tombright

Behind the battery in my 2012 is a fuse block. There were three tiny relays in a group that is nearly a square, not quite. Your local dealer probably has a few of those relays in stock for thirteen bucks. I simply plugged one in to complete the square arrangement. Headlights now go on with the ignition with diminished power (no taillights), off again when I switch to parking lights (taillights DO go on), and of course switching the headlights on gives me full-power headlights and taillights. 197-type LEDs are available on Amazon, about $13 for ten. Note that since LEDs only work with proper polarity, I had to rotate 180º experimentally to get them to light up. LEDs make the parking lights very visible during extended dusk time and driving through intermittent shadow under trees.

Eight flats in 40,000 on the OEM Contis. Had to pay for 3 tires, one by one, as the punctures were outside the first groove and Ford's service spec calls those unrepairable. Even the tires that did not go flat lost a few pounds every week or so. Too bad, since they cornered as if on rails and stuck like glue in the rain. (Of course, lately in California rain is no longer a concern.) Noise as high as 109 dB on California's crummy pavement, so I wear earplugs religiously and buy 'em by the box of 200 pairs. After I got my TC, one of my clients tested one for his 9-truck fleet and, shocked at the noise, chose Datsun’s similar-size NV200 Compact Cargo van instead. Each flat tire took a couple of hours at the Ford dealer, with recurring pressure sensor issues, and every other time it cost me $150 for a new tire. Hated to waste the mechanic’s time on nickel and dime stuff. I talked with the senior guy at the Les Schwab Tire store in Elk Grove. That store maintains the set of premium highway Toyos on my ranch truck. He said he'd had calls for TC replacements — would I be interested in trying set of car-format tires from a Taiwan brand called Federal? We put them on, and I spent two weeks with them. Cushy and really quiet, but squirmy. Applying the brakes on offramps, the back end came RIGHT AROUND on me a couple of times. Got my attention, recalling boy-racer days in the 70s. The tire guy spent some time on the phone with his area rep, and we swapped out the car tires for the store’s first set of Federal’s Conti clones. An EXACT copy, looks like. Rides and handles the same, wet or dry. ZERO flats in 25,000. None. Maybe one mpg less, from 24 to 23 mpg. Just as noisy. They hold air as well as Michelins, losing only a pound every couple of months. Federal may revise the price upward, but this first set was 30% cheaper than the real Contis. Les Schwab stocks TC Continentals too, now, as of about October 2014. Tire guy does NOT suggest aftermarket wheels because of the heavy load rating the TC requires. The big new Ford Transit Van is also designed with small-diameter, high-pressure tires, as pioneered by Mercedes on the Sprinter.

Okay, so it was not a wrap. But pretty big graphics on all 4 sides only cost me $250, application included. I just measured the panels and laid out artwork for the largest graphic and information block that would fit on the sides, rear and front.

45,000 miles on my 2012. Considering updating in a few months with a custom build, as long as that takes. Ford apparently allows us to buy out of our all-included service policies and apply that to the new one, a major plus in my case. Sync, like most Microsoft products, is embarrassingly, on occasion laughably, clumsy and out of date. I may be trying to engage the hands free, yet the binger fails to bing. Frustrated, I may press the button a dozen times and be met with only silence. Five minutes later, taking a notion, Sync will bing back my dozen requests for attention, too late for the dance. Ford bailed on the Microsoft contract recently, only to sign with another dying development team at Blackberry. Apple would be the logical choice to provide us with driver-friendly interfacing, and it has mentioned Ford in recent press releases, along with Ferrari. Steve always had little patience with dense code writers who demanded that a captive public memorize encyclopedic manuals lest the codewriters' afterthoughtty patchworks bind up and draw a blank. Steve, our very own Capo di Tutti Capi, demanded that the premium price we paid would purchase products which simply WORK. A bargain in traffic, a bargain at twice the price. Apple? We can only hope. Were I to keep this Transit, doubtful at this point, I was considering having a hi-fi shop install a thousand-dollar aftermarket unit that would actually do what Sync so pathetically fails to do, so often. If it had been a freebie, I could have suffered with Sync. But for the four hundred it cost? Better a hole in the dash that would accept, say, Pioneer.

Our Contis have suffered 5 nails in 39,000 miles. We just replaced a second tire when the injury was in the outer tread bar, beyond Ford's warranty zone. This is getting expensive. That said, the TC rides nearly the same whether lightly loaded or at the 1,600 lb load limit, and corners like a spider. Great fun in wet or dry. Replaces a full-size Toyota T-100 pickup rated for only 1,100 lbs. But the TC is LOUD. Using the iPhone sound meter app, we routinely measure 104.5 dBA at 20 mph, 109 dBA at sixty on our failing California pavement. Michelin only offers snow tires just now (March 2014). Just upgrading to Michelin Latitude Tours from Michelin LTXes on the 4Runner put us into Lexus Land for ride and noise. Might Michelin snows do the same for the TC? Even though they are only rated for a few miles on dry pavement, since we are spending $150 every 8 months for popped Continentals, what's the difference?

1. Noise -- I get readings over 110 dB on California highways. In the low frequencies, it's right off the scale. Earplugs every time I go farther than one block. 2. Head restraints -- Two inches too far forward. A lawyer issue, probably, for the unlikely prospect of a rear-ender. Toyota's current models are forward about an inch too much, and high-buck Lexus uses a cartridge to push the unit forward when the bags fire. STATIC EXPERIMENT ONLY: Try reversing the unit and strapping on a couple of inches of closed-cell foam and your driving position is instantly terrific. The seats really are great, but the head restraints spoil it and make me sore after a few hours behind the wheel. Three different Customer Relations people at Ford have been terrified to answer with anything but a boilerplate paragraph warning against modifying standard equipment. I don't want cobbled-up, crummy shade-tree fixes, I just want ergonomics. I ordered and installed two new ones from Ford, but they are both too far forward. So now I have spares. Never can tell when you'll need one!

Many little generic pullers work. Screw and C-clamp shape, articulated or not. Hardly takes any force at all. Local automated wash rack has twice snapped off my left wiper and flung it at the right-hand wall. Only $34 or so over the counter, though, if you save the blade assembly.

Hundred bucks is reasonable. Odd little clamps to hold them on, but they're still there after 5 months.

Clipboard with its To Do list fits perfectly. Since I'm in and out all day or need to scribble notes from a phone call, it's just right. That was the first feature one of my vendors noticed as he considered a Transit for his delivery driver.