1991 Ford Aerostar XLT (yeah!)

(yes I'm serious)

 This was the official shop van and partly Rod's family van for a couple of years.  We miss it!

This is really the "before" shot.  The van was acquired with Matt's help, and I (Rod) wasn't even thinking about an Aerostar, I was looking at the Astro for its look and availability of aftermarket performance parts.  I'd never really looked twice at an Aerostar.  So Matt brings this thing to the shop one morning for me to look at, and I drove it, looked harder at it, and decided that it was a really clean and well-maintained vehicle that should function as the shop "wood run", parts, courtesy shuttle, boat moving/towing truck just fine...

BAM!  Lookie here.  This is the van with some sweet factory Ford Bullit 17" wheels with nice Pirelli Zero Z rated (not an issue with this van...) tires.  With a complete new higher flowing exhaust system, 2 new cats, an airbox modification and complete tune up-this 4.0 liter little 6 makes decent power and sounds really healthy through the Magnaflow muffler and sweet tip.  With the crossdrilled and gas slotted front rotors the braking still wasn't as good as it needs to be.  Hellwig makes a rear sway bar for this, so I had to have one of those, and a complete set of new gas shocks from a bargain on ebay.  The wheel offset required some heavy duty CNC machined adapters, 1.5" thick, but the fit, the look, the improved handling overall-much improved.  The rear Air Lift airbags help keep the rear up when loaded down or towing.

Okay, now we've got this perfectly good, clean used van:  let's take it apart.  These are some of the largest interior panels we ever come across, with the left interior quarter panel the actual largest ever.  It spans the entire length of the van (this is the extended van, at that...) from the back of the driver's seat to the tailgate.

Here's a good shot of the interior. I remember pulling the headliner down, so I'm sure I matted the roof too.  This is the interior before I (Rod) applied about 60 square feet of Roadkill Expert series dampening mat.  I hit the walls with it, 'front doors, even the sliding door, covering just about all of the exterior sheet metal from the inside.  This resulted in a very smooth, refined, quieter ride, and the vehicle feels even more solid than it felt before.  (domestic vehicles like the Aerostar typically have thicker and heavier steel throughout the vehicles compared to their Japanese counterparts, at least around the era of this van...)

And there it is, lots of dampening mat, blanketing the floor, side walls, etc...

Look at all the gear that easily fits in a vehicle like this!  There we have a 5 channel Audison SRX5 amplifier, the old Sirius Kenwood tuner, the brain for the Kenwood flip out DVD player in the dash, the navigation brain for same is under the driver's seat.  Notice the 4 small black plugs on top of the Kenwood brain, those are diversity TV antenna connections.  This vehicle ended up with TV, PS2, dual 7" overhead monitors in a customized overhead A/C console, DVD, AM/FM/CD, Sirius satellite radio-we had one big fun family trip in this machine.

So with Kenwood speakers all around, a separate subwoofer in the cargo area, seats that fold flat into a bed, this van is no longer part of the shop "fleet", but we miss it!

Thanks Andrew-good work Carl and Tony!