Beta Don

The difference between 215/55's and 215/60's is more than 3% (an even bigger error than switching to 225/40-19's) which will affect lots of things - The transmission shift programming for sure. I don't think a small improvement in ride quality would be worth the errors that would bring with it Now, if you could find a set of 205/60-16's you'd be back to about where you belong Don

Your roads must be better over there than they are here - I would get beat to death riding on 19" wheels with low profile tires over here! As rough as the 19's will ride, I imagine it will be even worse if you lower the van I can confirm that the stock offset is 50mm - If you want a wider, more aggressive stance you might consider 40mm, but then if you're going up from a 7" width to 8.5" you might want to stay with 50mm. As for different sizes front and rear - I have a car like that and it means you cannot rotate the tires, so I would stay away from that option if you expect to get the best wear from those expensive tires Don

On my '14, the power ports are powered on all the time, hence the warning about not leaving things plugged in as they could run the battery down. I doubt you'll have any problem running a small fan overnight, but if you're intending to camp in it, you might be wise to add a deep cycle battery to power things separately from the starting battery, just in case I installed an inverter in our van to recharge our Segways as we drive and I replaced the starting battery with a more powerful AGM deep cycle battery so the inverter won't run the battery down when we stop for gas or lunch Don

If your original tires have lasted 5 years and are not yet worn out (I agree, I would change them now) I would give serious consideration to sticking with that exact same tire, even if they cost me $30 or $40 more for each tire. IMO, it would be false economy to go searching for something cheaper . . . . just because it's cheaper. It's a good bet the Falkens wouldn't last you 5 years, so how much would you really be saving?? You can order them from Tire Rack for lots less than $250 each (somebody is really trying to rip you off . . . or they're trying to sell you something else they carry) and Wally World will install them for you. The Continentals are $97.25 each at Tire Rack Don

Ford ordered a lowering of the tire pressure to 26 psi before the Explorer was even introduced . . . . after they had already determined they had a rollover problem! "Emerging Information shows that both Ford and Firestone had early knowledge of tread separation in Firestone Tires fitted to Ford Explorer vehicles but at no point informed the NHTSA of their findings" The Ford Explorer was first offered for sale in March 1990. Ford internal documents show the company engineers recommended changes to the vehicle design after it rolled over in company tests prior to introduction, but other than a few minor changes, the suspension and track width were not changed. Instead, Ford, which sets the specifications for the manufacture of its tires, decided to remove air from the tires, lowering the recommended pressure to 26 psi. Low air pressure leads to increased heat; heat can damage the tire. Sure sounds like a 'problem' to me! Some outside observers have speculated about the blame worthiness of both parties; Firestone's tires being prone to tread separation and failure, and the SUVs being especially prone to rolling over if a tire fails at speed compared to other vehicles. Ford directed Firestone to build a tire for a top heavy, overweight vehicle which they could use with only 26 psi of air pressure . . . . and for some reason, Firestone complied. This debacle ended a partnership between Ford and Firestone which had existed for almost 100 years. Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone were personal friends and Ford had used Firestone tires almost exclusively up until then Don

What's the procedure for resetting the TPMS when rotating tires? Do you have to 'reassign' each tire to the new position on the van? Easy to do?? Enquiring minds want to know! My only other TPMS experience was on a vehicle which didn't care where each tire was located because it didn't give you any indication of which tire was low . . . . just that one of the 4 was low enough to light the indicator on the dash Don

I've travelled a good bit all over Europe including Great Britain where roundabouts are very common and I've never seen one with either stop signs or yield signs - The whole reason for having a roundabout it to keep all traffic moving at all times. It's universal law that you yield to any traffic already in the circle when entering any roundabout, so no sign is necessary They're becoming more common here in the USA too. I'm not a big fan of them, but we have 3 or 4 of them now in close proximity to my house - None of them with any yield or stop signs Don

I doubt you'd be running both transmitters at full power at the same time very often, would you? Many hams and boaters run high power HF transmitters on sailboats where the power source is a bank of 12 volt batteries and no engine running. With the battery at 12.6 volts a 30 amp draw would load the battery voltage to around 12 even if the main power cable was a #2 wire, so running the transmitters on 12 volts can't be bad for them, can it? They must be designed for 12 volts. In the TC with the engine running, the power source will be 14 volts, so even if you occasionally (both transmitters running) lost 1/2 volt, you'd still be running them on 13.5 VDC I wouldn't worry about the 1/4 volt drop using a #6 wire at all and it will be much easier to run. But, overkill can be fun too, at least until you try squeezing that #4 lug into the BJB in the TC

"I find fuel efficiency to be strongly related to speeds driven" - A profound statement if ever there was one! My other two cars are 100% electric and you learn a lot driving an EV, and after some time in EV's everything else you drive magically gets much better mileage - Your 19 mpg at 95 doesn't compare too favorably to my 29 mpg at 55 to 65 mph. After 20,000 miles, the fuel economy readout on my 2014 SWB TC's dash says the average so far has been 27.6 mpg My Mitsu iMiEV with a 16 kw battery can go more than 100 miles at 25 to 30 mph, about 75 miles at 45 mph and about 50 miles at 70 mph - Nothing changed except the speed. Pushing the air in front of the car costs you more and more the faster you go! A reduction in speed of even 5 to 10% nets a much improved range in an EV and that translates into a much improved mpg number in an ICE powered vehicle The really big advantage with EV's is they all get better mileage in stop and go around town driving than they do at steady freeway speeds, while ICE's get much worse mileage under those same conditions. Just because your car gets better mileage at 70 than around town at 25 or 30 doesn't mean driving that fast is more efficient . . . . it's just that your 25 mph efficiency is so much WORSE. An EV with regenerative braking can get back about 80% of the energy you used to get it moving as it slows from cruising speed down to a near stop, while an ICE turns that energy into wasted heat using friction braking, so stop and go driving doesn't hurt an EV's mileage very much. Another big benefit is an EV isn't using energy when it's not moving like ICE's do - It also wastes much less energy turning it into heat. An ICE uses less than 25% of the energy in a gallon of gas to actually move the car . . . . most of the other 75% is wasted as heat http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml You realize when driving an EV that every time you put your foot on the brake, you're wasting energy, so you drive a bit differently - You leave a little extra space, you coast to a stop from farther away . . . . you do most everything you can to avoid the brake pedal. If you were raised driving gas engine powered cars, you never realize that braking is wasting fuel so the less of it you can do, the farther you can go on a gallon of gas. It's pretty eye opening when it finally dawns on you! Don

Thanks for the offer. Those are a bit different from the OEM Ford ones because the tie strap can be replaced on those whereas the Ford ones cannot - Once you cut them, they're junk I'll look around on eBay and see if I can find me a package of them to have on hand - Gotta be cheaper than buying them from Ford!! Don

A couple observations after completing this. Don mentioned that "You will have to cut some cable ties holding the cable on the front of the BJB." I cut them too, but I think if I was going to do it again, I would just pry those three ties out and not cut them. They are special cable ties which mount in a hole and I'll have to source some replacements for them - Likely from Ford. I can't imagine that when a Ford dealer replaces a battery (you would need to remove them for that too) that they're cutting and replacing these . . . . maybe they are, but if you just pull them out of the hole, you can just put them back when you're finished I needed a big #4 wire for my inverter install in the rear of the van - The cable is more than 15 feet long. If I was installing amps or radios, especially if they're in the front of the van, I would use a smaller wire. Certainly a #6 would suffice, but probably a #8 would be large enough to support 30 or 40 amps if the wire was only 6 or 8 feet long. Getting a #4 wire in the BJB isn't a simple thing and it would be oh so much easier if it was a #6 or a #8 Don

Thanks for all your good work here! Curious as to what's replacing the TC for the next 88,000 miles?? Don

Since I already had the battery out, and since it's already 3+ years old, and since it's so doggone difficult to get at . . . . and since I'm hooking up a high current load which will need to run off the battery when I stop for gas or to eat lunch, it only made sense to replace it with something better. Ford has chosen to use 'Ford sized' batteries in all their newer vehicles which I suspect was done to try and enhance battery sales at the dealerships. Our battery is a 'BXT-96R' which doesn't seem to exist anywhere but from Ford - Granted, you can buy a few 'equivalent' size replacements elsewhere Anyway, I wanted a higher capacity battery and I wanted an AGM, so after a good bit of research I settled on a Duracell Group 48 (H6) AGM from Sam's Club - $159.99. It has a 20 amp hour rate of 70 (3.5 amp draw for 20 hours) and much better specs than the OEM battery and it's made in the USA. 3 year free replacement and a 5 year pro-rated warranty Battery Electrolyte Composition: Glass Mat Battery End Type: Top Post BCI Group Size:48 CA at 32 degrees F:875 CCA at 0 degrees F:760 Polarity: Right Positive Reserve Capacity:120 The BXT-96R has only 500 cold cranking amps It's *almost* a drop in replacement for our OEM battery. It's about 1/2 inch taller, but fits in the battery box OK and you can even use the OEM hold down clamp if you remove the rear battery box spacer so the battery can slide back just a little to center the battery on the hold down studs. Then the clamp fits OK if you raise (or remove) the lifting handles that come on the battery - They fold back down after the clamp is installed, so you don't have to remove them If you intend to run high current accessories for even a short time with the engine not running, an upgrade to a better battery is probably a smart move . . . . especially if your current battery is 3 or 4 years old Don

Yes, on the TC the negative battery cable is only about 6 inches long. It runs from the battery to the nearest point on the chassis and bonds there. There is no negative cable from the battery to the engine block, or from the battery to any other high load application. Every negative in the car is a short cable direct to the unibody chassis . . . . and there are literally hundreds of them - Negative connections take up several pages in the car's book of wiring diagrams I've already scoped out the place near the jack where I'll bond the negative for my inverter Don

That sounds strange - You can't order a '17 in April of '17?? My '14 model was built in March of '14 so if it couldn't be ordered in April, it probably never would have been sold Based on my personal experience with 3 different Ford dealers telling me 'convenient things' which turned out not to be true, I would check with a few more dealers and you may find one of them who needs the business bad enough to order you a new '17 If ypu don't need to custom order one to your exact specifications, you can probably find a '16 or maybe even a '17 with 5,000 to 10,000 miles on it and save yourself $10K or so. There are lots of very low mileage ones on Cars.com Don

A small note for clarifaction - Don's last photo (of the firewall knockout) is taken from inside the car, looking up and to the left of the brake pedal and not from under the hood like the other photos. If you drill your hole in the plastic knockout in the lower left corner (looking under the dash facing forward) the cable will be routed alongside the battery box when you put it back in. I cut an 'X' hole in the padding removed from the inside and routed the cable through it so that sound insulation could be put back over the knockout I armored my cable under the hood with 3/8ths protective wire wrap, Item # 66987 from Harbor Freight, $2.99 - It's a perfect fit for a single #4 cable. I tied the cable doown with cable ties so it can't move and rub against anything A note for the not so capable DIY'ers - When your Gen 2 battery dies, buy the new battery from someone who offers 'Free Installation' . . . . if you watch them install it, you'll surely thank me after Don

I didn't try it, but I'm 98% sure you can't get a Gen 2 TC battery out of there without removing the air cleaner top and the air cleaner bottom housing too, so you can add another 10 or 15 minutes to his video presentation. Also, good luck with removing the negative battery cable first (as you should always do) because you can't slide the battery far enough forward to even SEE the negative terminal until after you have first removed the positive terminal Anyway, be extremely careful with your 10mm tool taking the positive terminal off because if the tool comes in contact with any metal, you're gonna get a real BIG spark! Don

Yes, as it turns out, there is! - And it doesn't take 3 or 4 hours I managed to do it without removing anything. I pulled up the lower portion of the rubber door seal around the drivers side sliding door and looking in the crack, I could see the light above the jack storage compartment - I found a straight shot back to the jack compartment without removing any of the panels. It looked like there would be enough room to tuck the #4 cable under the bottom plastic threshold below the door without removing it, so I gave it a try I poked my cable back into the jack compartment and began working my way forward, tucking the cable under the plastic threshold and replacing the rubber door jamb seal as I went. I removed the lower part of the door jamb seal from the drivers door and pushed a fish wire between the drivers door and the sliding door, taped my #4 to the fish wire and pulled the cable around the door post into the threshold of the drivers door - Buttoned up the door seal on the rear door Repeated this same procedure, tucking the cable under the threshold of the drivers door and replacing the seal. Found an easy exit for the cable just above the hood release lever and pulled the cable out there. It's just above the kick panel, right behind the OBD jack under the dash. So, I got a #4 power wire from the drivers kick panel area to the rear jack compartment in the back in about 20 minutes. The cable is tucked in tight everywhere, so there should be no rattles It truly was 'quick and simple!' - Now all that remains is getting it through the firewall and into the engine compartment where I will hook it to my 80 amp fuse. I found the fuse and in-line fuse holder on eBay for $7 Don

The 2.5 mated to the select shift 6 speed automatic is the best matched combination I've ever driven. Virtually all my cars going back 45 years have had manual transmissions, but I was ready for an automatic *if* it could perform like the manuals I'm used to and IMO, this combination is actually better - The computer knows when to shift it better than I could do with a manual You will be impressed with the zero to 30 acceleration and with the 50 to 70 passing power - You stomp on it and it goes! Hard to believe it's only 2.5 liters and I'm sure the performance is what it is because of the 6 speed and the intelligence in the shifting programming IMO, the build quality is quite good. I'm impressed. You are certainly correct that few people in most dealerships know much about TC's. I'm sure the information is there, but it appears few people bother reading up on what they are paid to sell or work on. Hopefully that will improve as time goes by I've never been a fan of V-6's - Inline 6's and 4's are my cup of tea. You'll like the mileage compared to your Dodge, I got 28.95 mpg on a tankfull during our last trip (400 miles) If I were you, I'd get my son to arrange an extended test drive of the model TC you think will suit you best and get it out in the mountains and see what you like and what you don't Don

I think any cargo which fits with the barn doors also fits with the lift gate . . . plus you can stay dry loading and unloading in the rain! We thought we wanted 'barn doors' until we drove a TC with them, but the lack of visibility with the rear view mirror quickly changed our mind - After that, we never looked at any prospective TC to buy unless it had a lift gate Don

The SWB models can be a bit hard to find. Once we had driven a LWB van and then a SWB cargo model (those are pretty easy to find) and we decided that a SWB passenger model was what we really wanted, I began the search in earnest. After a couple months, I found exactly what we were looking for in Georgia about 300 miles away. It's a 2014 and the dealer had tried to sell it new for over a year and finally gave up and titled and licensed it for use as a service loaner vehicle. A year later, they put it in their used car line and it didn't sell there either. I was able (long distance) to negotiate a great price ($4K less than they were asking) and we bought it with 13,000 miles on it. It is the perfect size and the way the rear seats fold up and are so easy to remove really makes it practical to use to haul cargo too. Ours isn't as pretty as yours, but we love it! Don

Thanks! - Man, that's some expensive conduit. I bought a 25' coil of super flexible red #4 Stereo power cable on eBay for $15 with free shipping. Don't you hate it when the plastic tube to protect your expensive cable costs more than the cable itself? Don

Don, Is there a 'quick and easy' way to get a 4 gauge wire from the BJB to the back of the van? I would like to install an inverter in the opening panel at the rear on the drivers side. I'm thinking a 750 watt inverter, though I would likely never draw more than 300 to 400 watts from it. A 4 gauge wire with a 60 amp fuse for the positive should be all I'd need - I can ground the negative lead of the inverter to the chassis near the inverter Don

I agree - Great post and very well documented, as always This will help many of us do a more professional job of adding high current accessories in our TC's. I've been wanting to install a 500 watt inverter so we can recharge our two Segways and wasn't really eager to take the car apart to find what would fit and where . . . . and what size wire I needed to use Thanks Don! Don

It's not a simple matter to hardwire in an aftermarket stereo these days - Modern cars aren't like the ones we're used to from even just a few years ago Now everything is run off the Can-Bus - Computer signals turn things on and off and not a hot wire from the key switch like in the good old days. Perhaps you've noticed that when you shut off your TC and remove the key from the ignition the radio stays on until you open a door? The Can-Bus turns it off - It turns it on too . . . . there isn't a switched accessory wire behind the dash that turns on the radio (or anything else) like there used to be - Lights kinda sorta work like they used to, but they are very sensitive to the amount of current the bulbs draw. You cannot just tap into your tail light wires to use for trailer tail lights like the good old days - You've gotta have a mini 'computer box' to run trailer lights too The 'Simple Way' to install an aftermarket radio is to buy a wiring harness adapter made for your specific model TC. It takes the Can-Bus signals and converts them to signals your aftermarket radio can use . . . . it even has a wire like you're looking for to turn on a separate amplifier, something you won't find anywhere in the car's harness You can buy the factory wiring diagram book like I did and try giving it a go, but you will quickly get frustrated - Been there, done that!. The book is several hundred pages long and it shows every pin of every connector in the car - Labeled with the computer signals many of them carry Don