TheWizard

Your response leads to questions about your use of terminology. "Ford even used HIDs any more"? HIDs are a relatively new type of lighting for headlights (and only headlights) that has come along this century (although the Lincoln Mark VIII used reflector HID headlights in 1998) and very few Ford models use LED headlights yet. HIDs are not used for daytime running lights because the high voltage ballast doesn't like being run using PWM voltage reduction so any vehicle using their headlights as DRLs is running halogen headlights rather than HIDs. With factory HID headlights, the DRLs are assigned to different lamps such as the turn signals or fog lights depending on make and model. As previously stated, there is no way to replace HID headlights with LEDs because nobody makes a bulb to fit. Halogen headlights can sometimes be switched to LED but the lamp design and particularly the dust cover on the back of the lamp can make installation difficult. Again, if you're actually talking about replacing standard incandescent miniature bulbs (turn signals - including DRLs, brake lights, side markers, etc.) with LEDs then there is no reason they won't work as long as you get the correct bulb type for each location. You may need load resistors to prevent the turn signals from hyper-flashing if you replace those bulbs.

Agreed. Simply railing against "buffoons" is not helpful. Granted there are some people who know why some headlight modifications are bad but don't care about anyone else as long as they get what they want - those are the buffoons. But there are a lot of people who simply don't know why they shouldn't do things like install HID kits in halogen reflector housings. We should be educating them rather than just calling them names.

If you already have HID headlights, why would you want to change them to LED? Aside from the fact that nobody makes an LED replacement bulb for factory HIDs... if they did you would lose effective lighting output for the small benefit of no warmup time and possibly longer bulb life. On the other hand, if you're replacing factory halogen headlights, the replacement LED bulbs should plug right in although you may have issues with space at the back due to the cooling fan or heat sink. And unless you paid a premium price for top-of-the-line LED bulbs (such as Diode Dynamics or V-LEDs), you're still going to lose effective lighting. You would be much better off replacing halogen bulbs in projector headlights with a good HID kit. Please, don't even think about replacing halogen bulbs with either HID or LED in reflector headlights. Now, if you're talking about replacing other bulbs besides the headlights (ordinary incandescent bulbs) with LEDs, they should be exact plug in replacements. Just be sure to match the bulb numbers (i.e. replace a 3157NA turn signal bulb with a 3157 amber LED bulb).

As compared to allowing your speed to vary, yes. As opposed to you manually trying to maintain the same speed, no. You're going to lose mileage by trying to maintain a steady speed whether you do it or the cruise control does. I found that turning off overdrive through the mountains caused only a small drop in mileage but made the ride much more comfortable because of far less shifting. It probably saved some fuel as well when compared to the frequent shifting done by the automatic with overdrive enabled.

Wow! Five years without changing wiper blades? That's amazing! Here in Florida we have to replace blades (used to be just refills but nobody sells those anymore) every six months. In fact, that's the industry standard although it's probably intended more for selling blades than any other reason - just like 3,000 mile oil changes. In Toronto I used to replace once a year because the road salt in the winter would destroy the rubber. I have tried many different brands over the years. I am forced to use Motorcraft on my Mustang because nobody else seems to make the right mount but I've used Trico, Bosch, Rain-X, Anco and several others on other vehicles. Rain-X is the only brand I would never buy again. I just installed a set of Michelin blades on my wife's car. I'll let everyone know how they do after they get used for a while.

As described in the links provide by enigma-2, error free and can-bus are basically the same thing. CAN bus is an international network standard used by many car manufacturers to control circuits with microprocessors. It stands for Controller Area Network and it's basically a peer-to-peer network (devices communicate with each other without requiring a central server). The network is commonly used to display an error (message or warning light) when a bulb is burned out so many LED manufacturers use it as a synonym for error free. COB is an acronym for Chip On Board, one of several types of LED designs. SMD (Surface Mounted Device) is the other common design used in LED bulbs these days. DIP (Dual Inline Package) is the type you normally think of when you think LED - it looks like a tiny bulb with two lead wires. COB and SMD are similar in that they are surface mounted but COB is a single circuit regardless of how many actual diodes are included whereas SMD has a separate circuit for each diode. COB design makes overall circuit design simpler and also tends to have the highest output (in lumens) of the three types. Cree is a brand name. They are known for being on the leading edge of LED design but they have produced several generations of LEDs so that name by itself is no guarantee of a brighter bulb (it could be a bulb built with 2-year-old Cree LEDs which aren't nearly as bright as current ones). Just to throw another variable at you... the rated brightness of an LED bulb (in lumens) doesn't necessarily correspond to the actual brightness when used in a vehicle. That is also dependent on the housing and reflector design. For example, I have found a number of vehicles where an SMD tower bulb looks much brighter than a Cree bulb that might have a higher rating. That's because Cree bulbs tend to rely on just a few very powerful LEDs where an SMD bulb has many more LEDs (often 30 or more). With some reflectors, the sheer number of LEDs on the SMD fill out the light much better than the fewer more powerful Cree LEDs so the light is more effective.

I had been wondering about the indexing myself - especially since the original Sync has a bug that causes it to declare that its index is full even when nothing has changed on the USB stick. I used to have a Kenwood head unit that would play tracks or playlists from a USB drive without indexing so I did some research. The difference is that Sync gives you the capability to find music by playlists, tracks, artists, albums, and even genres. In order to do that, it must have a complete picture of what's on the media which it gets by indexing the metadata tags within the music files. The Kenwood (and probably the Honda mentioned earlier) simply allowed selecting music by files or folders - basically what Sync's "Explore USB" option does. So you could browse albums (folders) and tracks (files) and playlists (M3U files) but you couldn't search for music based on the metadata in the files such as genre. You couldn't even select music by artist unless you structured your device with album folders within artist folders... and even then you would miss out on tracks in compilation albums (you know - those "various artists" albums).

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That Ford On Board quote is an interesting analysis but in some ways incomplete. Yes, increasing ethanol content will increase octane allowing higher compression (because there is a limit to ignition timing advance effectiveness) and therefore more efficient engine design. However, there would have to be other changes as well. As mentioned, ethanol is less energy dense than gasoline so it inherently produces lower mileage. Gains in engine efficiency would have to be sufficient to overcome that deficit or else the government would have to modify CAFE regulations to allow lower mileage ratings based on the fact that the use of fossil fuels would still decrease with a higher percentage of ethanol. And the cost of the fuel would have to be lower enough to make consumers put up with more frequent fill-ups. Then you have other practical issues. Ethanol blends are more difficult to ship and store due to being more corrosive and hygroscopic. Gas stations that aren't busy and don't turn over their inventory frequently will have significant problems with moisture in their fuel. And if they have to choose between E10 and E30 because they don't have enough underground tanks to carry both, most will choose E10 because it's a much larger market. So the propagation of higher ethanol blends (and the vehicles that use them) will be slowed due to lack of selling facilities.

I'm curious... what does Mazda list as the horsepower for each grade of fuel? The 5.0 Mustang goes from 408 on 87 octane to 420 on 91+ octane - a difference of just 3% at a cost of 30% per gallon. That 3% gain is peak horsepower at 6500 RPM. The gain at lower engine speed is minuscule.

Actually, they were comparing a 2015 to a 2016 (the 2015 on premium and the 2016 on regular). There are other differences between the models that probably accounted more for the difference than the fuel - especially that the 2016 was 109 pounds heavier. They mention in the article that there is no difference in peak torque and for horsepower the "drop is marginal". Since there is no more energy in higher octane fuel, the engine performance only improves because of the higher octane's resistance to knock allowing advancing of the ignition timing somewhat but that's still fairly conservative in street vehicles and doesn't make a significant difference... certainly not as much as the 30% higher cost per gallon. And I guess the definition of a "performance car" must be relative to other vehicles in the same class. The Edge Sport is certainly a better performer than most other CUVs but not so much compared to the car market. For example, my naturally aspirated V6 Mustang does the quarter mile about a second faster and yet I don't consider it a performance car by any means. The Mustang GT (and Camaro SS, Challenger SRT8, Corvette, ...) simply blows us both away.

It's probably safe to assume that if they only charge $40 per year, they're not going to want you using any more bandwidth than what it takes to remote start and even if it could be hacked to provide more access, they would turn it off as soon as they saw the usage.

I'm glad you mentioned that because in over 40 years in the automotive business in one way or another, that was a term I hadn't heard used like that. Some big twin motorcycles have drive belts, CVT transmissions have them as do some lawnmowers and tractors. I did look around online and found a few references equating drivetrain belt with serpentine belt but it seems to be an uncommon usage - hence the confusion. It's always good to learn something new.

Maybe he's thinking about the AWD Conversion kit from KaleCoAuto (the people who bring you blinker fluid)? The adapters mount to the front and rear hubs allowing the belt to drive the rear wheels on a FWD vehicle. They recommend not making left or right turns after installation. http://kalecoauto.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=8&products_id=18&zenid=l5hLL6fQtSrLQJhNJ9w181

Regular SiriusXM subscriptions can be transferred by the account holder (i.e. the previous owner) if they want/remember to do so. However, lifetime subscriptions have not been offered for several years and were only transferable under certain conditions. They could be transferred up to three times (for a $75 fee each time) between portable receivers but only once to a built-in car receiver. I got a lifetime subscription for $299 way back in 2006. At the time I was using portable receivers that plugged into the factory radio system in my car and on my bike. When I got my Mustang with Sirius built-in, they allowed me to transfer the lifetime subscription to it but advised me that it could not be transferred again. The subscription has more than paid for itself - especially since I use the included online listening all day at work - so if I ever sell the car, I won't be too upset about losing the lifetime subscription. It is possible that the previous owner had a similar situation and you will benefit from it. But it is more likely that the previous owner had an annual subscription that auto-renews and they either haven't cancelled it or your radio was off during the week or so after it was cancelled. SiriusXM sends out deactivate signals frequently during the first week or ten days after ending an account but after that they only send that signal every few months. If your radio is off when the cancellation signal is sent (perhaps you were on vacation that first week) then you will continue to receive the programming until they happen to catch the radio on when the cancellation is sent. It doesn't cost them any more when there are extra receivers still working (they still have to broadcast for subscribers) so they don't get really pushy with the cancellation signals after the initial push. Enjoy it while you have it.

Gas tank additives won't do any good because they never get to the valves on a direct injection engine.

"Capsule" is the technical name for what most people call the "bulb" in an HID system. In fact, it is being called a bulb much more commonly now so I should probably get with the times. Unlike a traditional bulb, it has a return wire that runs down the outside instead of having all the wires inside the glass. That return wire has been known to cause a shadow in the beam pattern much like you're describing (a finger or tiny wedge shape). Depending on the particular type (H7, H9, 9006, etc.) the bulb can be removed from the socket and rotated before reinstalling to position the return wire differently from where it was originally (e.g. it might go from the one o'clock position to the seven o'clock position). Sometimes a little trimming of the locking tabs on the bulb might be necessary to allow it to be inserted in a different orientation and still twist to lock in place. The object is to get the return wire into a position where the shadow it casts is in the area of the beam pattern that is blocked by the cutoff shutter in the projector so that you don't see it on the road.

It sounds like the shadow might be a common problem caused by the return wire of the HID capsule. When possible, rotating the capsule in the socket can eliminate that shadow by moving it to a blocked off area of the beam pattern.

Yes but you can get a pack of four for under $6 on Amazon (with free 2-day shipping if you have Prime). You want 50W 6-ohm resistors.

Yes, both side taillight wiring runs in a harness down the left side of the vehicle under the door sills. I never had a problem with the tape. I've used it in several vehicles and as long as there is airspace around the resistors it never gets hot enough to damage the tape. After all, it's only in use intermittently for the turn signals. If it was running lights, brake lights or something else that would be on for extended periods then I might be concerned. Get the resistors that are inside heat sink cases and it should be fine.

You don't have to install the resistors close to the lamps. They only have to be connected in parallel anywhere within the turn signal circuit. I mounted mine to a metal support under the left side of the dash using two-sided tape and connected to the rear turn signal wires behind the left kick panel. I don't remember the wire colors but they are the same in the harness behind the kick panel as they are behind the lamp itself.

Wow! I didn't realize that "alternative facts" had spread so much. "more the norm" implies "the majority". If 51% or more of Edge AWD models were experiencing PTU failures, don't you think there would be a significant uproar (and not just in online forums). Or maybe the press isn't covering it like they didn't cover the "Bowling Green Massacres". Ford has sold an average of about 117K first generation Edges per year in the US. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that half were AWD. That's over 58K potential failures each year. I suspect that less than 1% have actually failed (probably FAR less than 1%). Not that several hundred failures isn't a big deal that should be dealt with, but it certainly isn't "the norm". The same thing was happening with 11-14 Mustang MT82 manual transmissions. A number of them were failing and the screaming started on the forums. But the vast majority of owners (including myself) never had a problem (I still don't). You can't judge the scope of an issue by online forums because they represent only a tiny fraction of owners and those are likely to be the ones who complain anyway. People don't join a forum to post how happy they are with their vehicle so forum memberships consist mostly of enthusiasts, people who have specific questions, and complainers.

Nick was referring to a common swap where an H11 bulb is replaced with an H9 requiring just a slight modification to the socket to allow the harness to plug in (a small plastic tab has to be removed). The H9 bulb is essentially identical to the H11 but produces almost twice as much light (with bulb life being something of a trade-off). Similarly, a 9006 bulb can be replaced with a 9012 by just trimming a portion of the top locating tab to make it fit the 9006 socket. You gain about twice the light without giving up bulb life but they are more expensive. However, you already have the 9012 so that conversion isn't an option.

If you have an Ecoboost engine then that area has shutters that close as vehicle speed increases. That could cause problems where a light bar might be in the way of the shutter operation or the shutters could damage the light bar or its wiring. Why do you want a light bar there? For visibility to other drivers (like DRLs) or to increase forward light output?

I'm curious... what country? You show Miami in the US Northeast (I was unaware that it had been moved out of Florida ) as your location.