jrm223

Dang ole "Sunday driving with Miss Daisy" right there! Mine is a '15 model and I had 9K miles within about the first 3 months of brand new ownership! Rolled 129K today. Luckily, I stopped driving it 100 miles a day a little over 4 years ago by moving to a new state & getting a job and house that were a lot closer together, haha. Now it gets about 25-30 miles a couple times a week and around 170 miles 1-2 weekends a month to visit friends, so that fast odometer is slowed down a lot now. You oughta have good luck and good times with that van, they're handy lil things.

Looking at your battery install, stripping some paint on that chassis ground location could be a good thing. You do get at least some connection/flow through the bolt, too, but it's always been recommended to get bare metal under the connector itself. Of course, now it's going to be more difficult for you to get to since the van looks to be at least partially reassembled, lol. Those four extra outlets - are those all USB or 2x USB ones and 2x standard 12V "cig plug" power ports? Looks like some good work overall, even the unusual but resourceful "battery holders". I'd still prefer to see actual hold-down clamps; in a bad enough accident, that battery can still move around and - more importantly - up, potentially shorting on the false floor above it. Smart reuse of the swivel D-rings, too!

Gary Roe, have you every picked up a sleeper-sofa? They weigh a ton, especially compared to all the other options posted above.

I had changed my struts awhile back, but don't recall exactly what I had to remove for the cowl. I just went out and looked all over it and can only see those 4 screws across the top of it - and picking/moving around various parts of the cowl, it seems like that's really all that's holding it on. There might be some tab & slot type of deals, I don't remember now. I think maybe try lifting the two ends up a little bit first and then slide it forward? Since you posted 7 hours ago now, you may have already figured it out, anyway.

How about putting a section of plywood over it? 3/8"-1/2" is plenty thick enough to support a bed (probably even 1/4" since you're just covering a small area), and will take up minimal room overall. Plus you'll have the space between the steps and the plywood to store random small stuff, like a roll of paper towels or whatever. Is this a cargo van or passenger van? Cargo vans have a false floor there with a pretty decent amount of wasted space below it. I removed the false floor from mine a long time ago.

Rather than disconnecting the ground at the battery - or even the positive, for that matter - all you need to disconnect is the ground connection on the strut tower, next to the battery. That cable is the only ground connection between the battery & vehicle.

Pictured by G B L is the ambient air temp sensor - if that was bad, your digital gauge on the dash would show wild outside temperatures. For example, when mine went bad at about 33K miles, it said the outside air temp was as low as -25*F when it was really 90-ish F in the summer! The temp sensor you want would be the cylinder head temp sensor ($12-$17 on Rock Auto), middle top of the engine between cylinders 2 & 3.

They make 72-75% ceramic tint, nearly clear. The ceramic blocks UV heat from coming through the windows, and is supposed to reduce interior temperatures about 40°F, as I recall. It's so light that you'll easily get away with having it, even in states that don't allow front tint. And then use darker ceramic on all the back windows.

Some cargo vans do have rear & side windows, although it's too late for all that now, lol. For that matter, adding RV-type windows would have been less hassle overall than trying to remove all the wagon-specific safety stuff, particularly the air bags. As a camper conversion, you'll likely kick yourself for having glass all around, that's going to be your biggest problem with being too cold in the winter and too warm in the summer. Reflectix will be your best bet for insulating window covers, maybe sew it inside some fabric if you want them to look "aesthetically pleasing".

That's silver trim, same as my XL van, lol. I think sun & reflections are making it look different.

When they do blow, they go straight downwards, so I'd say leave like 3-4" alongside them clear of wood. Maybe you could do a canvas or other fabric cover with some tabs of Velcro every few inches to hold them into place? That way the airbags, if ever needed, could still deploy but you don't have to see them all the time.

Why are you removing the rear air bags? There's a good chance that doing so will disable your entire air bag system, just like removing the passenger seat will do. People with Gen1 vans figured out resistors to simulate the passenger seat being in place, but I tried them on my Gen2 2015 and it didn't work, lol - I haven't gotten around to ohming the connectors for my pax seat to figure out what resistors a Gen2 needs. But, I think you may open yourself to more problems than any advantage you may gain from their removal. You can test it by just unplugging them and starting the van, I bet the air bag/SRS light will stay permanently lit-up, indicating a problem. Maybe they can be reprogrammed/disabled via Forscan, first? I have a cargo van myself, so never had to worry about rear air bags.

After I removed my ladder racks (2.5 MPG hit!!), I drilled out the holes for rivnuts for one-tool installation/removal when needed. Only the front pair of holes are round, the rest are oblong, so they have to be drilled for M10 rivnuts as that's the smallest size that will fill the hole. I wish I would have started with the back ones, because I had already put M8 in the the front pair first and then moved back & realized M8 would be too small for the rear holes. So now I need to change the socket for front/rear, but at least it's all done 100% from above the roof, which was my main goal. Then again, myself and Templar are about the only ones I've seen on the forum using the front pair of holes, most others are using the second set back plus the rear-most holes, so they'd be drilled out for M10 or SAE-equivalent, anyway.

My van was scrapping with stock tires, still scrapes occasionally on 215/65R16 General Grabbers, so that'd never work around my rural area, lol. But, whatever works for you! It'd probably be great for urban areas, at least. Give a little protection for parallel-parking along the street.

The ribs are the three left-to-right supports in these pictures. B-pillar, C-pillar and D-pillar. There's plenty of roof space available without cutting into the ribs.

Since my van is an XL, it doesn't have a digital speed display, aside from the cruise control setting (I even had to add the CC, dealer-ordered van with just power locks/windows only). But, I have a ScanGuage II hooked up and the analog speedometer matches the SGII pretty well 99% of the time, sometimes they'll be off by 1MPH from each other but even that is pretty rare.

The thing with those 2019+ fuse boxes is that they are nothing like older 'traditional' ones. Take a look at this thread, where Marquizzo took pictures of the new underhood fuse box. I suspect the behind-glovebox one is the same type. Thread "What happened to my 2019 TC fuse box?"

I have seen some on Amazon that have built-in load resistors, typically in the range of $40+ per pair. For my 2015, I ended up putting one 50W 6-ohm resistor on each rear turn signal and that cancelled the hyperflash even with my front signals also being LED. Since I also added a Curt trailer wiring hook-up, I cut & modified that instead of the vans OEM wiring.

I wouldn't think it'd be a problem, presuming it's also the same orientation as current, but I don't know for sure.

Sounds like you don't have the auxiliary fuseblock, same as me. I have the panel completely off, but you'll recognize that the access door on your plastic panel is directly over this spot. I've read about the main fuse blocks on the 2019+ being different than 2018-, also. I think you'll end up needing an add-a-block type fuseblock and running your own power wire to it from the battery. If you're planning a camper conversion, you'll probably be adding a second (house/leisure) battery anyway, so it'd be easiest to wire accessories like the fan to your house battery and then charging that battery through a constant-duty relay.

Using spacers on the wheels will push them further out of the wheelwell, which then makes the steering arc wider/longer - meaning the tires will run into your fenders & bumper even faster because of the wider arc. 235/75R15 is just going to be too large for a TC. I'm running 215/65R16 General Grabber AT2's on my 2015 TC cargo, 27" overall diameter - those 235's are around 28.9" diameter. And then there's all that weather-checking/cracking on that tire, hopefully that is just meant for mock-up only? If you want to run 29" tires, you're going to be doing a lot more work for them than anyone here is familiar with on these vans. Probably opening up the wheelwells wider, then the 2" lift will wear out CV joints a lot faster, so you'll need to replace halfshafts a lot more often, etc. I've reprogrammed my computer for the 27" tires, but I don't remember offhand if it has circumference options large enough for those tires - you would need around 2300mm circumference, FYI. For the amount of work you'd be doing, I think you'd be better off removing the drivetrain and putting a 4x4 frame/drivetrain under it like people have done with everything from classic cars to Mustangs/Camaros/Firebirds, etc. At least then you'd have some real benefit (4x4) from all the trouble of going to tires that size. Using a ladder-frame would put the tires probably a foot or more below their current location, far out of the wheelwells. So, in the end, it would look like a van version of the "bro trucks" that are running around with 8" lift on tiny 33-35" tires that actually fit on a stock full-size truck without any lift. Or, just go with 27" tires (215/70R15, if that's an available size), which raise your van 3/4" from your stock tire size and don't have an endless nightmare of fitment problems. Depends on whether you want to be some sort of pioneer into this realm of 29" street-tread tires on a FWD cargo minivan, lol.

A puller isn't actually needed. Lift the long part of the wiper arm up 90°, so it's sticking up in the air, then gently rock the mount back and forth while pulling up. The spring tension when the arm is laid on the glass makes it nearly impossible to pull the arms off by hand, but when the arms are sticking up into the air, there's no tension to hold the wiper arms onto the shafts and they come off easily. Figured that one out when I had to replace the front struts last summer, lol.

That's the fuel shutoff solenoid. In event of a big enough accident, that will cut power to the fuel pump to help prevent fire/explosion.

2015 TC XL cargo, $150K/$300K limits with comprehensive & uninsured/underinsured ($30K/$60K BI, $25K property) coverage, $10K PIP, $2K deductible to keep premium low, $227 for 6 months with Progressive, multi-vehicle but this is the DD. When I still had Texas Farm Bureau Insurance, they started at like $97/month for basically the same coverage but no uninsured/underinsured coverage, then over a few years raised it to $114/month! Easy to see why I switched, more coverage for a lot less cost, lol. State Farm was even worse than TFBI ever was, I had them for just a few months when I first moved to Texas and had to drop my old American Family Insurance since AmFam isn't licensed in Texas.

I'm one of the guys that added cruise control to my 2015 non-CC van. Bought a correct steering wheel from Ebay (make sure it's the right Ford part number! Another guy learned the hard way recently by buying a full-size Transit steering wheel, looks exactly the same but doesn't work in TC's), then went into the BCM using Forscan and enabled Cruise Control and Adaptive Speed Control; my CC did not work when I only enabled the Cruise Control setting, but does work with CC + ASC enabled, YMMV.