Fifty150

Road hazards in The City are everywhere. Construction, neglected maintenance, storm damage...... I have hit so many potholes that is impossible to even guess which one did it. There are a few miles of freeway by the airport which are full of potholes for you to hit at 70 MPH. Never had a problem with trucks & Jeeps. The little low profile tire is just not as road hazard resistant.

Interesting that someone would set the limit to 62. Speed limit is 65. Who did you buy this car from?

Nope. Dealership tech did the work. I doubt if ha or she saved the broken part. I didn't ask for it either. I don't care. Free is free. But not free. Covered under warranty. Built into the purchase price. I'm glad Ford covered the towing also. 5 year warranty is better than 3 year warranty.

No worse than........

You're not alone.

The high roof looks interesting. Half the battle is the installation. Depending on who does the work.....it could be great. Just don't hire the kid with sport drink and cigarettes.

It was a dealership. I know how people hate "stealerships". I admit I've had mixed results with sales & service. But all that depends on who your contact is as you walk through the door. You get a good salesperson, parts counter guy, or service writer, and your experience quickly becomes positive. At this very same dealership, I had a bad sales experience. Which is why I bought my car from another dealership, an hour away from home. I would rather take public transportation for 100 minutes, then drive a new car for an hour to get home, rather than allow that guy to book my sale into his commission for the month.

The City. Capital "T". Manhattan is also referred to as "The City". San Francisco is also known as "the only East Coast town on the Left Coast". Awhile back, I did battle with a pothole on the freeway. My suspicion is that the damage was done at that point. Axle was not completely broken yet. But over the course of a few months, it finally gave out. Axle was replaced under bumper-to-bumper warranty. I only told the service advisor that it was fine when I drove it home and parked in the driveway. When I went to move the car, it was broken.

Join the club. I bought my Transit Connect new. Since the first tank of gas, I've gotten bad mileage. I'm driving in city traffic, with California reformulated fuel. Here is some information from fueleconomy.gov The 2016 information was submitted by me. I tracked the the MPG until I got tired of doing it.

The tech got the van up on the lift today. First thing that he saw was a broken passenger side axle. Part has been ordered. Once the axle is replaced, they will attempt to test drive. It could just be the broken axle.

Amazon.com has these LED remote control wiring harnesses which allow for solid light, and strobe flashing. I have hooked them up to a lightbar, and various colored lights on the same circuit. Really easy if you have a little knowledge of wiring 12V red & black wires.

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What year is your van? How many miles? Is your warranty still available?

With the right vehicle, you can expect gains in horsepower, torque, and fuel economy. Just not all of them together. With the larger engines, bolt on modifications and writing a new tune can significantly increase performance. Most vehicles are tuned to deliver better fuel economy and cleaner emissions, which usually decreases the performance. When you get more performance, the fuel economy goes down and your measured emissions will not be as clean. Obviously, since you are burning more fuel to make more power, your fuel usage will rise and more pollutants exit at the tailpipe. I recall loading a fuel economy tune on my truck. It made less power, throttle response was decreased, and the fuel savings was not worth mentioning since I found my foot pressing on the unresponsive accelerator a lot more. It did work, though. Shift into drive, take my foot off the brake, and gently feather the throttle to get moving. Drive a little slower, ease off throttle earlier, and allow for more coasting distance to the next red light. 27 gallon gas tank. I got close to an extra mile per gallon. With a truck that gets 10 - 12 miles per gallon, I could actually say that the gain was about 6% - 8%. Optimistically $6 - $8 savings on every $100 spent on fuel. Today, I drive with a "performance tune". Better throttle response. Firmer shifting. Recalibrated shift points. I found that my fuel usage was heavily dependent on road conditions such as stop & go traffic, and my heavy foot. A nice long road trip, where I can travel on the freeway for a couple of hours....and the fuel economy is surprisingly 18 - 20 MPG. My daily city driving gets about 10 - 12, sometimes 14 mpg. When a large engine is just sitting and idling, nothing good happens. But I was also only getting 16 - 17 mpg with my Transit Connect.

And if anyone needs a pidgin translation.....

Looks like hokum & snake oil. You are simply not going to get more power from the 2.5 liter, inline 4 cylinder engine. From my experience, https://www.sctflash.com/ , works really well with other Ford vehicles like trucks & Mustangs. A lot of "custom tuners" use SCT products for loading their custom tunes. Gryphon, Edge, & Hypertech products are also popular. For diesel, most people like Banks Power. Superchips is also highly recommended. But i don't see anything which is specific to Transit Connect. Nor have I heard of anyone being able to get more power with a Transit Connect.

For your tires, air them all the way up as per owners manual. Follow TPMS reset procedure in owners manual.

I am sure that once they take the transmission apart, they will determine what's broken. Then it's a matter of if it will cost more to repair or replace. The real problem is "why?". When they replace, it's usually remanufactured. I doubt it will be new.

The best and worst solution is to find the smallest trailer available. Load the scooter onto a trailer, strap it down, and tow it. You will be well under the tow limit. Difficult for a disabled person to do alone. And now you have to tow, which changes the driving experience. You will never find disabled parking to accommodate the length of the van and trailer.

3/36 is bumper to bumper. That is everything including things like seat tracks, hinges, windows, et cetera. I believe that the paint warranty is something different. Just like tires & battery are "pro rated". 5/60 is the powertrain. First, the techs have to diagnose what the issue is. They have to make sure that I didn't do anything to modify or effect the transmission. In the Transit Connect, there are no aftermarket transmission mods, engine mods, or custom tunes available. So, assuming that the customer did not do something like overfill or underfill the transmission fluid, disconnect anything and reassemble it incorrectly, or do anything else to cause the issue; the transmission should be covered under warranty. At this point, I am just waiting for them to diagnose the problem and determine that I did not do anything to cause it.

21,000 miles.

Looks like someone else had a transmission failure at low miles.

Nothing will center evenly over the top of the hitch receiver. Unless, of course, you remove the door, and find a way to balance half of the load inside of the van. Inside of the van, there are a few attachment points for tying down with ratchet straps. I would use ratchet straps. Don't think about bungee cords, rope, or chains. But the real problem with that is that a disabled person would have to load the scooter into the van, and without help. If you do have help, and someone goes places with you, then that is a different story. But some disabled people are more independent, and do not have assistants. I'm still surprised that the OEM hitch receiver has a tongue weight of only 200 pounds. I weigh more than that. Hitch receiver steps are very popular. I guess it's still good enough for a bike on a rack. As I think about it........if you have a roof rack, you could attach a couple of ratchet straps to the roof racks cross bars, and the outer corners of the lift platform. That would redistribute some of the load. But a disabled person may not be able to do that by himself either.

At start up. The vehicle drove fine. Never experienced any symptoms of failure. No hard shifting. No delay of gears engaging. No driveline shudders. No leaking transmission lines. I drove the car to my house from the apartment downtown. No problem. Parked in the driveway. No problem. I noticed that a parking space became available, and figured I might as well move the car. Hours have passed. Got it the car, started it, shifted into D to pull out. Gears are clashing. It sounded just like someone trying to shift a stick shift without using the clutch. I found the same result in R,D,&S. P&N were both quiet. No power to the wheels in any gear. Park did not engage either, and the vehicle rolled just like neutral. I wonder if they will give me the detailed findings......or simply, "we're sorry about your new car's transmission, don't worry, we will fix it under warranty and we appreciate your business". With my luck, "we noticed aftermarket equipment and modifications, so we will not be able to honor your warranty."

The transmission is a 6F35. A 6 speed transmission jointly developed by Ford & GM. Ford offers the 6F35, 6F50, & 6F55. These transmissions have been in use for about a decade now. And a lot of people have had problems with them. I see a lot of Highway Patrol Explorer Police Interceptors in the service bays, on lifts, with the transmissions dropped. I don't have any real statistical data on the failure rate of the 6F series 6 speed transmissions. Obviously, since it is not a 100% failure rate. So there are 6F transmissions on the road,, since 2006, that are still in service. Some of those being fleet & commercial vehicles. Hesitation & hard shifting are indicators that there may be something wrong with the transmission. Sometimes, a transmission fluid exchange solves those issues. But more often than not, by the time you experience transmission failure, new fluid will not help. Fluid exchange, performed regularly, is simply a part of maintenance. And when fluid exchanges are not performed, the transmissions will fail because the dirty, contaminated fluid is no longer performing at optimal level. No amount of clean fluid will help is there is a design flaw, assembly line mistake, or if you stress your transmission by overloading your vehicle, modifying your engine to produce more horsepower and torque than the transmission was intended for, and/or racing. Impossible to speculate. But I suspect that there is one guy on the job, on the assembly line, who is doing something wrong. And trying to isolate his piecework, is like trying to find "Patient X", the 1 flight attendant who carried HIV to Europe & North America. So there you have it. My theorem, with no findings, and no facts; that there is one person doing something wrong. And every transmission he touched has failed. I figure that if his part of the assembly process is that he is one of 25 people who are doing the exact same thing next to him, then he is responsible for the 4 out of every 100 units that fails. The only real solution is to fire everybody and hire new workers. At least new people would not be making the same mistake repeatedly. Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers, hired new people to do their jobs, and no catastrophe happened. Planes did not have mid-air collisions and/or fall out of the sky.