chong

Yea, I've been through that. I'm thinking that I'll have to try and utilize the holes that are already there just to be safe. I'm not looking at putting a ton of weight on the walls. Mrs. Chong wants the interior to look a bit nicer so I'm trying to work that into my re-factoring.

So for the next phase of my build, I've come to the realization that I need to bolt things in place either by using some of the pre-drilled holes or by drilling my own. I don't want to start doing that without knowing some things like load ratings for the walls and where to drill in order to avoid hitting electrical or other sensitive things. For the big Transits, Ford publishes the Body and Equipment Mounting Manual that contains a heck of a lot of information. I'm looking for a similar document for the Transit Connect, but I've been unsuccessful in finding anything. Does such a thing exist? If so, where do I get it?

That thing looks pretty cool. Clearly this is marketed at the ST crowd, but why wouldn't it work on the van! Does the app give you any readouts for AFR?

I may be tipping my hand a bit here, but your APIM came from a car with a different CAN architecture. That's why 911 Assist doesn't work. How are you wiring up the camera? If you aren't currently seeing a camera fault when you go into reverse, you may expect some difficulties when you get the camera hooked up.

Nice work! This is pretty cool!

Are you following someone else's write up on how this work or are you blazing this path yourself? I'm most curious to see how the stock radio is configured in your van.

Did your van already ship with SYNC?

This has been on my todo list since I bought the Transit. I've did this back when I was still daily driving my WRX through the winter. Definitely a must have! Good write-up!

It's a Curt 13167 Class 3 receiver. Installed it myself. It was pretty easy to get it up there, but I'm not too impressed with the clearance around the spare tire. I would have preferred the OEM receiver, but I wasn't going to pay the extra money.

I'll save you some time on your research. The Focus ST does not have a limited slip differential.

My car sat on the lot the entire day and they didn't even look at it. I have all the parts sitting in the glove box. About all I know is that it requires some disassembly of the intake manifold which means I'm not doing it myself!

If you are using any sort of wrench to snug a filter up, you are over-tightening it. That's why I made the comment of only using the tool once. My previous band type filter wrench has been used exactly once and then packed away on a shelf for years. I'd love to see what the torque setting is on the machine they use to put these filters on in the factory. Someone put it on the, "King Kong," setting. In any event, the Craftsman was able to grab the filter and I was able to turn the wrench about a quarter of a turn before I noticed that the filter body was simply twisting and not unthreading. I decided to stop before shredding the filter and requiring a tow truck. I've decided to make it someone else's problem. Maybe they can install my damn block heater while they are at it.

I was thinking about going to check out this one over at the local Sears. People seem to like it, and I'm a fan of Craftsman stuff. It certainly is spendy though for something I'm likely to only ever use once!

I give up! How the heck do you get the oil filter off the 1.6L Ecoboost!? While I can get a filter wrench around the filter, there is no direction you can point the handle to apply any sort of torque to the damn thing. Time to go search for different kinds of filter wrenches...

In many northern states they dump hot sand on the roads instead of salt because salt doesn't work so well when it gets really cold. The sand melts into the packed snow and adds a bit of friction which helps your tires work better. In Michigan, they dump sand, but apparently in Alberta, there is the odd bit of gravel thrown in. Combine that with the majority of people in Canada actually equipping their cars with winter tires and you get rocks thrown around all over the place. I assume that a rock hit the windscreen and started the crack. The freeze thaw cycles overnight made it grow. It sucks because I have the heated windscreen, I can't imagine my insurance company is going to be happy that they are going to have to pay for a replacement at full dealer cost (I'll be requiring the OEM windscreen rather than opting for a cheaper aftermarket variant).

One more: All in all, it was a good trip. I learned some things that I'll be using to guide my changes when it comes time for version 1.5 of the build. First, FWD is horrible in the snow. I'm not used to driving an automatic so feathering the gas to keep the tires from spinning is going to take some getting used to (need to make use of sport mode). It's fine on the highway with a good set of winter tires (I have Blizzak WS70 tires mounted up right now). The turbo was awesome in the mountains and had to problem supplying adequate power. I must confess, that once we got there, I was missing my baby (2008 Subaru Impreza WRX 5MT Turbo Swapped making about 300hp at the wheels on 91 octane): The single most useful thing I did for the build ended up being the Arduino based remote start. It was -18F in Fargo when we stopped the first night. The hour long timer was perfect. We managed to get a solid 7-8 hours of sleep that night without having to wake up and start the car. The added bonus was that the coolant was still warm the next morning so the van was warm as soon as we fired it up. I got no complaints from the Mrs about being cold so I'll consider it a win. That night was the coldest the temps got for our entire journey. We didn't use the remote start system at all over the final night in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The temps overnight there were around 30F and the heated blankets were more than adequate. I'll be making some changes starting in the spring. First, I'm going to reconfigure the position of the batteries so that they don't take up so much length or height. While there is plenty of room to roll around while sleeping, I'd like a bit more vertical space and I'd also like to fit one of my bikes inside. With the extra length, I might be able to fit my skis inside too. With the roof box up top and the bikes on the hitch, wind became a concern. I don't worry about it in the summer, but on icy roads, it wasn't terribly pleasant. For this van, that's about all I'd like to change. I'll also spend more time this summer making everything look nicer. Van 2.0 will likely be a larger transit with the extended wheelbase and high top roof. Something like that is at least 5 years out though. As for not showing up on youtube... I wish I had a dashcam. Just after crossing the border back into North Dakota we almost had an incident that would have totaled the van. We were on Southbound I29 the day after it was re-opened from the blizzard that went through. The road itself was clear and dry, but there was about 2" of standing snow on the shoulder. I was in the passing lane with the cruise set at 75mph (the speed limit) about to overtake someone in the right lane. The guy in the right lane, apparently, had a lapse in concentration and dipped a tire onto the shoulder. He also must not have a lot of experience driving in snow because when he did that, he did everything wrong. He yanked the wheel to try and steer back onto the road while hitting the brakes sending him into a skid. He spun twice and ended up sideways in my lane. My only option was to lock up (yes, you can do that even with ABS) the brakes and dive into the shoulder that he just left in order to avoid t-boning him at 75mph. The Blizzaks did their job once they hit the snow. I was able to lift off the brakes and guide the van back onto the highway. The other guy spun at least one more time, but he also never left the road. I can honestly say that's the closest call I've ever had. My heart rate monitor registered 153bpm after the ordeal. For context, my resting heart rate is about 75bpm as I'm sitting here typing this. 150bpm is race pace on my mountain bike. We spent a couple miles at about 50mph, but never stopped. It's funny how things slow down in the moment...

I wish I didn't have to actually upload images to the forum. I'm too lazy to edit them down (flickr does that for me and hands me bbcode embeddable links for various sizes). Here's a shot from inside Banff National Park:

All clean! Sadly, my windscreen will need to be replaced:

And we are back! As promised, here's a shot of everything loaded up just prior to departure: I was a bit disappointed to find out that the trip computer rolls over well before the 9999 that I would have expected. Here's how we did on Day 1 (Ann Arbor, Michigan to just north of Fargo, North Dakota): Poor poor bikes pick up so much grime on a long trip like this: I was thankful to find a manual car wash that just kept the meter running on my credit card. It took about $10 to get everything scrubbed up!

Leaving tomorrow morning. Should be interesting, a lot of snow coming tonight.

Good call. No time to pick up another detector, I'll move the one we have.

That's exactly where the exhaust is. That's also the side that I put the CO detector on. I'm quite worried about exactly what you stated, but I think (hope!) we have enough precautions in place to prevent disaster.

Thanks for the tip about the block heater! My van is at the dealer now for the install. Here's hoping they get it done by lunch time, I have a lot of packing to do. Wednesday night marked the coldest night of the winter for us thus far. Temps went down to about 0 and maybe a bit below. I slept in the van in the driveway. The heated blankets do their job. I didn't use my Fobuino system to start the van every hour. If I had the parts, I'd hack the heated blankets to put them on the Arduino too. I found that the 45 minute built in timer was perfect for a 2 hour sleep. Programming the Arduino to kick those back on every 2 hours would be about perfect. This week, we've been doing the finishing touches. Smoke/CO detector installed right above where our heads will go. Hopefully running the engine overnight while parked in an open area doesn't cause that thing to go off. The most important part of the entire system, the Fire Extinguisher, right behind the center console within easy reach.

All told its going to be just under $500. I'll get a breakdown on just the parts when I get the car back.

Appointment made at the local dealer for a block heater install on Friday morning. That'll help me rest a lot easier.