Fifty150

If I had to guess, you want to keep load weight to 200 lbs and under. The van roof is not heavily reinforced. The tent won't weight much. But how much do you weigh? It could depend on how you mount. That will distribute the load differently. The idea is that the crossbars create a "ladder" to help distribute weight. Some commercial ladder racks have 3 cross sections mounted directly to the roof of the van. That may be a solution for you. Mount a commercial ladder rack, then attach the platform to the rack sections.

You have a lot of weight in the back. SumoSprings or Timbren could work. Or you can look at airbags. Look at the rear suspension, and then look at what's available. Airbags can always be installed by a good custom shop fabricator. https://youtu.be/iwX7XwtvuXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwX7XwtvuXA

As far as I know, the long wheel base and short wheel base have the same suspension components.

Sorry, I can't see the wheels in the photo. There are rear suspension components you can try. You could also look at airbags. The real problem could be weight.

Install Ford sensors. Get a Ford tool. Enable sensor learning mode manually or with FORScan. Start with driver side front, then passenger front, move to passenger rear, finish at driver side rear.

What happens when you try to train your sensors? Are you in the sensor learn mode? Does the car respond with horn beeps? Do you have Ford sensors installed on the wheels? The Ford TPMS tool looks like this.

I have never, with an automatic transmission or a stick shift, do what you described. Exiting a highway would lead me to believe that you are decelerating from highway speed. Why would you put it in neutral and rev it up?

etrailer says it will work.

Looking at the installation instructions, I think you can do it. You just have to secure the mounting base to the roof of your van. Be willing to drill holes if needed. The real problem is how much weight the Transit Connect roof will carry safely with that platform.

Rhino says no.

$10,000 seems kind of high for a Gen 1. But then again, it's a free market. Any car is only worth what the seller and buyer agree on. I'm sure that whomever is listing that van @ $10,000 expects some haggling, and will take less. Not to mention better mileage with the transmission gearing. This is one of those cases where the newer model was an improvement. Pricing aside......The 1st generation van could be better for parking with the short wheelbase. If you find yourself buying a 1st generation van, have it checked out by a good mechanic. Get a list of all maintenance required, even stuff that isn't immediately needed. Include things like a radiator flush, brakes, spark plugs, transmission service, etc. You are essentially buying a big repair bill. With a vehicle that old, wipers and light bulbs could set you back another $100. You're buying X-years & X-miles of wear. The front end on that car will require suspension and drive parts sooner, rather than later. Figure in another $500 for tires. Then there's all the emissions control system items that could cause more trouble for you. Whatever price you think you're buying a used car for; you will have another couple of thousand dollars of work to put into it. Still, used cars can be a good value. No payments. You save on insurance. Somebody else paid the dealer's sales commission and lost money on depreciation. Buying a new car is great if you have money you don't mind losing. Maybe. Maybe not. Transmissions can be funny. You can't physically look inside to see what the wear parts look like. Forum members seem to be in agreement, along with a lot of mechanics, that the transmissions should be serviced. Most people in the general public do not service their transmissions. Odds are against you finding a used 1st generation van where the previous owner flushed the transmission every 25,000 miles, and kept records. Just from what I've seen, a lot of the older vans suffered from lack of maintenance and overloading. People tended to stuff as much as can fit into the van, and the overloaded vans really wore down the transmissions.

Nobody that I know has ever paid the sticker price for a car. You're not suppose to. Even in the days before you could use the internet to research car pricing and availability. Most people I knew paid less "out the door", than the sticker price. I hate that aspect of buying a car. I loathe that dealerships think of you as stupid, and that there's a game to see how much they can steal from you. Then they have those fake invoices which they show you, to lie to you about how you're getting the car for less than the invoice. The hours wasted on haggling. The salesman's fake expressions, and how he is going to beg his boss for you to get a better price. Then they try to confuse people with service contracts, extended warranties, and then really rip you off with the financing. I know a guy who was a "sales manager" at a dealership.......he just scoffs and laughs......the bottom line is that the dealership is there to make money. They don't do that by losing money. And there's no bottom line price on any car. No matter how good of a deal it is, it's always a good deal for the dealership. Another car they sold, and made a profit on. That whole dealership, the acres of cars, the lights, the print ads, the TV commercials, the staff.......you just helped pay for it.

Looking at those prices, I would buy new. The payments can't be much higher.

Which type of fuse tap did you use?

Do you have any photos of the installation? How did you do it? What is the link to the part you bought?

That's news to me. I didn't know. Thanks for the update. Car seats, as far as I know, don't have a "standard dimension". Some have cup holders and stick out more. What I can tell you is that each car seat fits correctly onto each Transit Connect seat. Transit Connect 2nd & 3rd row seats are "full size" seats, as opposed to compact cars and SUVs where the middle seat is really not a seat. None of which means anything, since a "designated seating position" in a car is only 13". No child car seat is 13" or less. I'll let someone else go out to measure their van seats, and go to the store to measure car seats. For my purposes, the car seats fit in the Transit Connect seats, the anchors work, the seat belts work, and I hope the air bags work. I have friends who are Polynesian. Big people. Samoans go to the dealership, and see which cars they can fit in, climb in and out of, and if the car is big enough for the whole family. Which is why so many Polynesians buy full size trucks and vans. You don't see Samoans in a Toyota Yaris or a Honda Fit. No Samoan will be able to ride on a 13" designated seating position. What you could do, is take your car seats, go to dealerships, and test fit them. When you find the car which fits the car seats best, then that should be a point of consideration. Forget about mileage, reliability, performance. Your priority is making sure that your children and their car seats fit into whatever they are riding around in. You may have to buy a used version of whatever car, truck, or van works. If a Suburban is what you need, and you can't afford new, you may have to buy a used Suburban. I don't know what your budget allows......but I see minivans full of kids, all the time. Honda, Toyota, Dodge........ You may want to explore other minivan options.

When you get it all figured out, take a picture. I'd like to see which fuses you tapped.

Laws are different everywhere. Where I live, a forward facing red light, flashing or steady, is a violation of the motor vehicle code. All forward facing lights must be white or yellow, with no more than 4 white lights illuminating the road. In a lot of places, red lights are for police, fire, ambulance.......

TPMS sensors are not built to be serviceable. There's no battery door. You can take them apart. They use those small batteries you find in watches and remote key fobs. You change the battery. Then you have to glue them back together, and hope it works. We'll start with the fact that most people do not have the machines to take a tire off a wheel, remount and balance the wheel. So that's already impractical. Assuming that you were able to take the TPMS sensor apart, change the battery because you just happen to have the correct battery handy, and reassemble the unit.......you still have to mount and balance the tire. Now what? It's back on your car, and you try to program it......what if it doesn't work? What if you damaged the unit while trying to change the battery,? At the end of the day, you might as well pay to have new sensors installed when your sensors stop working. It's just more practical.

I have done it. All 3 seats in the middle row have anchors for the child seats. After you anchor the seats, you can still loop the seat belts through the back of the car seat. The 2nd row also has airbags. Your kids will be safe by US government standards. I have also placed car seats in the 3rd row. I anchored the seats to the D-rings behind the seat, and looped the seatbelt through the back of the car seat. Yes, 5 kids in car seats. None of the children were mine. But we got where we were going.

Where did you mount the switch?

To the best of my memory, the dome lights are small wedge lights.

I wonder what kind of magnet those tire shop guys use. I've never tried myself. For fear of looking like an idiot, with a Mickey Mouse souvenir magnet from the refrigerator. I bought the off-brand counterfeit version of the tool. Mine looks like the little Ford tool, but cost less. It works just the same.