Sevensecondsuv

This thing looks promising. It'll be this or the bronco to replace our town car for family hauling duties in about 3 years. I'm really hoping the 3.0L will be available in a rwd base or XLT (whatever trim is necessary to keep the second row seat a bench). That tacked on tablet looks horrendous though. Another reason I'll stick to the lower trims.

Props to the guy for trying a rear engine conversion (and honestly, plopping a junkyard-fresh fwd transverse powertrain in the middle of the bed is a genius way to go about it), but the execution is, well, lacking. And an integra engine? Was he trying to make it slower than stock?

The main issue with the panther wasn't that the model itself was unprofitable, it was the issue of supporting an entire plant with dwindling volume (also see the old Ranger). The Taurus got to continue despite suffering similar (and also dwindling) volume because it shared its plant and chassis with the much higher volume explorer. So if Ford can put all the low volume lines in one plant to get enough combined volume to keep the plant running near capacity, I could see them keeping mediums, e series, and stripped chassis going for a long, long time without anything more than tweaking powertrain offerings based on availability of corporate parts from the F Series bin. Also helping this approach is that all three lines aren't passenger vehicles that are subject to constant evolution of crash and fuel economy standards.

The twin I beams are great! Of course the handling ain't anything to write home about (how much can you honestly expect out of 85 ratio tires anyways lol), but they're very robust and indestructible. The ball joints (or king pins if you go back far enough) are loaded much less severely than a typical long / short arm independent setup and will generally last a lot longer. Although the achilles heel is the radius arm bushings. Gotta keep those fresh as they'll make it wobbly in a hurry!

If you're in Maine I'd highly recommend snow tires for winter. Even in northern IL I run them on both our primary vehicles. The difference between regular all-seasons and dedicated snow tires is eye opening. It's very comparable to the difference between 2 and 4 wheel drive. Personally I've tried the General Altimax Arctic and Continental Winter Contact SI. I'd recommend both. If you're like me and drive approximately 1500 miles/month, a set of snow tires will last at least 4-5 winters. As for all seasons (which I only run April thru November), I find that brand/model isn't nearly as important as tread life rating. Anything greater than 60,000 mile rating requires a very hard rubber compound and traction suffers. The 70/80k mile rated tires usually suck in my experience. Personally, I've found the Cooper CS5 to be a very good value while delivering acceptable performance throughout the treadlife.

It's supposed to be a great solution for making the old truck handle, but I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would do this. The appeal of an old Ford truck is the 1960s simplicity and style. It's never going to excel at driving dynamics or speeding around (or down) a race track relative to other better suited platforms, so what's the point of trying? To each their own I guess.

I don't know why they're surprised the taco pulled as well as it did. 278 hp is 278 hp no matter how you slice it. So long the ecm doesn't drastically pull timing and the transmission can keep the engine at it's peak, it's going to make it's way up the mountain in about the same elapsed time as any other 275ish hp truck (like the ranger) pulling the same load.

Like I said, what thermactor?

Slow as molasses, dependable as gravity (except for that pesky tfi module), and oil is optional. Yes optional. I know this for a fact lol. And what termactor?

I'd be careful with 10k oil change intervals on these modern engines. Most of the time it's probably ok but you never know when you're dealing with the next 5.4 3v where perfectly clean and fresh oil of the correct viscosity is the difference between good long service life and a toasted valve train at 80,000 miles. They don't make them like the 300 six anymore.

Those push pins are going to be a pain in the ass. My experience with them is they can be resused about 3 times if you're really careful taking them out. While not the end of the world and certainly not a reason to avoid the truck, burying the oil filter behind push pins is a dumb design. Ford kinda dropped the ball here.

I'm hopeful we'll see the 2.7 in the 2020 Explorer. I think we'd have it already but the D4 explorer was a dead man walking by the time the 2.7 came out so Ford didn't bother.

I'm with Dean - the Ecos are great in the 1000-4000 rpm range but the powerband is limited because the turbo is so small (necessary to get the immediate response at low RPM). This shows up in the engine ratings where the turbo engine makes less hp but more torque than the atmo V6. The engineers could spec a larger turbo and extend the powerband (and peak number), but then it'd get doggy at low RPM. The other thing with the turbo engines is high speeds where you need a relatively large amount of continuous power (since power required to counter wind drag is proportional to the cube of velocity). Eventually you hit a speed (around 80mph apparently) where there's not enough displacement to make the requisite power without boost. That's fine, but boost requires extra enrichment which defeats the whole point of "eco" the first place. It also makes the engine feel "winded" because you've got to keep your foot in it.

Is a V8 necessary in the new bronco? No. Would it be welcome? Definitely! It's not quite like F150 or Mustang where there's certain buyers who are V8 or bust, but it'll be the next closest model Ford sells.

Heck - even the one from 1986 I'm running has a water-cooled center section.

Ford only dropped the 6.8L from the pickups (i.e. delivered with a bed). 6.8 is, was and always has been available on class 3, 4, 5 delivered as cab/chassis. I see many class 4 and 5 utility trucks running around with the V10. The F550 seems to be a favorite for a small bucket lift.

When I turbocharged the 2.5L in my 2001 Ranger 2 years ago, I used a factory turbo off of an '86 Thunderbird turbocoupe. The old 2.3 SOHC of 80's Ford turbo lore is the same basic engine used in the Ranger until 2001, so it was a perfect fit. It was well used and obviously never rebuilt when I installed it with the plan being to rebuild after I finished mockup, but it ran so good I never bothered. Two years and several thousand miles later, still works good, makes 20 psi no problem. So yeah, turbos seem to hold up about as good as anything else on an engine. I think the bad rap came from the really early carb'd turbo setups. Outside of certain dedicated race applications, turbos and carbs don't mix. EFI keeps everything happy.

Well it's not like Ford is working on a real big block of their own and the release timing coinsides perfectly with the next GT500. Oh wait. Nah! That's for big trucks and everybody at Ford knows truck engines and muscle car engines are different universes and can't share with each other. That's to say nothing of the completely underutilized Ford 6.2. It really makes you wonder why they bothered eating the development cost on that one only to sell it in 2 years worth of Limited F150s and then relegate it to F250 fleet trucks.

It could be argued that the coalition of voters who delivered the White House to Trump in 2016 also delivered a mandate to do away with (or significantly reduce) the 2025 CAFE numbers. Whether or not that mandate is/was durable enough to survive successive elections may never be known. The 2018 election went down as a split decision so it's hard to read the tea leaves there. It'd be very interesting to see the results if the CAFE standards be put to a direct ballot referendum. Personally, I think there's far less support for them among the car-buying public than the regulators in DC think there is.

Running 9Ns were going for $900. Running 8Ns were going $1300. Jubilee's could be had for $1800. I bought an excellent running post-1965 2000 gasser with nice paint, 4 good turfs, and remotes for $2400. The steal of the auction was a very nice restoration 961 diesel w/ remotes that went for $2600. I wasn't paying attention to that one or it would have come home with me. It was a great auction! I've never seen that many Fords in one place and it was true no-reserve. On the flip side, a buddy of mine was just at another auction trying to get a 2012 F250 4wd XL reg cab gasser as a backup plow truck. Stupid thing got bid up to $36k. Talk about irrational auction behavior!

If it's going to be a flathead, may as well make it a flathead six. On a barely related note, I was at a farm equipment auction over the summer that had a couple hundred old Ford tractors. Among them were three 8Ns that had the "Funk Brothers" conversion. One was a flathead V8 and the other two were flathead sixes (I think 226 was the common Ford six of the era). I had a chance to test drive them and those sixes were smooth as silk. Rated at 85 hp, they were way more than the 8N chassis was able to put to the earth, but what fun nonetheless. The flathead V8 one bought decent money, but the sixes went for about $2500. I'd never seen before and couldn't think of a use for one at the time so I didn't bid. But I've been kicking myself ever since over it. Man those things were so cool!

Yep. The thing with power is that it's like any addiction. Once you get used to a certain level, it loses it's thrill and you have to up the dose. I actually made a hard decision to sell off all my fast stuff and limit myself to 200 hp about 10 years back. That managed to reset my expectations and I now find my recently built 300 hp 3200 lb turbo Ranger (old style obviously) to be a thrilling power/weight ratio again. I find I'm much more responsible with it now that I'm older so I may venture out further into the power level spectrum yet. I'm trying to take it slow this time. But anyways, 600 hp in a 6000 lb vehicle is still perfectly streetable and even mannered. The same amount in a 4000 lb vehicle is starting to hit the limit of streetability.

And we all would have said the same thing in 1994 when 200 hp pushrod 350/351 engines were considered more than adquate. But now 400 hp is more or less the standard in 1/2 ton applications and yet everyone wants more.

A CD6 truck-ish sort of thing could be cool. I have no idea how much of a market exists. Could be one of those whitespace vehicles. I personally see it ranking somewhere below a new Excursion (which you all didn't like the idea of) on the priority list. A CD6 Sport Trac would seem to require more engineering than slapping a new Excursion together out of the Super Duty and Expedition parts bins.

And then GM can add a similar phev system to the 4.2tt 6 months later. Displacement still matters. Fuel economy is largely a function of how much power you use, not how much the engine is capable of making. There's a minor penalty with pumping losses in a larger displacement engine but it can be offset by a million other things. All other things being equal, I bet the Caddy 4.2 fuel economy is within 5% of the Ford 3.5eb.