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I added some nice LED lights to the cargo area of my SWB 2016 wagon. The lights have an OEM look and provide just enough light to illuminate the cargo area. The lights are mfg by Brand Motion http://www.brandmotion.com/oem-integration/led-lighting/loftlite-led-interior-lighting-kit.html The total lumens from the 4 lights is probably around 90-100. I tapped into the wiring for the side mounted cargo lights. The lights turn on and off with the doors. They dim as the interior lights turn off like the stock incandescent lamps. Each light has a function where separate power can be wired to the light to turn it on by pushing the center of the lamp. Unfortunately this won't work in the TC because the TC dims the lights and turns them off by raising the negative supply to the lamps from 0 volts to +12 volts. So when the lights are off both leads are at +12V. The "push-on" function won't work because when the lamps are off there is no negative supply to the lamp. This is not a problem for me because I would never be in a position to turn the lights on while I am driving. If you wanted them to be reading lights for passengers it would not work. The installation is relatively easy. You have to carefully pull down the headliner just enough to access the back side and cut 4 holes. The insulation on the headliner has to be shaved away so the bezel can snap onto the lamp (use an xacto knife and cut at a 45 deg angle from the bottom of the hole). You will also need to temporarily wedge something between the front lamp housing and the roof so you can push the bezel on. I cut a short piece of PVC pipe and stuck it on a long rod. You remove the wedge once the unit is snapped into place.

Sorry. I don't know how that happened.

So last night a buddy and I did a little hardware hacking. Mrs. Chong informed me that at least one night last week, the overnight temperature in Regina Saskatchewan dipped down to -40C. For those that don't know, -40 is the convergence point (-40C = -40F). That level of cold is bad for things on many levels and is the reason that many cars sold in Canada ship with dealer installed block heaters stock. I'm going to be reaching out to my local Ford dealer to see if I can get a block heater installed in my van before we leave, but I'm also going to have a contingency, Fobuino... What you are looking at is the inside of a Ford dealer installed 1-Way Remote Start Transmitter wired to an Arduino UNO. My buddy has been telling me that this is something I should be doing for van road trips for awhile now. I kept pushing it back until I found out just how cold it gets up there. My buddy was in charge of hardware and I was in charge of the software. I do write all kinds of software everyday at work so this wasn't too challenging for me. The Arduino is a very easy platform to pick up and develop on. Pressing the button is simply closing a circuit. We used the Arduino complete the circuit and start the car. I wrote some very simple code to do this every hour. I configured the remote start settings in the cluster to run for the max time of 15 minutes and configured the heater settings to use the last settings from the climate control. Now all we have to do before shutting the engine off to climb into bed is crank the heat and the fans. Fobuino will handle the rest. I've made the code available under the MIT license. Version 1.0 seems to work pretty well. In the future, we plan to hook Fobuino into the OBD2 port to read the Engine Coolant Temp Sensor and use that to start the van rather than a simple timer. We didn't have all the hardware to do that last night, so the timer will work for now. Check it out on GitHub!

Think you posted that enough times there Fifty150?? I'm used to the links in your posts bring two feet long vertically . . . . thankfully you don't post most of them more than once!! Don

Interesting. You couldn't find a 7 seater. When I was looking around the dealerships, and checking inventory online, they were everywhere. But then again, it is still 2016, and you were looking for a used 2016. That usually means that availability would be limited to whatever the rental car companies are trading in, because most private owners don't trade in their cars within the same model year. I hope you saved enough money for it to be worth not buying the 7 seater that you really wanted. I imagine that you would be able to install the 2nd row 3 seat bench. The hardest part may be pricing and availability. Since seating is rarely a collision repair item, it's not as easy as getting a bumper or a door. You will probably need all the hardware, brackets, and latches. You may need to drill a hole here or there. If you're not worried about functionality, and only seating, then you could probably get a torch, cut what you need to, and weld it in permanently. I added 3rd row seats to an older SUV that didn't come with 3rd row seats. I've also added flip and fold jump-seats into the bed of pickup trucks. Once, I stripped seats out of an old school bus, and installed them into a cargo van. Being a guy who has owned Jeeps & trucks most of my life, welding and drilling holes into cars does not bother me. But other guys would never take a Sawzall, drill, or torch to their cars....even if the end result was getting what they wanted.