Tiller

Nope. I have a wilderness search dog. During training or searches she, (and I), can come back pretty muddy and wet depending on the area and weather conditions. I wanted a way to hose her off and rinse off some of my gear before having to load it all up in the TC for the ride home. And sometimes, during night training and searches, search dogs have been skunked too, (so far not mine! But she has been at home! And team members have had their dogs skunked in the field). Not pleasant to have to drive an hour, sometimes two, with a skunked up dog in the car. So I carry a de-skunking kit in the car just in case now that I have water too. If no one smells at the end of the day I can use it to rinse the TC off once we are off of dirt roads.

Here's the second half of the video. TC_Water_small_2.mov Tiller

So I finally go my water pump installed. Instead of a bunch of pictures, which I'm happy to provide if anyone wants them, I decided to do a movie. One of my first tries with I-movie. I had to split it into two movies to keep under 10 MB to load. If you have any questions let me know. The switch I wired the pump to I had added previously is in an earlier posting of mine. Tiller TC_Water_small_1.mov

That's a nice design. I kind of like that. But no. At least on the TC Titanium's (in the U.S), the refill is on the passenger side, rear panel. I love the capless refill. Faster and cleaner. Tiller

It's plastic, it can easily be rounded out. :-) Tiller

Yeah, then you just want the roof rack cross rails. That wasn't clear. Sorry. Not my fault. That was never specified. Tiller

Never thought of that mrtn! I can see using that for tissues, work towels, latex gloves, twine/rope.. etc... Tiller

Boomerweps Here is a DIY roof rack posted here on the site.

Nice! Clever design!

So it looks like you can upgrade Sync 3 from Ford and do it wirelessly by the owner. I'll have to look into it some more. That at least allows upgrades and fixes. Still won't let me turn on my back up camera when ever I want!

Yes. I would agree. The problem is the business model. Ford sold the car to the dealer without that option. If the dealer now "sells" DRL to you as an aftermarket add on, how is Ford to get paid for it? Yes, the dealer could send them a cut. But I doubt they currently have a way to do that. I think it's only a matter of time until you find people offering to "jailbreak" the computer systems of vehicles and activating features not purchased. Might already be people out there somewhere doing it.

Then that's why American car dealers will fail. Today's car and future cars will be basically computers on wheels. Especially the tech savvy younger generations are going to expect good user interfaces and updates to the on board systems. It's unacceptable that patches and upgrades aren't done as part of regular checkups. Many of the new cars, luxury cars especially, no longer have mechanical linkages like a stickshift. Just an electronic joystick or push button. Everything is controlled by screen touch. Those features will keep filtering down to the lower end vehicles as well. I've not been happy with my dealer at all. They still haven't figured out how to activate the global up window option for me. (ticket open to FORD). Their detail shop sucked. The van had factory stickers on the roof that they failed to remove at delivery. They tried to repair factory installed weatherstripping that was badly installed simply by gluing the ends of it. They used excessive adhesive that squeezed out on to the finish paint. But they never bothered to properly seat the stripping into the frame and the rest fell out now. Poor attention to detail. When I was looking at it to purchase, the salesman had no idea how to put down the seats yet the van had been on the lot for over three months. I mean honestly... how many different vehicles are you selling? Shouldn't good sales people be on a new model or vehicle like flies on sh** when one rolls onto the lot? It's the job!!!

Well. that's kind of a dumb thing than Don.. They have to update and review the manuals annually anyway. New manuals can be made available easily as PDF's on the internet. Upgrades can be done as part of regular service checkups along with instructions on how to get the newest copy of the manual. They can even offer to print it off for a fee. It would also get people to at least visit their local Ford dealer once in a while cause they could make it so only the dealer can load new firmware and software. Plus is would make people happy if they could get the latest and greatest. Cause we know how crappy the sync interface is to start with. (IMHO). Would be nice to Ford be willing to improve it and grow it and take customer suggestions into consideration. It's just like upgrading your computer at home. You don't want to buy a new computer just to get the newest software. Sometimes you have to. But most of the time you don't. It seems to me that Ford is missing a great opportunity to increase service visits and build brand loyalty. I bet Tesla has regular upgrades as part of their service programs. It wouldn't surprise me that some luxury vehicles to this as well. And the additional cost wouldn't be that much. They already have electronic manuals available and they are all developed on computers. Downloading software costs practically nothing. And most of todays younger mechanics could do a firmware and software upgrades with their eyes closed.

Then in that case, I would think Ford could add that feature via a software/firmware up grade to the sync module then.

Does anyone have any knowledge about the rear backup camera on the TC Titanium (2016) or similar? A friend of mine got a new Dodge Ram truck with a rear cam and bed cam. He can activate either one at anytime. I really wish the TC would have a way to activate the rear cam on demand. So I was wondering how the TC's cam is wired. 1) Is it wired so that that putting the car into reverse, turns on the cam and and the video senses the cam is on and displays the output. OR... 2) Is it wired so that that putting the car into reverse, notifies the computer system which then powers on the rear camera? If its case #1, then could it be possible to install a switch that would send power to the cam which the computer system/video system would sense and display the video. Any thoughts??? Tiller

I'm a crate fan myself as I think in an accident the danger of the dogs being thrown around the vehicles in the harness is more likely an issue than the crate collapsing. You'd have to have a fairly invasive crash to collapse most crates. Especially if the crates are kept more in the center of the vehicle. But even a low speed collision could toss the dogs around the cabin on the harnesses. But you have to do what you think is best for yourself and dogs.

I installed a light on the rear cargo lift area to illuminate the ground and bumper area when the lift gate is up. I think you'll have a problem with trying to illuminate the actual interior cargo area via a light on the cargo lift gate. It will work and it will look good when you step back and look at it. But it won't work well when you are standing at the back of the vehicle and trying to see in the cargo area as your body and head will block a good portion of the light. To really light the interior properly I think you need a couple of lights mounted in the interior and headliner. You can see my cargo light on my build page.

I had mentioned the cargo light I put on the cargo door, This is the back of the TC with no light on. With the cargo LED light on it makes all the difference. Of course the camera also reduces the exposure as well due to the extra light.

Final results. I did rewire the panel slightly. I made the first switch on the right a master switch so that it turns off the 2-5th switches. Basically a master switch for four of the switches. The second switch controls the three devices in the top of the switch panel. That way the voltmeter is only on when I have the master and second switch on. If i need an extra switch some day I could also wire the three devices directly to the master. The third switch controls an LED light I added into the cargo door. The rear lighting in the TC sucks. The cargo light basically illuminates the immediate rear of the vehicle when on. The fourth and fifth switches are not hooked up yet. But I suspect the fourth one will be for interior lighting I'll be adding. I want more light in the actual cargo area and I'm planning on adding some led strip lighting underneath the floor to illuminate the underneath storage areas. The fifth one will probably be used for auxiliary fans I'm planning on adding to help keep my dog cool when we are parked. The sixth one I ran directly to the aux FZ-1 fuse block to a "switched" circuit. Which means it only works if the car is running. It will control a 12V water pump that I'm in the process of hooking up and plumbing. The water pump will be able to be hooked up to my 5 gallon collapsible water jugs. I'll use this to hose/bathe the dog down after training or hose the wheel wells off if we happen to be in a particularly muddy area. The dogs have on occasion been skunked when out on training, especially night training. Nothing worse then driving home with a skunked up dog. This will let us bathe a dog right at training (or a search) if we need to. I wanted it on a separate switched circuit so it only will run with the engine on cause it could run down the battery. Plus I wanted an easy to reach switch to control the pump. It does have a pressure switch on the pump too. I'm happy with it so far. This is the LED light I added to the cargo door so when it is raised, the light illuminates the rear of the vehicle. The light can swivel so if need be it can be directed to the right or left of the vehicle.

Once it was cut out, the final hole was like this. This was the dry fitting of the panel.

So I haven't updated in a while. Been so busy I haven't had much time to put into the TC. But I finally did find a few hours here and there to do a few things over the past month or so. Today I finally got around doing some electrical stuff I've been wanting to do. I pretty much copied Don's thread on installing the FZ FZ1fuse block in the rear electrical panel of the TC. I pretty much followed those directions. I I purchase this marine grade, 6 gang rocker switch panel with aux 12 v and USB ports and a voltmeter too. About $41.00 with shipping. Long shipping time! This is basically all pre-wired. One red & black wire to power the top three devices and another black & red to power the all six rocker switches. I figured even if I couldn't use it as is, I could cannibalize it for the individual devices and switches. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Car-Marine-Boat-6-Gang-Waterproof-Circuit-colors-LED-Rocker-Switch-Panel-Breaker/401319174012?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 I was pretty sure I knew where I wanted to put it. So I did some preliminary measuring and cut out an inspection hole. This shows my initial inspection hole and the FZ block mounted next to the fuse block. I used velco tape to attach it to the body so I can easily take it out to add circuits to it. I widened it a bit at a time, making sure I had full clearance behind it. If you try to cut out too far to the right, the depth lessens. Your can see in the panel area on the right the body angles to the left. The higher up you go, the more space that body work takes up. If you cut in front of it, you don't have enough depth to put in the panel. I simply used a cut-off wheel on a dremel to cut the hole out. The cutting wheel gets hot and the plastic pretty much starts to melt. Only do small sections at a time to prevent it from getting to hot. You don't want that.

What you do depends on what you want the van for. I built my floor way up with storage underneath. I still haven't gotten back to putting something down to smooth out that well a bit where the seat bolts are. But hopefully I'll get to that soon. Others level it with the back section and put some type of trap door or hinged lid. It's all in how you intend to use the van. I kind of wrote out 3 or 4 primary goals of what I wanted to do and that drove the build. Still a lot to do!!! Tiller

Thanks for this post! It gives me hope to do what I want. The TC Titanium has a lot of dash board real estate on it. I'd like to try and use some of that for a solar device that would seamlessly keep my battery topped off. I'd like to, for instance, be able to run a couple of 12v fans in the vehicle on battery/solar power when the vehicle is off. It would be great if for instance while I'm in at work, the fans could run and the battery would hold it's charge. There are times I might have the car parked in sun for 6-8 hrs with it off and I want the fans to running. Thoughts? Tiller

Welcome from a fellow dog hauler!!

Nice job!