Ramphastid
Active Member
Like many of us, I grew up with Jurassic Park and it has been one of my favorite movies (if not favorite over all) ever since. My love for the movie never seemed to die so when I was financially sound enough (and had a good excuse) to make one, I jumped at the opportunity.
My search started with initial research on what others had done previously. Although many people have decent replicas of the tour car, very few have the modified interior and bubble roof like the movie vehicles did. I knew this would be expensive so my first step was finding a suitable Explorer to build off of in the best condition possible.
After searching for several months, I finally found it.A1993 Ford Explorer XLT 2WD with tan leather interior AND the original wheels! And that's not even the best part- It was in pristine condition with only 38,000 miles on it and only 3 hours away from where I lived. Aside from a small ding in the side and on the front bumper (both of which can be easily fixed), it is in flawless condition. There is also a tear on the driver seat but it wasn't a big deal considering that was all going to be replaced anyway.
Mine will be number 04, based off of the Explorer Lex & Tim rode and and was eventually trashed by the T. rex.
(so far this is all I have)
Lastly, the hard part- The bubble roof. This will probably be more expensive than any other part but I am told that it is possible. It's just a matter of finding somebody to make the mold and everything for it. I will update this thread with more info as I am presented with it.
EDIT: I changed and deleted a lot of misinformation that came from my own research. The entire interior is custom and Cherokee seats were definitely not used. I've been away from this thread until I had some major updates and I now, in fact, do. This has been quite a handful and a lot more work than I ever thought. The Jeep guys have it easy!
First, I've found all accurate exterior parts save for the front fog lights. This includes Running Boards, Tail Light Guards, Brush Guard, and fender/roof lights. I even managed to find extras of almost all of these in case they were to ever get damaged. The 'Radial' All-Terrain BF Goodrich tires are the same model as the film, however they no longer say 'Radial' on them. Which is fine because I'm never going to even try to drive on vintage tires. Most of these parts require a lot of hard work and dedication to find. There are very few who have all of them and the brush guard is especially hard to obtain.
I've also been wrestling with the interior over the past year. The dashboard, center console, and seats are all completely custom made for the production. This makes recreating them to the proper dimensions a huge pain. Most people have taken two OEM dashboards and just mended them together to make something similar to what's seen in the film. That wasn't good enough for me though so we created something that would resemble the dash in the film as close as possible. Right now, the texturing and color are not quite what I would like so we are going to go back and redo a lot of it. But here is what I have so far.
I'm also having the seats redone (again) because I was not happy with the last two attempts. Once everything is more presentable, I will show more pictures. For now, this will serve as a rough idea of what's been done. I am also having the Explorer completely repainted again.
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