jrm223

Look up SSM 46321 on this page below. I'm one of the people that successfully had the dealer turn off the stupid approach lights after BCM update. Just tell them that you'd like the approach lights turned off because you've had battery drain that required jump-starting - it's just a small white-lie, haha. I have not tried turning mine back on using Forscan, haven't felt any need to.

I'm trying to remember the largest amount my tank has ever taken - might be in the vicinity of 14.5-15.5 gallons after I poured in about 1/2 gallon from running it out at 2am one morning... For reference, the "X miles left" gauge had said 0 miles for at least 30-40+ miles driving between 45-70 MPH. I'm in rural Texas and there's not many options for gas along that route I was on, especially at 2am haha. But, I only had to walk 3 blocks home after the engine quit to get my gas can and the meager 1/2-ish gallon that was left in it. Moral of the story, "0 miles left" still has it's own reserve, but I wouldn't recommend pushing it. With my typical mileage, I'd guess the 0-reserve at around 1.5 gallons or so.

I can say that my 215/65R16's on stock wheels has not affected turning at all, at least not that I ever noticed. Granted, I never did before/after turn radius measurements; but I have never heard any rubbing while turning, so the slightly larger diameter of the tires is not causing problems in the wheel wells of the van. Fifty150, you had asked about getting stuck. With the OEM tires, I did get stuck in my own yard at my project house here in Texas. That was a couple years ago when it was raining almost every day for a month, but I only got stuck the very last day (when I was leaving, of course) after being there for a week. That was also a slightly lower spot in the yard than I had been parking in most of the week, but I had also parked right there to unload when I first got to the house. So far, the Generals have not gotten stuck, even when the grassy ground between my gravel driveway and garage is 3" of muddy soup. One of these days, I'll have more gravel brought in since the previous owner did not fill in that area - she just parked on the driveway, instead.

These are the smallest 'aggressive' tread tires (all-terrain) that I could find, and for relatively cheap - about $110/ea through Walmart. 215/55R16 stock vs my 215/65R16, 5.9% larger via GPS calculated - an 83.9 mile drive showed 79.2 miles on trip-odometer after I upgraded. The only way I found to get more aggressive tread in a short tire is by using ATV/SxS tires and there's still only a handful for a 16" rim, haha. Van weight & PSI would both be a big problem on those tires, too.

I have the 'premium' extended service plan and I can tell you that it covered replacement of my right-front wheel bearing with about 87K miles on my 2015 van just a few weeks ago. But there is a $100 deductible on repairs, too. If I had bought the parts and tools to do it myself, it would have cost a lot more than $100. When I bought the van, I was driving 100 miles a day round-trip, so it would have over 126K miles by now if I had not moved 2 years ago and now have a shorter commute - I'll be rolling 89K within a week or two. I know for sure that windshields aren't covered, but I really need to look again at the list of what is covered; I'd forgotten I even had the coverage until I had to get the wheel bearing replaced.

The first pic is from a thread I made and the second pic is just last night after I rotated tires & got my new lug nuts on, haha. Maybe someday I'll have some better looking wheels to go with the spikes. The thread has some more pics of tire clearance since I'm on stock suspension, they've never rubbed for me.

Lower than my 23-24MPG average? ? I even drive like an old man and rarely go over speed limit (which is generally 70-75 on regular roads here in Texas). I used to get 26-28 in Illinois with their lower speed limits and about 45% highway commute. My 1K mile trips (2K round-trip) back to IL to visit family & friends gives me maybe 25-25.5MPG or so and these numbers are indeed adjusted/corrected for tire size.

Edit: Somehow got a double-post

Haven't heard of M-Sport, yet? Granted, it's Euro, so we don't get it on this side of the big pond, lol. It also doesn't help with a lift, since most people lower these vans. Who knew that a cargo van could look so hot? haha - http://www.m-sport.co.uk/m-sport-news/dovenby-hall/revealing-the-m-sport-ford-connect There's also a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Msportconnect/ On the topic of larger A/T tires, I'm running General Grabber AT2 215/65R16 on my stock steel wheels. I haven't had any rubbing issues, the tires give me about 1/2" more ground clearance which is basically nothing. They do fling gravel like an SOB (I have gravel driveway and live in a rural town that has gravel roads except for the main roads being paved) and of course the speedo is off a bit because of the taller profile - 66 indicated is actually 70MPH road speed.

Before I had Safelite come replace my windshield, I had called a local shop to get a quote from them - about $450 installed, if I remember right. Went with Safelite since it was actually cheaper. I just got another quick quote from Safelite on my 2000 F350 and it's $303 before tax & disposal, higher than I was hoping. I still need to call the local shop to get a quote on that one, I'm hoping for just a couple hundred bucks. It's a project truck that I'd like to get it on the road ASAP, but I have other bills to worry about right now instead of a $320+ windshield - I'd maybe go ahead and get it done if the local shop is a couple hundred, though. When I did a quick quote for this truck on Safelite a few weeks ago, the price shown was about $375 instead of $303 like right now, mobile shop (come to me) both times. Going to them quotes $268, but I'm not driving an unregistered & uninsured truck 44 miles each way to save $35, haha. With my luck, the cops would nail me for several hundred dollars in tickets & impound fees.

I can tell you that I had to have my windshield replaced last November on my 2015 Transit Connect. I had Safelite come to me to do it so I wouldn't have to take a day off of work. They charged about $400 total, but I had found some coupon that knocked off like $20-25 so the $400 is after the coupon. I have an XL cargo van, so it has nothing at all on the windshield, not even a mirror mount; so glass with mounts, antennas and such may be extra, I don't know. I do remember that their website asked about things like rearview mirror, GPS, heated glass, so on & so forth. Mine was from a rock chip that had spread before I even noticed it, all in the matter of maybe a few hours.

Have y'all looked on TireRack recently? 330 wheels that fit our TC2 vans (each style in 16/17/18" counts as 3 towards the 330) - the MSW Type 19 would look similar to the old school Torq Thrust wheels, 16x7 at $103/ea for silver painted or $124/ea for black. https://www.tirerack.com/wheels/results.jsp?&autoMake=Ford&autoModel=Transit+Connect+Van&autoYear=2015&autoModClar=Long+Wheel+Base

That's a Euro-model switch, the 0/1 (I think it goes up to 4) is for aiming the headlights up & down. I'm guessing the right switch pulls out to turn on foglights, though? I haven't been in a Gen 1 TC, but my Gen 2 XL doesn't have anything for turning on foglights since it didn't come with any.

Add me to the "successful dark mode list" via Ford service, lol. Ford wouldn't cover the programming under my extended service plan, but the service manager discounted the cost since I would have to pay out-of-pocket. The odd thing here is that ETIS does not show any changes yet and I had the dark mode done last week. I haven't hooked up my laptop to it, yet - but I can definitely confirm that the lights don't come on anymore, so the BCM was definitely updated. I also asked them to disable Bulb Minder because I prefer to turn features off instead of adding extra junk (ie resistors), but their tech wasn't able to get it disabled for some reason; strangely, the "bump to flash" flash pattern is now different than it used to be. Previously, it would give two normal flashes and then three fast flashes, but now it just gives five fast flashes. I'll take a look at Bulb Minder myself when I get around to hooking up my computer.

Warning from their instructions: So, you better not fire up the ole CB to talk to truckers while your Rostra CC is active, because CB is 27MHz range and might kill your car?! That sucks. As for adding cruise control, why not add the factory CC? You swap the steering wheel (get one from a wreck at the junkyard?) and then there's like 2 or 3 spots in the computers that need to be 'enabled' and then you have factory CC. As I recall reading, the settings are in PCM, ABS and maybe one other spot (TCM?). You may need to have a Ford dealer use their computer to enable the settings, although I've read about people doing it on the Ford Focus cars (which our vans are based on) with Forscan or maybe Focccus and an ELM327 adapter. $20 for a steering wheel puller if you don't already have one, maybe like $75-150 for a steering wheel and I think I paid around $25-30 for my own ELM327 off Amazon. Not having to cut & solder wires under the dash - priceless.

I have a 2015 XL cargo van in the US and my van unfortunately doesn't have any power block in the right-rear corner, either. That crooked rectangular indentation area just in front of the back door on the right side of pic is where the secondary power/fuse block is located on vehicles that actually have the fuse block. If you pulled off your plastic panel and there's no fuse block there, you'll have to run your own wiring.

Wait, since the trailer kind of looks like it could be a space-pod, how about an astronaut, instead? That would really mess with other drivers!

Maybe get some black vinyl to make a "window" on the driver-side of the trailer and then use Celebrity decals for your rear-most "driver", haha!

So-called "all season" tires tend to be mediocre across all uses & situations. Whereas dedicated summer tires are great in late-spring/summer/early-fall and snow tires are great from late-fall to early-spring. It's a little extra hassle & expense, but it goes along the "use the right tool for the job" saying.

To answer your question, yes the handle is removable. There's a thumbscrew that holds it in place, just loosen it & pull the handle out. The handle is two pieces that have a set-screw holding them together, so you'd need tools if you wanted to completely break it down. The jack fits great under the false floor in my 2015 cargo van, no need to disassemble the handle itself since it's only like a few feet long.

Unfortunately, our members here really don't have experience with the full-size Transit 150/250/350. This forum is about the wee little Transit Connect... That said, with the gas tank being beneath the fourth bolt, is there enough room that you could use a nutsert in the floor? So you're not trying to get a regular nut between the tank & floor. Also, the full-size Transit comes in cargo & passenger versions just like our Transit Connects - so what about getting a middle seat from a passenger version and putting it in your van? The bolt holes might already be there, or you may need to put nutserts in for that seat, too, I don't know...

I think my cables came from Ebay, if I remember right. I've had them for at least 5 years, I'd guess. The $200 or so included a 3ft pigtail, 5ft pigtail and 25ft jumper cables, all 2awg. The extra pigtail was intended for a removable winch on a hitch-mount plate that I never got around to wiring (I had a 2003 F350 4x4 diesel back then). I had one of those bigger jump-packs that my grandpa gave me, but eventually the battery in it died completely.

I stay in the driver seat, it reclines nearly flat in my van - but both seats lay back equally in my van. I just went out and took a quick pic for ya to show how far back it lays down. Nevermind the removed headrest - it doesn't like to share space with a cowboy hat, lol. This shows why it seems odd to me that your seat doesn't touch the partition at max recline... I'd think something is hitting before it's truly at "max recline"... Also shown is my beast of an inverter, 3000W/6000W pure sine wave - bought it cheap not working and I haven't figured out what's wrong (I'm a computer tech by day) so I'll have to find someone/place that specializes in these. Mike, good video on the nutserts. I have some for the roof to install E-track since my van didn't come with roof rails. I was going to use the nut & wrench method, but a washer & small wrench that's just barely bigger than the bolt would probably be easier.

We talked about that when I did this same thing with my van a couple years ago. Your van has carpet in the front, thus carpet in the cavity. Myself & Mike Chell have base XL's with vinyl in the front, thus vinyl in the cavity. Mike, you're working a lot faster than me! I've had that subfloor in & out many times, depending on what I need to use my van for at any given time. Right this moment, I have the support beam and "rear" floor panel in with maybe half-dozen of the bolts, but not the smaller piece right behind the seats. I got rid of the vinyl floor cover long ago and plan to do bedliner, instead. One of my plans is finding a chest toolbox (used, for cheap) that will fit "just right" in there so that I can have additional locked storage for my tools and things. The main reason I want to find a cheap one is that I'll probably end up cutting the bottom of the box to fit lower into the floor - I recline my seat to take rest breaks on road trips to visit family & friends in northern Illinois and I'm in Texas. You're doing great work, I look forward to seeing more!

Now that's what I call a "mobile home" lol. Too bad our USA cabovers aren't as nice & streamlined as the Euro cabovers. The Freightliner Argosy was the most streamlined and also the last class 8 cabover in the states. I'd love to have a Scania, though. A Longline cab would be great for my use as a "motorhome" pulling a camping trailer.