Beta Don

I reuse mine 2 or 3 times . . . . but then, I don't over torque them and squish them out of shape Don

I might have a steering wheel that will work for you. My 2014 came with factory cruise and I replaced the OEM steering wheel with another OEM wheel which is leather wrapped and has the audio controls also - My original one was just vinyl and doesn't have the audio controls. I bought the leather one on eBay for $125 Don

Ours is not a long wheelbase work van, nor is it a 'commercial vehicle' - It's a short wheelbase leather equipped passenger van and it's insulated well enough that even on 95 degree days we never need to turn the A/C up beyond fan position 2 and usually we don't even keep the cool knob turned all the way counter clockwise. I guarantee you our van is much quieter than your pick-up. We still have the OEM Continentals on it and when it needs new tires, we will buy the same ones again, as they are very quiet too . . . . unless you are driving on some of the washboard asphalt, and no tires are quiet on those surfaces. Few cars are as quiet as our Volt, but for a gas powered vehicle, our TC comes pretty close, IMO. The road noise is quite acceptable, the Pioneer stereo we installed sounds very good and we both enjoy traveling in it much more than we recalled before we bought the Volt - This was just a post telling you all how happy we are, comparing the two for long distances Don

We hadn't taken our TC out of the garage for the past 3 or 4 months and were even talking about maybe selling it - We do currently have 5 cars between the two of us, so garage space is getting to be a premium. We bought the TC for traveling and we usually take 2 or 3 Segways with us and it's just excellent for that purpose . . . . but I was thinking maybe if I built a little trailer to tow behind our '17 Volt, we maybe wouldn't need the TC any more - The TC gets 28 to 30 mpg on trips and the Volt gets 45 . . . . even higher when you average in the battery power for stop and go in town use - But then, it probably wouldn't get 45 towing even a small trailer. Also, we use the TC for occasional trailer towing (trips to Lowes and Home Depot, etc) and the Volt probably wouldn't do that so well Anyway, I needed to take my CBX up to Birmingham, so we got the TC cleaned up and on the road again. I really DO like owning the 'perfect car' for whatever the current need is, even if it means owning 5 cars. I had forgotten how comfortable the TC is on a long trip - Better than the Volt actually, so we came to a mutual decision to keep it . . . . for the time being at least. It's a 2014 and only has 26,000 miles on it, so it should last us a lifetime if we keep it that long It's just such a great 'road car' that we would both miss it if we were driving anything else on road trips, Quiet, handles like a sport sedan and not a van, hauls and tows whatever we hook it to . . . . within reason - Does a great job with my enclosed motorcycle trailer. I'm preaching to the choir, I know, but this last trip just made us realize how indispensable it is to our fleet, even if it does frequently sit unused for 2 or 3 months at a time. If only it were a hybrid, or better yet, and extended range EV like the Volt. Guess you can't have everything . . . . yet Don

There *is* something different about the angle of the windshield on a Gen 2 TC. I've had three small stones hit the windshield and all of them chipped the glass requiring a repair. So far, I've caught them all before they spread, but for a car seldom driven and 95% of the miles on the freeway, it sure seems odd that I've had 3 dings already - Can't remember the last time I've had a chip in any other car Don

The TC is my first 6 speed auto FWD vehicle and I find that I have to be pretty gentile on take-offs from a standing start lest I spin the tires, so I'm not sure what you mean by "lacking on pull off" - I find the opposite to be true. In first and second, it's very responsive for a 4 cylinder vehicle, even when pulling a trailer Don

I think the 'thought process' went something like this - First, we'll just call it a 'lifetime maintenance-free transmission' so you'll never need to check or change trans fluid, so no dipstick needed . . . . and it is a lifetime trans - When it fails at 75K, well, that was it's 'lifetime'. Second, if we eliminate the dipstick, owners will be forced to come to the dealer for the really easy things they used to do themselves - Win, win for Ford . . . . at least in their thinking I didn't really have a problem with that when we bought our TC - I had already decided I was about DONE crawling under cars to do the routine stuff and I actually planned to just let my Ford dealer do it all. That was before I had a chance to deal with the two dealerships closest to my house - Neither of them will ever touch my car again, so it's a good thing I didn't throw away my ramps. Luckily, more than 90% of all the miles we drive are in electric vehicles, which are virtually maintenance free, so it's not often I find myself on the ground under a car these days . . . . but if I had checked out my dealerships before hand I would never have bought my first Ford . . . . . Don

Especially since they decided to do away with the dipstick! Don

Yes, but . . . . A.) He hired a professional to do the swap, B.) It's a Gen 2 TC, not a Gen 1, C.)They have been at it for about a year, and D.) I don't recall that they have a drive able manual trans TC on the road as yet - They may very well run into similar problems before they are done Don

Google is your friend! - I had no idea what a 'replock' was, so i looked it up. Seems to be a British thing where you repace the key cylinder in the drivers door to make it harder to steal your van. There are OEM Ford links for the kit and a video of installing one in a Transit - Not a Connect, but a Transit Thankfully I don't live where this is an issue Don

I did. After a fender bender on our 2012 iMiEV I discovered that the fog lights on the EV were identical to the ones on our '14 TC, except they have a built-in DRL bulb and since I wanted DRL's on the TC and I already had one of the fog fixtures from the EV, I bought another one on eBay and installed them on the TC with a LED bulb in the DRL socket. I had to add the wiring for the DRL's and hooked them to an unused fuse socket on the engine fuse panel - The DRL's are on all the time the engine is running There are all sorts of fog/DRL fixtures which will fit the Gen2 TC's as they are the same physical form as several other cars. You can get some with the LED halo rings and some other pretty neat ones too. Not very expensive, less than $100 per pair for most of them, once you know what you're looking for. If you remove one of your OEM fixtures and have it in your hand while you're shopping, it will be pretty evident which ones fit and which ones don't Don

Ammeters don't read volts at all, milli or otherwise - If you need to read millivolts, you need a voltmeter, but for what you're troubleshooting, I think you need to read milliamps Don

Bulbs rarely 'short' when they burn out and if they did, it would blow a fuse A switch (like your brake light switch) *is* a short when you touch the pedal - It shorts the two wires going to the switch and that's what causes the bulb to light Don

I have a similar funnel - Just getting down to the transmission vent to stick it in is a real pain though . . . . and then it takes forever for a quart of fluid to drain into the trans. A truly poor arrangement all around Don

If the same fluid doesn't change color in the Allison transmission, but it does in our transmission, that tells me our transmission is doing something not so healthy to the fluid, which would make me want to change it even more often I'm pretty happy using 25K for changes - My fluid didn't look too bad when I did my first change. I just cannot imagine going 100K without changing transmission fluid in ANY auto trans, especially one with a history of failure like ours. I wish our trans was easier to service. My wife had a little Mitsubishi van and it had a standard drain plug in the trans, just like the one in the engine. I changed engine oil every 3K and every other oil change I drained the trans and refilled. The trans held 7 quarts total, but only 3 quarts drained when you pulled the plug, so I was effectively getting a full change every 12 to 15K It's not that ours is hard to drain - It isn't. But it would be real nice if they had given us an easy to access place to pour in new fluid . . . . AND a dipstick to check the level with. Methinks they were just planning on selling lots of rebuilt transmissions!! Don

When Mitt Romney's dad (George Romney, former Governor of Michigan) ran for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination the tax rate for anyone making $100K was 70% (millionaires paid even more) and guess what? - None of the Republicans back then were campaigning on cutting tax rates!! Things are much different now - Pass HUGE tax cuts for the rich (who don't need them) and then tell us there isn't enough money to support Medicare and Social Security. The first half of that just happened and they told us all we should be celebrating. The average American got a $25 raise . . . . which went into his gas tank because we're entering a trade war with nearly every country on earth - Everything is gonna cost way more next year and then when you younger people get near retirement age, you're going to be really disappointed when you see what's left of Social Security Me - I'm retired military, so I have the best health care in the world with no co-pays and no cost prescriptions . . . . for life Don

My point was, this looks like a case of operator error - The wheel is probably statically, but not dynamically balanced, because the operator didn't have a clue what he's doing On a modern computerized balancer, you input the rim diameter and the rim width - Actually, the width of where the inside and outside weights will be placed, which is not always the same as the actual rim width, if you're using tape weights and they are not placed as near the edge of the rim as possible. Once the machine is set up properly, you only need to spin the wheel one time and it will tell you where to place both the inside and the outside weights It could be that the wheel is actually statically balanced - In the old (really old) days, we used a 'bubble balancer' and balanced the wheel by laying weights around the rim until the bubble was centered, however many weights that took - Usually, all of them in one place, but untrained operators frequently placed weights all over the place - No real problem, so long as you got some combination which centered the bubble. When the bubble was centered, you had a statically balanced wheel which wouldn't jump around when you drove the car, but it may have still been out of dynamic balance . . . . very likely it was. This would eventually cause uneven tire wear, which was VERY common in the good old days You could take a wheel/tire put it on a bubble balancer and have it be perfect, with no weights needed. Put that same wheel/tire on a modern dynamic balancer and find it needs weights to dynamic balance it. Since it's static balance was already perfect, the odds are almost 100% that the weights needed to bring it into proper dynamic balance will be equal amounts, placed 180 degrees apart with half of them placed on the inside rim and half of them on the outside rim. This happens more often than you would guess It appears to me looking at the wheel in question, that the technician put a bunch of weights intended for one side of the wheel on the rim and then when the machine told him the amount and placement of the weights for the other side of the rim he put those on the same side too. Statically that wheel is probably in good balance, so it probably drove OK, but it could have been statically balanced with probably 1/4 of the weights he used, as many of them are just cancelling each other out Don

A dynamic balance usually requires weights often placed opposite one another, but usually some on the inside of the rim and some on the outside. The pictured wheel looks like all the weights were placed in the same plane, even though the machine was probably calling for some on the inside and some on the outside . . . . obviously, the operator didn't know what he/she was doing Don

I think if you don't do regular fluid changes every 25K or so, the TC transmissions may be a bit more prone to failure than some other vehicles. If you buy a used one that's running fine, a fluid change would be the first order of business for me, as not many people actually do them, so it may be likely that the OEM fluid is still in there Don't know if there is any direct swap transmission for a TC, other than from a similar year TC. I would be surprised if a Focus trans was identical in every way and even reprogramming the ECU might not make one a good swap candidate Don

I agree - Looks like a tire that was driven very low on air. Many times people see they have a low tire and it's smoking hot and they fill it up and think they're good to go, but they will very shortly have a tire that looks just like this one. Overheat it, damage the carcass and you're riding on a ticking time bomb Don

I don't think any Gen 2 cargo van started out as a wagon with windows to avoid the Chicken Tax and got converted to a cargo van - The Feds caught onto Ford's scam in 2013 and put a stop to it. Pretty sure when he goes to install windows, he will find that it's the first time any windows have ever been in there Don

Here you go - #1 of the Ten . . . . Don't over inflate your tires! https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/ownership/10-things-you-should-never-do-to-your-car/ss-BBLG50T?li=BBnb7Kz You've got a VERY hard volleyball!!! Don

In parts of Europe, it's actually against the law - You didn't see that, at least not when I was there When I was stationed in Germany, I had a 240Z with the optional dealer installed alloy wheels, fitted with the OEM size tires. For the very strict German TUV inspection, they stand a straight edge vertically against the tire, touching the tire at the bottom and the top - If that straight edge fails to also touch the fender, you're not legal and you fail the inspection. Never mind the fact that the car isn't modified in any way and the tires fit completely inside the fenders when the suspension is completely compressed . . . . you still fail and you can't drive the car on the road. I was there for 3 years and every year come inspection time, I had to go swap wheels/tires with a buddy to go get my inspection done and them come home and swap tires back again Don

Don't be misled by the Gen 2 pictures - This C&D article is dated September, 2013 https://www.caranddriver.com/news/feds-watching-fords-run-around-on-chicken-tax-riles-customs-officials If you Google 'Chicken Tax' and read about it, they say Ford got away with it on their Gen 1 TC's - The above article confirms that Don

Ford dodged the 'Chicken Tax' on imported work vans up until about 2013 when the US government got wise to what they were doing (importing passenger vans and stripping them) and began taxing them anyway - Since then, there's been no reason to do so. I seriously doubt any Gen2's were imported and stripped, but the rumor persists . . . . It does make a nice 'story' Don