theDuff

He makes no mention of the Boss 302. The car they have no answer for. Its what, $20k cheaper than the ZL1?

Luckily, its easy to work on! :D There's stuff I have to fix right now and we spent a good chunk on it the last time I serviced it (4 months ago). Still a far cry from the '08 and up problems.

IMHO, it looks more like the original Escape then the outgoing model. I don't know what all this "it doesn't look like an Escape" nonsense is all about. Wifey drives an '03. This will probably replace it. I don't understand all the love for the last model. Terrible cars. Rattles, mechanical issues, boring, etc....

I don't know. Even when gas was cheap people complained about their mileage. People lie too. A guy comes in with his Ecoboost F150 saying his Tahoe did better on the highway. :rolleyes:

We get it dude. You don't like your seats.

Dear Dynacorn, Pease make a '65-'66 fastback body. Yours truly, A TON of vintage Mustang enthusiasts

CUE will, and MFT does, use an 8" center stack touch screen. CUE's isn't bigger. Different tech, yes. Bigger screen, no. Revisit the specs page before you jump to conclusions. The full LCD IP is nice. Ford has been playing with LCD screens in the IP for years now. I'm sure a full LCD will be the next evolutionary progression. Doubt it will be Lincoln specific though. Maybe start there and trickle down to Fords that next model year. Highly doubt you'll see any in a Chevy, so entry level price to get you into a full LCD IP will be much higher over at GM.

We asked him to not use it for a week and see if there's still a problem, and then try his friend's. He called every two hours when his truck was in service. Seems pretty unreasonable. I don't think he believed us. He's going to do whatever the hell he wants, and then try another service department. My guess. Every two hours?! C'mon. He has a brand new APIM, so, that's not it. A hard reboot fixes it. That would leave me to believe its software related. Or in this case, hardware incompatability. I've seen nanos work fine. Its just his. My Sansa Clip did something similar. I had to do a hard reboot about once a week. Bought a 30 gig Sony flash drive about a year ago and hasn't hiccuped since. That's why I recommend flash drives.

That is what I said to him. It reminded me of a similar problem with the Ipod touch where sync would shut down. You had to give the APIM a hard reboot to get it working again. Ford came out with an ssm stating the touch needs to be at firmware level 4.2 or higher IIRC. I am not an Apple user, so I'm not sure exactly how i-tunes works. The customer said he plugs the nano into i-tunes regularly. He was sure that i-tunes would have alerted him if there was a firmware update. He kept going on and on how his friends nano works just fine in his sync equipped vehicle and it has to be a problem with the truck. It was pretty black and white to me. Works fine, plug nano in, shuts down. I'm still blaming the Ipod.

Oh yeah! Or their Ipod. Had a '11 F150 yesterday where his Ipod nano would shut the whole system down. No bluetooth, no steering wheel controls, no voice commands. Always worked flawless without the nano plugged in. Not MFT, but a sync problem nonetheless. He was pretty pissed that that's what it was. I told him, lots of people use the nano with sync. Maybe its just yours. I always recommend flash drives. Two OS's talking to each other, there are bound to be hiccups. A hard reboot on the phone fixes some concerns. This is mostly with sync though, not the typical MFT complaints that come in (blank screens, constant system maintenance screen).

That's pretty much it, and APIM replacement if it bricks during the flash. That doesn't mean I don't do a lot of them.

That used to be pretty easy. The '00 to '07 Tauruses were garbage. So many problems with the 5.4 3v (I could give you a pretty big list of common problems, mostly '04-'06). Pre '08 Focus. The '08 and up Focus is actually a very reliable car. Anything with an Explorer badge. 6.0 powerstroke. '08 Escapes. Now I tell people to stay away from 6F35 trannies and MFT. Lots of complaints about shift quality in the new torqshift but no repairs yet. The only warranty work I do anymore, other than 6.4 stuff, is MFT. Oh yeah, serviceability on the rear suspension on any Edge is kind of a pain in the neck. That was going to be wifey's next ride. Not sure anymore. Remember, I don't like to work hard on my own stuff. Too early to tell on the new Focus and Explorer. The 6.7 was a great launch. Just a couple little things. Its on my highly recommended list.

Sometimes its a challenge being a Ford fan and fixing them everyday. At least I know which products to stay away from. Also note my current vehicle. I think that should say something about its reliability. Its hard for me to get around to fixing my own cars. Just ask my wife about her '03 Escape. There's also a '65 Mustang I need to get around to. I've had it for 16 years now, even took it to all my proms. Its been in a barn for the last 10 years. Making your hobby a career sounds great on paper...

Actually, I'm relieved they didn't. Think about it. Ford writes software for ABS, RSC, SRS, and the like. Maybe powertrain stuff, not sure. I know they patch a lot of powertrain software on the fly. TOW was pretty sure they write a lot of there own now. Anywho, your going to ask them to write a user interface? I would think that the software engineers needed to write said UI would all be new hires, no? It would be a B-Square disaster all over again. Wouldn't it be cheaper to sub it?

I'm just relaying what Ford representatives told all the Ford dealers at the dealer show. They said MS did the rewrite. I guess MS didn't want to do it the first time and recommended BSquared. MS didn't want to do it this time either, but, I guess, Ford said pretty please and here we are. Again, this is what the Ford reps said at the show according to our business manager. reason for edit: clarity

Which brings us right back on topic. The dealer show. Apparantly, according to our business manager, Microsoft re-wrote the MFT software. This is the "total re--write" we've been hearing about. I guess Ford paid big bucks to have them do this. All MFT owners will be getting a flash drive in the mail so they can reprogram it by themselves. If you don't want to, the dealer can do it for you. He is a MFT user (wife drives an Edge Sport, his demos) and is constantly complaining about it. He witnessed the reflash process and said it takes about 15-20 minutes. A lot shorter than I can do it right now (about 45 minutes if it doesn't hiccup). He tried it after the fact and said it was night and day. He tried a ton of commands right on top of one another and it didn't miss a beat. My fingers are crossed. I'm really sick of it. All the work I've done for free: explaining things to customers, hard reboots, syncing phones, getting APIM prior approval. This will make my month! :happy feet:

Just talked to our business manager. On his way to that dealer show in Michigan. Lucky bastard. He said it was typical to have between 30 and 40 of the Focus, 10 Tauruses, and 2 or 3 Fiestas. The Focus is rolling in. I see them in the shop for their PDI pretty regularly. They just sell as soon as they hit the lot!

As of right now we have 10 Foci, 5 Tauruses, and 2 Fiestas. We're a big dealer. The salesmen are pissed.

Uh, they do. Shoot, we've got one on the lot right now and it doesn't even have a bed! I'm not kidding.

Building a Fiesta that is say, 80% of a Focus may not be economically viable, because the smaller vehicle is not that much cheaper to build, and as the market shows, there just aren't that many people that will spend that kind of money. :D I think the main difference here, though, is transaction prices. I'm going to assume that Fiesta has a higher atp than Ranger, but the Ranger could be redesigned in a way that it would command higher prices. Personally, I never thought the Ranger was a compelling product. Good idea, poor execution imho. Bad ride, very cramped interior. Could be due to it being outdated, but I felt the same way in 2000 when I leased a 4 cyl 5 speed XLT. A time when you could say it was not outdated. Now, if it had similar content to the F150, a better ride, and four full size doors I would have bought it instead of the Fusion.

I think we need to see an actual dyno sheet before we assume the engine has all sorts of low end torque, and I'm not talking about something like that contrived/ridiculous one they had for the 3.5EB. What I mean is, how flat is that torque curve below 3000 rpm really? How much torque will it have at 1500? 2000?

Sounds like an intro to a Twilight Zone episode.

Yeah, that's what we need. A $40k truck with a 4 foot bed. I think that's why the last one failed. Not enough bed length and too much money. You really can't put a 6 foot bed behind that second row of seats. That, and it wouldn't be as cheap as a Ranger

Here here! I never had a lot of love for the 05-09 design. The '10 and up however... love it. The GT500 included Personally, I think the taillights and curved rear filler is the most attractive part.

I still can't see it.