mike dexter

If anybody has experience with this brand, I would like to hear your comments. Thanks.

I suggest flushing your heater core again. It is cheap and easy to do. You can even do it yourself with a garden hose & couplings, or better yet with a transfer pump, bucket, hoses, and flush chemical. Try that before moving on to more expensive diagnostics (removing & testing the heater core, blend door functionality, etc) Also, a quick check for a clogged up heater core...when it's up to running temperature, feel both heater hoses, they should both be hot.

I can tell you "what", perhaps someone else can help with "how'. With the car turned off, so it bypasses all the (smart?) logic, you need to jump the motor that closes the glass. Apply an external power - separate battery - to the pins on the motor's electrical connector that power it forward. The trouble is that there are two motors (behind the rear glass panel, and above the headliner) and each motor has a multi pin connector. Getting to the motors should not be difficult. Pull down on the headliner behind the rear opening. Then, which motor and which pins? If nobody here knows, your dealer will, and should be able to force the glass shut. Try insisting they do this, instead of thousands to diagnose and restore full functionality.

Yes, I did, thanks. It went smoothly. And if the Moog control arm turns out to be a dud, the rivets can be drilled out for easier access to the nut.

Rear defrost wire harness is on the passenger side of your back window, about midway up. Pop off the trim panel and it should be right there. Check that the connector is seated properly, is not corroded, etc. If you don't find anything obvious, disconnect it, and verify that it has voltage when the defrost is turned on. If yes, then it is the back glass itself. Which seems doubtful to me. As WWWPerfA mentions above, one broken wire usually results in only that horizontal line not defrosting. If no, then it is something between the fuse box and the harness connector.

You're right, there is a progression of events. It starts with unexplained loss of coolant, and coolant in the oil. The former, you could just visually check the coolant level (when cold) on the degas bottle every time you open the hood. To check for the latter, take off your oil fill cap and look for a milkshake consistency, instead of the regular amber or black oil color.

Based on your cars age, I suspect its the battery. When the battery starts to go, there are momentary blips in communication between the various modules, and weird stuff like this can happen. When my battery started to die, the evap system was the first to throw a fault code. Get the battery and alternator checked.

Unfortunately, it is usually the sensor ring, a toothed ring attached to the halfshaft. Look for it behind the wheel and see if it is cracked, corroded, or damaged. If you're lucky, it will be the sensor, which is fairly cheap and easy to replace.

…and went with the Moog brand control arm. The price was less than half of the Motorcrafts, and the limited remaining life of my Edge was also a decision factor. 11 winters’ worth of road salt... corrosion will kill this car before the miles do. Speaking of corrosion, I had a worst-case scenario occur when doing this job. The forward arm-to-frame bolt attaches to a cage nut that is buried inside the subframe rail. When removing the bolt, the nut broke free of its cage, but stayed stuck to the bolt, and just spun around inside the rail. I had to cut an access hole in the bottom of the rail (about the size of a credit card), and pry the cage off, to get at the nut. The nut/bolt had so little clearance to the side of the rail that it was not possible to get a socket, box end, open end, vise gip, etc on to the nut. It had to be cut out and replaced with the only M14 hex nut that my hardware store had (which was probably grade 5 or 8, and not grade 10 like the bolt). Next weekend’s project is what I could use some advice on. First, replace the temporary nut with a hex flange grade 10 nut. Then, drill and rivet a doubler plate to the bottom of the rail to replace what I cut out. I considered welding the plate instead, but that requires paying someone to do it, and makes for a much more difficult job if that plate ever has to be removed. However, I am open to being convinced otherwise. Or maybe there is a better idea that I am missing?

Standard jackstands are concave, the pinch flange on your car just rests in the bottom of the “valley”. Your flanges will get chewed up over time - just squeeze them back together with vise grips. This will certainly accelerate corrosion, but that is preferable to that rubber chunk tearing or slipping when you’re underneath the car muscling some rusted bolt loose. My advice is to skip the rubber chunks. Stay safe. The circular pads on jacks are shaped like a castle’s turret. Use the low points of those to line up with the pinch flange on your car. Or use your Edge’s scissor jack - it has a V-shaped pad that the pinch flange rests in. If none of your jacks are feasible, my advice is to buy a new jack instead of the metal adapters. I don’t like the smooth bottoms. They could slip off the jack pad when lifting.

That is a vacuum line that goes to the lower intake.

Thanks for posting this, I have to do the same job pretty soon and was thinking Moog control arms instead of Motorcraft.

Emergency brakes are drum brakes, so the rear rotors can present the same challenges to remove as well worn drums. I am like you, and let my rotors get real bad before changing them. I had this problem on one of my rear wheels once, and it was a combination of tapping the backside of the rotor, tapping front and back of the center of the rotor (3 and 9 o'clock if you're looking at the wheel), adjusting the park brake cable to ensure all tension was off it, and lots of wiggling the rotor back and forth.