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I reckon I'm just part of a dying breed, lol. I can drive just fine with only the side mirrors and specifically bought a windowless van; no cameras, bumper sensors or other fancy doodads, either. If anything, I wouldn't mind adding some roughly 6x15" (I think that's the size I was looking at) rectangular portholes high on the C/D pillar of my Gen 2, but for air circulation rather than view. Make that 7-7/8" x 15-3/4" portholes - if you look at the customer images, there's a Chevy Express that has them roughly where I'd put them, too. When you look at the inner door structure versus the "reveal" on the outside, I don't think you're really losing that much usable glass overall with those sliders - and opening them for fresh air would be more than worth any assumed loss. Swapping to barn doors with factory glass would probably only give a 10-15% gain in usable glass, which I mean as the area you actually look through, rather than the giant border that's glued over steel with factory glass.

For any synthetic worth a hoot, 5K is way too soon to be changing your oil - Way, WAY too soon! Ford and most synthetic manufacturers recommend 12K changes. I use Castrol Edge Extended Performance fully synthetic and Castrol says it is good for 20K changes I typically change at 10 to 12K on mine because I don't drive it that many miles each year . . . . without the oil change reminder recommending me to change it sooner. But . . . . if you don't reset the change reminder each and every time you do a change, then the change reminder is never going to give you good information . . . . it's eventually going to tell you to change it at some point, and that may end up being only 2 or 3K after your last change. Read the manual on how to reset it after you do a change, even though it has never gone off and told you a change was necessary. Reset the change reminder every single time, regardless . . . . especially if you intend to use it as recommended If yours was reset when a change was done and then you went 5K and changed it without resetting it and you got a change notice 4K later, it's actually telling you that you needed a change at 9K and not at 5K when you last did it . . . . or, more likely, you probably missed resetting it twice and what it's actually telling you is that it should be changed at 14K - Mine never says a change is needed before 12K . . . . but I reset it every time At any rate, 5K changes with fully synthetic oil is certainly a waste of time, money and natural resources. Google and read all about modern oil, modern engines and synthetic oil change mileage recommendations Don

Moral of that story - go with smaller windows? <G> Vintage Technologies is about 100 mile round trip from here, so I stopped by their shop so they could have a peek at what I had to work with, then went with their recommendations. They also marked the panels to show where to put them for the guy who did the install. Side windows are 21x14 (VT #WD07) , and rear doors are 16x14 (VT #WD03). You also have to match the trim rings to the body - TC used "0" thickness rings designed for thin panels like mine. Anyway - I figured most anything would be better than no windows at all, but was pleasantly surprised by how much visibility improved, both side and back, especially after gutting the cargo wall. I've also got a backup camera, but prefer to actually see what's behind me when driving. The smaller rear windows are a good fit for the back doors I think. PS - careful with sliders - you'll want to make sure the drain holes are pointing either down or back, or you could get some water inside. Mine are right and tight ... No complaints here, which is kind of a bummer as I really like to complain. ;-}

It looks to be under the driver side headlight for us Americans - passenger side for the Brits & some others, lol. The place I found this pic insinuates that dual-tone is an option, not standard. My '15 XL LWB cargo only seems to make one tone that I can recall - anemic, at that, as most car horns are, haha. Does your original dealer window sticker indicate that you have dual-tone horns? I might take a look at my dealer sticker this weekend if I can remember to; I still have it in the glove compartment with the purchase paperwork from 4.5 years ago.

http://fordstnation.com/focus-st-tires-rims/8868-19-vs-18-rims-focus-st.html "Avoid 19's. Unless you live somewhere with ice sheet smooth roads. The 18's on this car are already a bit thin on sidewalls. I know a guy who has bent 4 wheels of the course of 1 year (normal street driving), and I bent one enough to where I replaced it. 17's are much nicer (I have those for winter)." If the 18's are that easy to bend on a Focus, they eon't be any less likely to bend on a TC 'Nuff said Don

First, I have zero 'paranoia' with upsizing to larger wheels - I've done it myself on more than one vehicle. So long as you stay with the stock overall circumference of the tires *and* you can find properly sized tires correctly rated for the vehicle you're driving there's no problem . . . . other than a rougher ride and the distinct possibility of bending a wheel All FWD vehicles use wheels where the spokes are about flush with the outside of the wheel and that makes the inside lip of the wheel very easy to bend. My daughter's Mazda 5 came with 205/50R17's and she managed to bend all 4 of the OEM alloys during the life of the OEM set of tires - None of them badly bent, mind you, but enough that the tire store refused to mount new tires on them. We bought a new set of Mazda 3 take-off wheels and she bent 2 of those with the second set of tires. Her car weighs 3,500 pounds and she never carries more than 2 or 3 people in it Gen 2 TC's are all rated at more than 5,000 lbs GVWR - I'm not sure of your definition of 'light vehicle' but ours are heavy enough that they require specially rated tires rated to carry the weight. Only a small percentage of the available 215/55R16's are rated for our vehicle and when you go up to 17's or 18's, the selection is even smaller. True, *you* can mount any tire you like, rated correctly or not, *but* you'll have to do a bit of hunting to find a tire store which would mount them - In the event of a fatal accident caused by the use of incorrectly rated tires, the store you bought them from would most certainly be held liable in the ensuing lawsuit You can take my word for it (or not) but the 18's from the Focus ST will be very easy to bend on a vehicle as heavy as a TC, so unless you have better roads in your neck of the woods than we have here, I would most certainly buy an extra wheel or two while you can find them - Likely you'll need one or two sooner than you think Don

The sidewalls aren't taller - The 16's have a 4.66" sidewall and the 18's are only 4.16". That's over 10% shorter His 235/45R18's are 4% larger in circumference than the 16's, so the speedo should be off by that same amount. The ride will be noticeably worse of course and with the slightly shorter sidewalls, you'd need to be careful of bending a wheel if you hit a chuck hole Don

I think larger tires on the 16" wheels are the only way to go. Larger wheels make the tire sidewall smaller relative to the total tire diameter. If they would fit I would consider a 15" wheel and tire with the same total diameter as the 215-55-16 inch , this would make the tires ride better and take abuse better. They won't , the brakes in the front are too big. The brakes are a good thing

I think even with the proper weight rating the side wall height reduction would make the ride hard and very susceptible to road damage on the kind of roads where I operate. The cool look has to take a back seat to the service requirements in my case.

Focus ST 18" wheel/tire combo will fit our Transit's and can be picked up on the used market. Problem is the weight rating on most, as in doing early research only the Continentals that came on my 17" factory wheels are the only ones at that time with the correct rating. That may or may not have changed in 8 months since I researched.

There was another post about 18" wheels that fit . The only issue is as the wheel gets bigger the sidewall profile Gets smaller. The result of this is that the ride gets harder and the tire takes less and less abuse from potholes and on road objects .

Taller compared to the rubber bands you see on some cars where they've gone too big with the wheels. Those are HARDLY that. And these are light vehicles. Unless you looked up his specific tire you are using generic diatmeter specs that can in fact change dramatically from tire line to tire line within a manufacturers product lines, much less among manufacturers. Not hard to find .5" diameter difference in the "Same size" tires among the choices. With motorcycles you can look at lower or raise seat height a little by choosing a tire with a different diameter, all while keeping the same size tire. I get your paranoia with bigger wheels, but you're overstating the problems. Lots of us have been upsizing for decades and we're still here and have never broken a wheel or flattened at tire on a pothole. You would be correct if we were talking about putting 20's on this vehicle, but nobody is. You mention that as you're older and drive easier that your transmission and brakes last longer. My TC is a delivery vehicle in (slow speed) city use over mostly pretty good streets. When there potholes, I steer around them. Or brake to slow down. Think how much abuse your wheels take (or don't) is any different than your tranny/brakes when you driver easy?