obviously I will check the usual used car stuff, I'm looking for anything that might be unique with an 08' Expy. One thing I did notice on my test drive, the 1 - 2 shift is very firm.

 

Well, for what ever it is worth, we bought it.

 

Congrats on your purchase!

Does the 4wheel auto, hi and low switch work?

Does the rear wiper work? (mine didn't but the fix is not too bad to do yourself)

Do all of the power widows function normally?

If so, enjoy!

Fog lamps are in a location prone to stone chips and cracks but can be replaced easily and fairly cheaply (about $40 each at RockAuto.com).

Try to find out whether yours is an early build (before December 2007) or late build. That may come in handy for some replacement parts like the engine compartment heater hoses.

We bought our 2008 in the summer of 2014 and within one week, drove 2000 miles round trip to Myrtle Beach with no issues. Still love it, great for our 4 kids + guest if applicable. Ours is an EL Limited.

 

Everything seems to work, windows, 4 wheel switch, rear wiper, etc.

The fog lamps are toast, looking for upgrade alternatives. A good, quality set of driving or fog lights in their place would be great. I live in BFE, lots of large game on the road at night, good lights are major important to me. The PO installed aftermarket headlights with LED park lights, halo lights and projectors for the low beams. One of the low beams was burnt out, had to tear it all apart today to figure out what kind of bulbs I needed - H7 low and H1 high. A may do an HID upgrade on the low beams, need to see how the lights actually work out at night before making any decisions to upgrade. I would prefer the factory HL's but I will at least see how these work out.

My truck appears to have the later engine, build date on the valve cover is 3/27/2008. Not sure what the truck build date is, I will have to look.

So far, we have not put very many miles on it, but both the wife and I really enjoy driving it. This truck will be our primary family vehicle and possibly serve winter commute duty for me, 130 miles RT to work, lots of snow in season where we live. I'm going to drive it to work tomorrow and throw a set of snow tires on it on my lunch break.

Our's is an EL XLT with the front and middle bench, so 9 passenger. Pretty basic truck, which is what we wanted. I will upgrade the stereo and add DVD for the kids soon.

 

Keep your eye out for bubbling and then peeling paint on the front of the hood where it meets the grill and on the rear hatch around the license plate. This is the only big problem I've had with mine.

 

I forgot about that! My hood was repainted during the previous owners time with my 08 Expedition. The rear lift gate was repainted by the dealer that sold it to me because of a relatively minor dent repair from backing into a light pole or something on the lot but the area around the chrome trim above the rear licence plate was already flaking off before that too.

The aluminum on both of those panels is finicky than steel for oxidation and paint adhesion.