Waldo

15 hours ago, baronizer said:

So if I tried installing from another USB Ford sent someone else for their Edge, it would not work? That's cray cray! Nickel and dimers!

You're trying to steal a copywrite protected item to save yourself money, and you're accusing Ford of being a Nickel and dimer??

You don't trust a feature designed by the engineers at Ford who know everything about the engine and have done millions of miles of testing and simulations, but you do trust a bunch of strangers on the Internet??

That being said I've always run Mobil 1 full synthetic with Motorcraft filters.  I don't put a lot of miles on my cars, so I end up changing it yearly.

11 hours ago, Edgingage said:

 

 

Waldo: thinking back, I think that part of the reason I tent to believe that wider tires have better traction may have come from seeing some sport cars and actual racing cars having wider tires on the driving wheels (engine driven wheels).  As Snoking mentioned it above, Camaros came to mind, also Corvettes, and obviously real racing cars.  Up to date, I thought the reason they have wider tires was to increase the traction and have a faster take off (in 0-20 mph, or something like that), and I thought that will also serve for a faster braking/stopping.  So, if wider tires not necessarily provide better traction, why some of those cars have wider engine/transmission-driven wheels?

 

The same physics that apply to ice driving do not really apply to performance (dry) driving.  Tires are very load sensitive and react differently at different slip angles.  When you're driving on dry pavement and generating forces over 0.5gs or so, the tire physics are much different than when you're driving on ice with very low forces.

The best explanation I can find in a quick google search is this:

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=78848

Basically it gets down to tire deformation within the contact patch and how that causes uneven distribution of the pressure.  It is true that a wider tire can generate more grip on dry pavement, but it's not because it has a "bigger" contact patch, but rather because it has a wider but shorter one.

8 hours ago, Edgingage said:

 

 

 

  I think I got it now: 10mm wider in tire size not necessarily translates in wider contact patch because, if I understand correctly, that size refers to wall-to-wall width (not specifically to contact patch width).

 

Sorry Edgingage, but you do not understand correctly.

A tire is a pneumatic device, much like a balloon.  Inside the tire is pressurized air.  Pressurized air will always distribute itself throughout the tire equally.  It will exert the same amount of force at all points on the tire.  As a result, when you apply a certain amount of load on that surface, it's going to deform so that the same amount of surface area is in contact with that load.  If you have a balloon with air inside at 50psi and you put a 50lb flat surface on top of that balloon, the amount of surface area of the balloon that contacts the loading surface will be exactly 1 square inch.  Or to sum it up, at a given tire pressure and load, the contact patch will always be exactly the same total area, no matter what size the tire is.  So while a wider tire will have a wider contact patch, it will not have a larger contact patch.  The wider tire will have shorter contact patch.  That's why narrow snow tires work, because while they make the contact patch narrower, they also make it longer.  That gives the front part of the patch some "time" to move the snow out of the way, or compact it into the tread blocks, then the back part of the patch can actually provide grip.

So if your real goal is to increase contact area on the ice, then all you need to do is lower your tire pressure.  Going to a wider tire won't make any difference.

I still don't understand, why are you looking for a wider winter tire?  Narrow tires are better in the snow.

How many keys do you have.  If you have 2, you can easily buy something online and do it yourself.  If you only have one, it's much more complicated.

What are you really trying to accomplish though?  There is no reason to just go "wider", what do you hope that having a wider tire will do?  Are you looking for cornering grip, steering response, increased rolling resistance, worse snow traction?

The tire size printed on the side of a tire is like a category.  The Tire & Rim association publishes guidelines that tire manufacturers follow and it provides a range of dimensions a tire can have and still be labeled with a certain size.  That range of dimensions is quite large and can often overlap other sizes.  In other words a tire produced by one manufacturer and labeled a 245 might actually measure only 240.  But another tire labeled a 245 could be a 253 or something.  Sometimes that information is available on sites like Tirerack.com, and sometimes it isn't.  Those dimensions are also measured on a specific rim size and at a specific tire pressure and load.  You could put the same tire on two different cars and just the weight of the car will change the actual width of the contact patch.  And the stiffness of the sidewall and other tire construction parameters can change how much that changes from one tire to another.  Not to mention that the tire contact patch width will change as the tire is loaded.  When you go into a corner the outside tire will generally get wider and the inside will get narrower, but it's the tire sidewall and construction that influence that.  

So my point is just saying you "want to buy the widest size I can fit" doesn't really make sense.  Why do you want to do this?  There are so many different tire parameters that affect how the tire and vehicle work, you can't just focus on one of them.

My 2010 MKT has the same sunroof as the Edge, and earlier this year it wouldn't close.  I took some towels and some grease and gave it a good cleaning and now it's back to normal again.  Cost me $0.  Plenty of youtube videos showing how to do it.

The blend door actuators are known to fail from time to time, so no reason to think that's any sign of things to come.  I replaced it myself for about $20.

Turbos are VERY sensitive to the amount of dirt flowing through them.  Are you really sure you're aftermarket solutions are filtering effectively and protecting your turbo?

The Mustang has a totally different water pump than the Edge.  Mustang and F150 use external pumps, the Edge and the other FWD based vehicles use an internal pump.

No, they are not compatible.  The stem mounted sensors broadcast a slightly different code than the band style sensors.  If you really know what you are doing, you could use Forscan and go into the BCM and change the parameters so it would accept the sensors, but the relearn tool you have is not going to be able to get them to work.

Ford design's their tire size to leave millimetres of clearance, not inches.  I think this will cause huge problems.

Well yes, Ford and just about every other car manufacturer try to make their vehicles look fairly similar when they are in the showroom together.  The 2020 Edge looks a lot like the 2020 Fusion in the front.  The 1992 Taurus looks a lot like the 1992 Mustang, 1992 Tempo and 1992 Crown Vic.  Take a look at a 2017 Continental and 2017 MKZ from the front and see if you can even tell which is which.

Sounds like it might be out of calibration.  The dealer should be able to re-calibrate it fairly easily.  There should never be any "self-test" of anything while you are driving.

Yea, the roof on my MKT is doing the same thing (same parts as Edge).  It wouldn't close, so I squirted some white lithium crease into the tracks and that got it to close.  I'm going to give it a good cleaning in the spring.  Has nothing at all to do with the manufacturing of the roof.

Turbos will only make any noise when you are accelerating, and then it's either a high pitched whine or a whooshing noise that you hear.  Next time you hear the noise, try to put it in neutral and coast from 60 down to 40.  If you still hear the noise, then it is not the turbos.

There should be a VIN number etched onto the metal on under the cowl, but it might be covered by the insulation pads.  It's there for theft recovery purposes and is technically supposed to be in a "secret" ie unpublished location.

22 hours ago, dajo2012 said:

I am trying to figure out a camera in the upper windshield can see around the front of the car and see the ground?

Why would it need to?  It's looking ahead at the car in front of you.  It would never let you get close enough to something that it would lose sight behind the front of the car.  Besides the radar is still there, it can "see" everything in front and isn't blocked by the hood.  The cameras that are used in the 360 parking view is mounted in the front grill, not the windshield.

It would be like trying to install Windows on a Commodore 64.  

6 minutes ago, protspace said:

You mean camera behind the windshield on the back side of the mirror? I have it also

You have a camera, but you don't have the IPMA module that interprets the image so that the ACC can use it.

Yes, the new system incorporates the windshield camera as well as the radar.  The modules that are used for Adaptive Cruise include the PCM, BCM, SCCM, Gateway, ABS, RCM, IPMA, IPC and CCM.  Chances are you'd have to replace most of those because the software you need likely wouldn't be compatible with the modules you have.  It will likely end up being cheaper to swap out your 2017 for a 2019 vehicle than it will be to try to correctly update the ACC on your 2017.

I have done a few of those things, but one thing I have never done is ignore a screen that was playing something in my field of view.  I consider myself a very focused driver, I can usually ignore everything my wife says while I'm driving, but I know I could never avoid being distracted by a screen playing right there in front of me.

12 hours ago, Jombi said:

 

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The simplest and most generic implementations of AWD at first consisted of three open diffs--front, center, and rear.  (this discussion excludes a small variety of makes, like Jeeps, Subarus, Audis, BMW X-drive and a few others that have nearly always had some sort of transfer-case or locking/LSD center differential.)  Most of these initial AWD implementations were in SUV's that started life as FWD SUVs.   So for the majority of AWD SUVs, the dominant axle is the front, which has shorter and beefier axles, and the AWD option threw in an open center diff with a little prop shaft to the back to turn a couple of pencil-thin rear axles to assist if you hit ice or snow.  It’s important to note that most of these front-dominant AWD vehicles even today will only do a max 50/50 split front/rear, because the thinner, longer axles/half-shafts in the rear simply couldn’t handle 100% of the torque if it needed to move close to 100% of the vehicle’s maximum load.  They will do their job admirably by helping in snow, even hard-pull 1/4 mile launches on dry pavement, and to help cornering, etc---but in the case of the typical grocery-getter AWD SUV, the rear driveline just isn’t beefy enough to tow a boat uphill all by itself--and the carmakers wouldn’t (shouldn't) allow that 0/100 torque split to happen if it didn’t beef up the components.

 

As an example, in my Edge, the front axles are relatively short, thick and stubby (this matters), with the fat part of the shaft about 1 ¾” diameter while the most tapered part of the shaft has a diameter of 1 3/16”.   The narrow part of the shaft is only a couple of inches in length at each end not counting the splines.  Contrast that to the rear half-shafts, which are only 7/8” diameter end-to-end, and around two feet long.  So not only are the rear shafts much thinner, they are much longer too.  Even if they were the same diameter as the front, the length makes a difference and effectively lessens the absolute load it can handle.  Consider that it’s much easier to twist and snap, say a 10-foot bar that’s an 1/2 diameter (it's already sagging at a length of 10 feet!) than a 2” long bar of same diameter.  

It's true that the rear shafts are designed to less than the max torque of the vehicle, but in slippery low speed situations, they can still handle 100% of the available torque if that available torque is less than half of the max torque.  That's how Ford can say they can deliver 100% to the rear on an Edge.

And you've got your physics backwards.  A shorter axle will be able to handle much less torque (not load, torque) than a longer axle of equal diameter.  That's how they can be so thin, because they are fairly long.

And the only difference between 4WD and AWD is which marketing department decided to put the badge on the vehicle.  There is no technical delineation between the two.  Consider that the 2011-2019 Explorer had a 4WD badge but the AWD badged Edge and Flex used exactly the same system.

17 hours ago, erikrichard said:

 

There is no advantage to a water pump being inaccessible, so I can't imagine any other reason for doing so other than to decrease the footprint of the engine so it would fit in their vehicles. 

I have never heard of a water pump that is designed for the life of a vehicle. 

Do you know of any manufacturers out there that recommend water pump replacements as part of scheduled maintenance?

The Edge and Fusion of the time were based on a Mazda platform.  It would have costs hundreds of millions of dollars to make the engine bay wider, and even then, would have resulted in a vehicle with poor turning circle and worse fuel economy.

The engine only needs to be off for 0.6 seconds for it to save fuel.  Think of all the wear and tear you are saving on the engine by not having it idling for all that time, it adds up to dozens of hours over the vehicle's life.

I'm still a little confused as to why so many people don't like it.  Is it the (incorrect) assumption of extra wear, is it the slight noise and vibrations on start-up, is it the reduced climate performance, is it the inability to creep along after stopping?  Those are all semi-legitimate reasons, but all can be overcome once you get used to it.