wlepse

great...thanks...probably something I wouldn't have noticed but now will. I guess I'll have another weekend project.

I agree it isn't a nice thing to do but at the same time these same dealers will lie through their teeth and tell you the MFT is the greatest thing ever and that they have never heard of a failure/bug before just to get another sale. Also in the drpeppers defense no one expected it to do anything of damage to the MFT hence Wilsons66604's offer to test it on his vehicle.

Sounds like the typical MFT issues many seem to have. What version of the MFT do you have?

Sounds like a nice ride. We wanted some of those adders but the wife really wanted the bordeaux reserve which was discontinued so we ended up with what was left. The MFT does take some getting used to. Even though it seems contrary to what many people here say....I would recommend you hold off on upgrading the MFT unless you have a problem. This is typically the way I handle computer updates since I find they often make other problems. Wish I headed that advice; since the recent update I did we had more faults/error messages in one week than we had in the previous 5 weeks. But even with the errors it is still a nice ride and has a lot of cool features to play with. I just wish the MFT were more reliable so I could show it off without the fear of it crashing.

Do you only get the water after rain? Do you have a sunroof? We also own an Audi A4 that is plagued with sunroof drain problems. Most of the time the leaks are up high by the dome light and sunroof controls but I have heard of people having leaks low as well. One person in particular had a tie strap that was tightened too much causing the tube to break and dumped the water into the footwells.

I am not possitive but I think the 200 series is the same as the Bi-directional kit but adds the additional security system. Price listed for the 200 series seems reasonable, but the others are a bit high. Another site lists the 100 @ $182 the bi-directional @ $227 and security system @ $122.

I would agree...the nav system is not the best. Besides the nav card fault messages we have had it lock up, luckily I already knew where I was. But overall I think this nav unit puts takes too much processor power. Before buying the car I did as many suggested here and that was to play around with the MFT to make sure it seemed OK. I did this for over 30 minutes, pissing off the salesman in the process, and it worked fine. Once the card was inserted it slowed significantly. I think the other sign that things are slowed by the nav is that it is always lagging your actual position on the map. Mine is off by at least 50 feet which has made it difficult at times to pick the right exit at busy interchanges.

akirby...I can't speak for everyone but I am not trying to say Ford isn't trying to fix it. I just can't understand why they are aware that rebooting can help some issues and not have this built into the more recent software updates. In another thread one member even said they supplied him code to reboot his on the fly, so they have the capability. I just can't understand what it would hurt to give people a safer way of doing this. Realistically if the dealer tells people they need to shut off the car, open the door, wait 30 seconds then restart, this is not something you can do safely on a highway but pressing a button is pretty simple.

Yeah on my old car when I traded it in I put a cap plug in place of the grommet.

Seems to be a common issue without the harness. Ford uses a pulsed voltage so it can cause issues with some ballasts so if you use a harness that pulls power direct from battery and only uses the headlight connector to turn power on/off you should be OK. To anyone that has added HIDs...can you buy the rear covers as a separate part? Just from a quick look at things it looks like you need to drill and access hole in the covers to get the HIDs installed. I would like to have an extra set of covers.

Very true...but again if they know this forced reboot can "help" the issues why not have it built into the software. If they could program it to do this automatically thery could add a button somewhere in teh menu to force a reboot/reset. Don't understand why people need to find their own work arounds when they already have a pretty good idea of what can help.

I can understand they didn't expect these problems but when dealers suggest to owners to perform these tasks you would think it would occur to Ford to add this to the software.

Does anyone know how this thing works? What I mean is what does the system do when you turn off the car? Does it go into something similar to a sleep mode rather than a true shutdown? I am assuming that is the case otherwise pulling fuses would do nothing more than shutting the car off. If this is true that the system sleeps it would make sense that over time it gets more wonky but why wouldn't Ford set it up so you could force a reboot like you can on a desktop. Seems like it would be a simple software change, worst case it isn't configurable and the system reboots while you are driving on occasion and you get the "system perfoming scheduled maintenance" screen we are all too familiar with.

Had the wife switch off the HVAC and no change at all, so this isn't from the vents at least in our car.

Damn...was hoping it was similar to the update like you mentioned. Unfortunately I deleted mine so I can't help you there. But onto what Akirby mentioned earlier...where is it defined what delayedreboot is? Maybe if that is modified then you can make it work however you want. That would be super slick and almost easy enough that I think I could get the wife to do it on her own.

Not quite true...you need to find one that is for testing the circuit but yes the majority found in auto parts stores do as you say. The one I have/had is rather old and actually has pigtails and no fuseable link but the newer ones give you tabs to connect a meter to. Back to Wilsons66604 finding...just wish you didn't have to restart the car. Would really like some fix that you can do while motoring down the highway. Or can you continue and let it do its thing and eventually it reboots is back to normal just that you are driving for a minute or so without the MFT functioning? Is there a requirement to shut off and restart?

The one I picked up for our 2011 (Valley 82162 I think) didn't require any cutting or drilling but since they changed the exhaust cans somewhere along the line it doesn't fit out car without hearing clunks. I believe your exhaust cans should be fine with any of the hitches since they are widest at the middle. There is a thread here where someone modified the Valley hitch to make it completely hidden (was my original plan) and it shows a picture of the older exhaust can style. If yours look like that you should be fine. Also AFAIK the only cutting that is required is on Sport models due to the rear valence hanging lower than other models. Currently I am awaiting a Curt 13067 which specifically shows the newer cans in the install instructions so I am hoping for the best. As for what is best for a bike rack that is really dependent on what kind of bikes and how many you are hauling. If you are doing two lightweight bikes a 1 1/4" hitch would be OK but I would make sure teh rack has some anti wobble/rattle feature built in. But if you are going to do more than two bikes or mountain/downhill bikes I would recommend a 2" reciever and some sort of anti rattle/wobble device.

Fuse tap I have gives you two fuse slots....one for the original one for the new circuit. For this idea you would use the original then one of those fuses that has pigtails. These pigtails would be wired to a switch that you can open/close at will which would be the same as pulling the fuse. As for the bad APIM module I guess anything is possible but most of my issues started with the upgrade, seems too coincidental to me. I wonder if Ford has some variability between parts that are causing many of these issues. Maybe there are some driver issues or something.

The other option I am now looking more seriously at is to add a switch to the fuse and mount the switch in the cubby behind the center stack. I mentioned it in another thread and someone said they already did it. I figure you should be able to use one of those fuse taps to wire in the switch. Right now I think this might have to be my weekend project as 2.11 has made our MFT completely useless. We have had more locks, reboots and just blank screens in one week than we did in the first five weeks of ownership.

Wishing I never did this "upgrade." Prior to the upgrade we had some slow responses and some quirkiness (minus the one nav failure) but it was still very useable you just couldn't rush it. Now the system is downright useless. As I mentioned above the the radio was ranomly changing audio sources which is new, we constantly get a notice saying call ended whenever you start up the car. We have gotten the "system maintenance" message at least 12 times and this morning the screen is completely blank. I guess it is time to start documenting all the failures so I can present it to Ford.

Well it is worth a check...next time she calls and I hear it I will ask her to shut the HVAC off.

Thanks....if it is just a simple relay that looks at the headlights to get power before powering the ballasts then any of the aftermarket harnesses should be fine...I just wasn't sure if they had something magical in there to deal with the pulsed signal.

What did you use on the headliner? I noticed some but was afraid I might make it worse. Right now the wife doesn't notice (which is unusual) but I am afraid I could make it noticeable.

Are you sure they are on the outside? Mine do not show up if there is humidity outside but if the windshield fogs inside I can see them right away. By the way Ford (in general) or at least my dealer really does a crappy job prepping these vehicles. Not only was the glass poorly cleaned there was a big greasy hand print on the A pillar, dust on the dash, the hard plastic around the window switches was all spotty etc etc.

Well that is why I am hesitant to go with the full retro kit since I have heard mixed reviews...seems like either people love them or hate them. To be honest that is the case for all HID sellers but when their price is 4x's what I paid for my DDM kit I would be far less tolerant of some hiccups. I know at least one other person here has installed the DDM kit but was hoping someone knew what was so special about the harness on the Retro solutions kit if anything.