Im looking to buy another explorer for my wife, I just bought a 98 for myself, any sugestions on which year gave the least problems?

They all have plus / minus -

my suggestion is if you need a 2nd explorer - go with as new year as you can afford - or buy the same year if you do your own maintanence.

having two of the same makes it easy to compaire/contrast parts when somthing goes wrong on one.