SoonerLS

It’s not so much an error message as a status notification. Disconnecting the sensor caused the system to stop the “optimized” charging and just go back to charging all the time, which caused the cutoff to stop happening so quickly after killing the ignition. It still happens, but only after 20 minutes or so. I was concerned that it might shorten the battery life, but considering that my truck is coming up on 12 years old and is on its second battery, it would appear that the short cutoff was the only “casualty.”

I haven’t spent much time on hydrostats, but every geared tractor I’ve ever driven has had “cruise control”—it’s called a hand throttle and a governor.

The solution for this on the 12th Gen F-150 was to unplug the Battery Monitoring System sensor on one of the leads to the battery (I think it’s on the negative lead, but it has been a long time since I yanked it). The BMS is supposed to make charging more efficient, but all it seemed to do was cause it to charge insufficiently.

tl;dr: Lawsuit claims that the Mach-E doors are dangerous as designed because there’s no manual/mechanical release.

Yep. We’ve discussed this ad nauseum over the years, but Ford’s stock price will always lag because of their two-tiered stock structure where the Ford family controls the voting stock. That keeps out big investors, like institutional investors, because they can’t buy any control over the company—no matter how much Ford common stock you buy, you don’t get any say in how the company is run. On the minus side it keeps the stock lower in price, but on the plus side it keeps the likes of Carl Icahn and other activist investors away.

E10/87 was $2.51/gal when I filled up on Monday evening. The winter storm that hit later that night sure did wonders for my gas expenditures this week.

You ought to look up Steve Lehto’s “Crazy Town” miniseries on his YouTube channel. Lehto had been the successful plaintiff’s attorney in a civil case, and the defendant later tried to sue him to recover what he’d lost. Despite the fact that the suit was frivolous and there was no legal way for him to recover what he sought, he still found an attorney dumb enough to file it.

IIRC, that’s when the Super Duty started sharing the F-150’s cab structure, which had been meeting rollover and crash protection standards since 2009.

You realize that the 12th Gen F-150 was, style-wise, basically unchanged for six model years (2009-2014), right? It didn’t exactly hurt its sales any.

One aerospace commentator I heard recently said he had been hopeful that Boeing would infuse McDonnell-Douglas with some needed sanity when they merged, but he was horrified to see M-D infecting Boeing with their insanity instead. Of course, when I saw the thread title, I was wondering if Ford actually had enough of a problem with whistleblowers to start seeing them die in mysterious plan crashes…

If you mean the “law” that they have to provide parts for ten years, that’s an urban legend, not a law.

There’s more than just light bulbs in those taillight assemblies these days. They also have sensors (e.g, BLIS), and some have indicators to tell you what your payload/tongue weight is. I’m guessing that those figures are all-in costs, though, which probably includes bodywork and harness replacement costs—it’s not like your local tweeker is going to take the time to unplug a connector when he can just cut the harness.

Aren’t V-12s normally 60-degree Vs? If so, it wouldn’t make sense to base it on a 90-degree V8; you’d want to build it off something that’s already 60-degrees, like the 35EB. Also, it seems to me that the big V8s are already pretty well stuffed into the engine compartments of the Super Duties, so adding four extra cylinders to the length might present fitment problems. ‘Tis an interesting idea, though…

Look how long it took them to go to a boxed frame under the Super Duties, and even then, it’s only boxed under the nose/cab because so many upfitters build on those C-channel frames. If they wildly recreate the EREV truck, they’ll completely cut it off from that segment of the market, which Ford obviously sees as consequential.

I had to run down to Norman this afternoon, so I filled up before heading back. $2.46/gal for E10/87.

I paid $2.50/gal for E10/87 at the east side Sam’s in Tulsa this evening.

I wouldn’t expect the auto manufacturers to change course based on what this administration does, at least as far as CAFE targets go. Unless Congress acts, anything one administration does can be undone by the next, so they pretty much have to assume that current targets would come back if this administration alters them.

I thought all along that this was the killer application for the Baby Godzilla. With the hybrid powertrain, it would tow like a freight train in town, plus you could use it to power the job site when you get there.

I think there’s a market there, but it’s probably not big enough to justify the investment. If it had been, we’d probably still have the last iteration of the Conti in the stable, so I don’t see them going back to it.

Yeah, the word from Ford insiders was that DEW-98’s fate was sealed as soon as the LS was slated for assembly at Wixom, because it had no chance of becoming profitable. IIRC, Wixom was Ford’s highest rated plant in the US when it came to product quality, but I guess it was just a super expensive plant to run.

I’m not wrong. The statement about the Escort being a CAFE offset for the Crown Vic was true when it was reported, and that was the joke at the time.

The closest I ever got to owning a Panther was my ‘66 Galaxie. Back in the mid- to late-‘80s and well into the ‘90s, the Crown Vic was the top of the Ford lineup. Don’t confuse the fleet queen that it was at the end of its life with what it was in its heyday. Back then, it was what the older folks (think Greatest Generation) drove when they had money to spend on cars.

It wasn’t a basic fleet sedan back in the ‘90s.

Back in the ‘90s, they said that Ford was actually losing money on the Escort, and it only existed to be a CAFE offset for the profitable Crown Vic. The joke was that between the CAFE offset and the profits from the Crown Vic, they could put an Escort in the trunk of every Crown Vic and still turn a profit.