Fifty150

It all depends on how far your imagination will take you. You are only limited by your budget. My budget would not allow me to go all out, Chip Foose style. I don't have a work space. i don't have the tools. I don't have enough training & experience to do it all myself. I don't have the money to pay someone else to bring my vision to life. A small box, ladder frame could be your platform. Maybe something from a 1/4 ton truck like a Ranger or Tacoma. Shorten or lengthen the frame to fit, so that you can ultimately lower the Transit Connect body on top. Pug in electric battery pack. Independent electric motor powering each wheel for full time All Wheel Drive. With all new technology, the entire vehicle will be drive-by-wire computer controlled for acceleration, braking, and steering. You won't have to worry about lining up the steering, or weak transaxles. No fussing over power plant and powertrain. Just build the electric car onto the box ladder frame, mount the van body on top, connect the sensors to the vehicle controls........ After you've gone through about $125,000,000 in research & development; 3 members on this forum might order a car from you. Then you go public with your stock, and cash out.

The bumper to bumper warranty is for 3 years. The powertrain warranty is for 5 years. Depending on the initial delivery date, and your current mileage, you may still have some of that warranty left. It also depends on the dealership you go to. Some dealers may perform the work as an after-warranty-adjustment. Some may just magically happen to have one of those in the back, in a pile of spare parts junk they took off other vehicles. Some dealers may declare that it is a wear item, and not a warranty item. Some dealers might deny you any sort of warranty service, and insist that you pay out of pocket @ their rates; and insist that you have to replace the entire door.

Try sourcing recycle auto parts for something like that. Companies like LKQ are nationwide & online.

The car you drive, as well the your clothing; makes a statement about you, and presents your image. People judge you by your presentation. Wide brim fedora, long rain coat, and creepy van with blacked out tinted window.........the kind of guy who hangs out in the back room of adult video arcades, and not the kind of stranger you would take candy from. Want to come see my puppy? I've got ice cream.

With enough mechanical knowledge, and an unlimited budget, you can do anything that you want. Mechanically, the entire front end & drivetrain will not be strong enough once you start lifting, using larger wheels & tires, and weight is added. The front end will be a challenge. You should be able to fabricate mounting and use larger coilover struts. Lining up your steering will be a challenge, which you may be able to engineer with good CAD software. I just don't see the OEM engine & transmission package being able to effectively operate with what you want to do. Lifting the rear, with leaf springs, you can probably add-a-leaf, or have a custom leaf pack made, and add lift blocks with longer u-bolts. Then it's fairly simply to spec larger and longer shocks. Fenders will be cut. New wheel well liners will be fabricated. You won't have much to work with when you start sliding the rear doors. You may consider eliminating those sliding rear doors altogether, so that they don't slide open right into the modified larger rear wheels & tires. With the wheelbase, and added height, your stability will be like a Suzuki Samurai. This fantasy build can become a reality, if the right team of people find work-arounds. Very few Transit Connect builds out there. A few have been built to be faster. But nobody has built a front-wheel-drive, lifted, rugged terrain vehicle.

I like the Mercedes vans. Just don't like the pricing. I would rather drive a Ford, and keep the other $10K in my pocket. But that's how I feel about cars in general. I would never buy a luxury car. Vehicles for me are about utility and transportation. I'm not willing to spend more money for luxury features. Same way I don't buy designer label fashion jeans. Hush! That would be a waste of a couple of good chicks. Someone else could find some good use for those 2 chicks.

Covered under new car warranty. Just something for everyone else to pay attention to. That little bit of oil or grease you might see, but figure it's nothing.....Or you might hear a little rattle, but can't figure it out. Maybe it just doesn't seem like it's driving straight or the tires aren't wearing evenly. Get as much done under warranty as possible. That's why you bought new instead of used.

A lot of people consider 1,000 miles a month to be "average". That's a loose rule of thumb which is based on warranty coverage. 3 years, 36,000 miles. In reality, everyone has different driving habits, commutes, and ex-wives.

PhotoAl, Sorry about your father in law. 5150

Looks like you found a van with reasonable mileage, and still within the powertrain warranty.

Just in case you have the same issue.

The senior citizens are passing and flipping you off, because their granddaughters are riding in your van. I get it now.

It's all within the parameters of "free speech". Inasmuch as this is an open, and free, forum. Some people have other ideas. They feel the need to control what is being said, where it is being said, and categorize as to their own personal opinion what belongs and does not belong.

Don't buy it. Forget about even trying to diagnose it, and negotiating with the seller for presale repairs. Be patient. Wait until you find a van you like, without a clunk.

It's official. Someone will be mad. Thread is off topic.

My van is in the dealership at present. Service Writer offered a rental. I didn't need it, so I declined. I guess it depends on the level of customer service offered by the Service Writer standing in front of you.

Violence is the universal language. Over the course of human history, when encountering other people who do not speak the same language, violence has always been able to bridge the chasm. It's often inflicted upon request. But my personal life, and what girls want me to do to them, is not up for discussion in this forum.

Although I am privileged with the luxury of having a larger vehicle for heavier loads and heavier towing. Not everyone has a truck at their disposal. And not everyone is able to rent a truck @ $19.95 a day when they do have a something heavier to tow. Kind of hard to imagine having enough money to buy a boat, enough money to maintain a boat, enough money to put fuel in a boat; but not having the $20 to rent a U-Haul van for the day so that you can tow the boat. A real genius will try to tow a trailer with horses behind a Transit Connect. Same story. They have all the money for those horses, but can't afford a U-Haul truck rental. Same way I can't see how anyone could overload a Transit Connect, when logic and common sense should prevent that from happening. Bricks, concrete, wood.......how much can you fit before you notice that your rear end is slow low that the rear tires are pressing into the wheel well? At what point do you realize that the front end is not suppose to point up in the air because your rear end is too low? How much weight does it take to blow the tires? I can only imagine the poor horses suffering in that horse trailer, towed by a Transit Connect, and the trailer flips & rolls. Makes me want to use violence.

When public schools lost funding for Drivers Ed, we unleashed a nation of untrained teen drivers; whom all became untrained adults behind the wheel.

We are officially off topic. Some people's feelings get hurt when all natural order in the universe is disturbed. You simply cannot have a free flowing, organic, fluid, and dynamic exchange which strays away from the original topic.

Most effective, lowest cost, and ugliest solution is a commercial ladder rack. Get a used vehicle without a roof rack, and you won't have to worry about how much weight the previous owner loaded on the roof. i would look for the vehicle without the hitch. Because who knows what the last owner towed. Without the hitch, it never towed, and that's less wear on the transmission to worry about. Have the dealer tune it up, flush the tranny, and perform all service work before you take delivery. At 50,000+ miles, ask about an extended warranty and have that includes into your out the door price.

Sounds like a San Francisco Cable Car. http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/the-brakes.html THE BRAKES The cable cars employ a series of mechanisms to assist in braking the car and regulating its speed. The three parts of this system are the wheel brakes, track brakes, and an emergency brake. Both front and rear wheels have metal brake shoes, which the gripman operated by means of a pedal located by the grip. The conductor also has a rear brake lever at the back of the Powell and Mason cars for use on steep grades, while the California car has two pedals, one at each end of the car. Next to the grip and quadrant is a lever that operates the track brakes, pine blocks situated between the wheels. These blocks are pressed into the track whenever the gripman pulls back on the brake lever. The soft wood used exerts pressure on the tracks—sometimes enough to produce smoke—and stops the car. These blocks wear quickly and are replaced every three days or so. The final brake device is an emergency brake, operated also with a lever near the grip and track brake levers. The brake itself is a one-and-a-half inch thick piece of steel, about eighteen inches in length, hanging under the cars and over the track slot. If the gripman cannot stop the car by other means, pulling on the lever will push the brake down into the slot where it wedges so tightly that it must often be removed with a torch. This action leads to it sometimes being referred to as a “guillotine” brake. Of course these brakes are in many ways supplemental as the main braking action results from the cable itself, which when tightly held in the grip’s jaws enable the cable cars to move along at a nice 9.5 miles per hour constant speed, even on steep grades.

I had the "sport edition" Pinto. A Mustang II.