dr.edge

Nice. I'll have to wait for a couple of months until it warms to get a chance to really work on the car (Georgia is a little warmer this time of year than Minnesota) but adding some Dynamat is on my list of tweaks I was going to do. Any other areas you think would benefit from some sound deadening?

True enough. Maybe in the spring time I'll take care of that and give them a bit of glitter. How did the Dynamat work out? Any noticeable difference in sound?

There is a good sized grommet/rubber boot that seals the steering column as it goes through the firewall. Push it through there from the inside into the engine compartment and then pull it through to the battery.

Someone's got a bit too much time on their hands.

Geez, I don't know...mine match my paint.

And I'm sure that she uses it in such a way that it doesn't cause any issues. There are still other "real" people that have issues. My latest was that I couldn't stream audio over Bluetooth. It's been working fine over the last couple of weeks and then yesterday when I started it up, no audio. My iPhone's showing the podcast advancing and if I switch to speaker it works. Switch back to "SYNC" and no audio. Dig out the USB cable and connect up and now I can hear the audio but now I have to use the screen interface to back up the podcast to the point where I'd left off. All the time trying to navigate traffic on my way to work. Talk about frustrating. This morning, it works the way it should. That's the biggest frustration - you just don't know if it will work or not. It seems that one of the factors that Ford didn't take into account the first time around was that people will use their software in a multitude of ways and stress it differently. Hopefully the "beta testing process they borrowed from software manufacturers" (to quote them directly), will allow them to resolve enough issues that everyone will have a satisfying experience.

The "switched 12V" that I was referring to is just the 12V that you're using to turn on the LED's. If you want these to run as DRL's then this would typically be a circuit that comes on when the car is running. Doesn't necessarily need to be anything special, heck, you could even use Fuse 29 if you wanted to push your luck (maybe having the extra load might fix some MFT issues!) If you want to actually have a switch so that you can turn this function off and on (which is what I did as well), then yes, you have a wire run from the fuse box or headlight circuit to one side of a switch, and the other side of the switch runs to the (+) positive input to the DC - DC converter (it's not a transformer). Also, the issue that I ran into with the common ground was probably due to the fact that I was connecting all the negative leads to chassis ground. If I had run two wires (positive and negative) all the way from the power supply output to the LED's, it would have worked just the way you'd expect. By time I discovered the issue I had already run all the wiring and didn't want to have to lace in a couple of more isolated ground wires to the LED's.

Here's the power supply that I used. The nice thing is that the output can be set to a number of different voltages. The LED strips can handle the higher voltages, and the output really increases, but I wouldn't want to guess how long they'll last. Either way, you can play around with the different settings to see how much light you want to create. The one issue that I had to deal with is that the power supply doesn't like having it's input and output negative leads tied together (ground should be common right?). When I first hooked it up like that, it didn't work and after some troubleshooting, I found that I needed to disconnect the input negative wire. So I've got - Power supply input +12V lead connected to switched 12v Power supply input negative lead floating Power supply output +15V - +24V lead connected to LED bar positive Power supply output negative lead connected to chassis frame LED bar negative lead connected to chassis frame Without knowing the circuitry inside the power supply it's hard to say why this works, but it does for me. YMMV. Hope that helps.

The LED strips that I installed (not quite the same as the dual mode ones you ordered, but close) can't be dimmed down as they start to flicker at about 12V. In order to boost the output sufficiently, I had to install a dedicated DC power supply that provides about 16V to the strips. I can switch it to even higher voltages if I wanted to but I'm pretty sure the trade off would be in reduced life span. If you mount them in the existing LED parking lights, they're not too bright compared to the headlights at night as the diffuser bar spreads the light out. If you mount them by themselves, pointed through the grill somewhere, then they might be a bit bright, but I doubt it.

The frequencies currently in use are X, K, Ka 34.7 and Ka 35.5. Check out RadarTest for some good reviews of current technology being deployed on both sides of the radar gun.

Nope.

At some point I may take you up on the offer but for now I think I'll stick with my 9500ix. Here's where I have the remote currently mounted. It's not quite as much of a heads-up display as yours but I'm going to work on something similar and see how it turns out.

So, did these come with the radar detector or did you just build out an LED circuit to trigger off of it?

That's what I figured. Once the weather warms up, I can see a frustrating/interesting weekend in my future.

The LEDs lighting up the console are great! Were they much of a pain to install? It looks like you would have to remove the console bezel and drill a couple of holes to mount them.

I swapped in Polk MM571's for both the front and rear speakers.

I used the same location that the factory ballasts use. It's on the side of the headlight assembly and is just the right size. I drilled a hole top and bottom through the supporting flange and then just ran a cable tie through it and around the ballast. It ends up being nice and secure and easily removed if necessary.

It takes such a small thing to make you happy.

Everyone has a different idea about what looks good but since you asked, I think they're completely mismatched with the style and type of car. If that's the look you're trying to achieve, then you nailed it.

Yes, you always have to boost the voltage - at least for this particular kit, I'm assuming others are similar. And the DRLs ARE always on, I just wanted to have the option of switching them off if I wanted to revert it back to completely stock appearance without having to pull some connector. Or, if I want to run the headlights as DRLs, then I can switch the LEDs off and activate the headlights as DRLs. But either way, they're all running off fuse #91 (#89 doesn't exist on the Sport) so that they're activated automatically.

These LEDs need to run at 15 - 16V (that's what the original control box provided). At normal battery voltages, they're too dim so just hooking them to a 12V source wouldn't work. I saw the same reports from people saying that they just cut out the failed control module and wired it directly to the battery. They must not be too concerned about how much light they produce. On mine, everything is hooked up to a switched 12V source so it's all automatic, the switches are only there so I can select what I want to have as DRLs. Most of the time I just run with the lower LED bars, but if I want to, I can have the headlights lit as DRLs, or both. I don't use the switches to turn them on as they are on whenever the engine is running. Thanks, but I like having them as bright as they are now all the time. Like I said, at night, they match the 6000K HID kit I have installed.

It's hard to say exactly how much brighter the lights are - maybe 3 - 4 times brighter? There's only one high power LED in the original assembly firing vertically through the diffuser, while the new unit has 5 LED's. Either way, they're bright enough that if I'm stopped behind a car on a sunny day, I can see their reflection quite clearly. The other reason that I went through all the effort to add them in is that at night, I wanted them to more closely match my HIDs. With this setup, they're both in the 6000K range, rather than the sickly yellow that the stock lights put out. Here's a link to the DRL kit I used.. Since the auto-sensing wiring harness wasn't working for me, I used a PST-DC2171 DC to DC converter from PowerStream to drive it at 15V. If you want it brighter still, you can drive it at either 18V or 24V but I'm not sure how long the LEDs would last. Here's a picture of the power supply mounted behind the dash just to the left of the glove box. The 3 switches (2 blue, 1 red) just in front are for controlling whether or not the LEDs or HIDS come on while the engine is running. The third switch is my MFT reset switch (basically installed inline with fuse 29). The switches are hidden by the glove box cover but accessible when you open it..

Check out Fuelly for real world results. My highway mileage is about the same as yours and as you can see, overall average seems to be settling in around 19.2 MPG with a high ratio of city driving.

And yes, they were taken today, 5 days before Christmas, in Minneapolis! No white Christmas for us this year!

Good post, here's some additional info after running these as DRL's for a while. The intensity of the lights is reduced a bit by keeping the diffuser bar in place, but not that much. The bigger factor that impacts how visible they are (as you found out) is how they are aimed as they have a fairly tight beam pattern. Once you get off-axis, they really lose their intensity. The wiring harness that usually comes with these is a piece of junk. It's intended to just hook directly to the battery and when it sees the voltage jump to the normal charging voltage (13.6V - 14V) it switches a relay to supply a boosted voltage to the LEDs - something around 16V. I found that this would rarely work and even after getting a replacement from the vendor, it still didn't work. You can't just connect them to battery voltage since they need more than the typical 12V (at least these ones did). I used an aftermarket 12V to 18V DC power supply and that seems to drive them quite nicely. I could go with a higher voltage and they get brighter still, but I think that may impact their longevity. When I started this mod, I wasn't sure if I was going to keep the diffuser bar in place which is why I split the lens assembly from the back. I think you'd want to that no matter what since cutting the slot in the rear generates a fair amount of plastic shavings that would end up inside the light and I wanted to make sure that it would be clean inside when I sealed it all up. Finally, here are a couple of pictures, one with the OEM LED's lit, the second is with the high intensity LED's lit. I just used my phone so the exposure's not the best, but you can see a bit of the difference between the two.