Anyone have information on removing the dashboard? The radio has stopped working and I'm out of warranty. Thanks!

 

I have a 98 Explorer so yours may be different. There should be some holes in the radio faceplate. Cut off a coat hanger and press it into the holes to release the catches, or go to a parts store and buy an expensive tool to do the same thing, or run by a stereo shop. They will have a tool and will probably remove it for you - it only takes a few seconds.

 

I am new to this site and trying to learn how it works. My reason for joining is I have a 2003 Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer edition which I purchased new. It now has 155,000 miles. My oil pump recently quit and I threw a rod, I am assuming a wrist pin was starved for lub, the rod broke through the wall of the block. I had plenty of oil in the reservoir. It showed half way up on the dip stick. So my diagnosis was oil pump. I had a used engine with 110,000 miles installed. I don't plan to use the vehicle much as we have a new CRV which doubles the mileage I was getting, but I use the Eplorer when my wife needs the other car.

About two months after I noticed my hot/ cold control stopped working, got plenty of fan. I started noticing a soft staccoto sound when I turned the **** from cold the hot and vice versa and it was moving past the transition point, ambient temp. Now I wished I had joined this group to diagnose it earlier but we had a lot of hot weather coming our way up here in Seattle, so I dove into the project, during which I found that because I had a dual control button which allows a different temp for the driver and passenger, that meant two air door actuators. I had not exhausted myself in diagnosint the problem, but I found although I was quite able to replace the driver side one, which had no broken splines, and I found the one on the passenger side was almost encased in steel structural support of the dash or other divices behind the radio, and the air blender box. One of the sites said I had to remove the dash, so I started, what cluster !#%& (you may know the word I want to use), so I started to think rather than disconnecting all the rest of the circuits I had not yet messed with I might be able to move the dash far enough to be able to work around it to access the passenger side actuator.

I am looking for any help I can get presently with regard to the dash. The have to be some connectors that Ford hid just for me to expound my true thoughts about the company's design engineers. If they could beef up the actuators there would be no concern on the part of the owners and I might not question my thoughts about owning a Ford for longer than 150,000 miles.

Also, if this gets out to the members, and I am not supposed to post here, let me know. I briefly looked for some rules, but when I tried to create a new thread the administrators suggested "no you won't"

Thanks for reading, John K