Thub

The girlfriend picked the replacement to the Impala last week. I snagged one decent picture at time of purchase. I've been too busy with work to really go through the car for her and adjust a few things with it yet. 2016 Mazda CX5 Grand Touring AWD. 2.5L with just shy of 32k miles. I went and test drove a lot of cars with her and the CX5 is definitely the sharpest looking and best driving vehicle in that class. It came down to obviously picking a quality vehicle, but the interior and exterior looks, and handling sealed the deal for her. The CX5 looks great, handles great, has way more room than you would expect. This GT has every option except the lane keeping, and radar cruise control. I personally do prefer Mazdas application of a larger displacement NA 4 cylinder instead of the smaller turbo charged setup.

Pretty sure my girlfriends Impala got totaled last Friday. We were making a left turn, I was sitting shotgun (waiting for a passing car) and anther girl blew right into us. She hit the brakes and tried to go for the ditch at the last second. Hit us hard enough to blow all the airbags in her Malibu and mush the Impalas suspension up and push the tire out at a good angle. We were 3 blocks from my moms house so I had to call her to come to the rescue. You can see I was in total weekend mode already, sandals and swimming trunks. I paid them a visit since the yard they took them too was right up the road from work.

I agree a lot with what other have said but I will say this forum really got traction because of a select group of members who were very passionate about their vehicles and went to great lengths to care for them and develop worth while modifications. Everyone cared about each other and what they were doing with their vehicle and wanted to follow what was happening. I own one of the most popular vehicles in the country but I have only posted to an F150 forum maybe a handful of times. One reason is because I bought a high trim vehicle and there isn't much to do to make it better, and the second is that anything I need for info is usually in a good youtube video thanks to the hundreds of thousands of other F150 owners. Also there is Ford Tech Makuloco who pretty much revolutionized the youtube tutorial for car repairs. These guys that come up with great tutorial videos for common vehicles are guaranteed to become an instant success.

The F150s moonroof/sunroof took a crap on me. The plastic track guides cracked and exploded all over when I tried to open the window last week. It got suck open so I was forced to make an emergency repair. After researching the job and finding out it is a major undertaking I ordered the replacement parts from the Sunroof Doctor. I wasn't going to pay $1000 or more to someone to fix this when I knew I could handle it, just super time consuming. Step 1. Tear the entire interior apart to drop the headliner...took about 1.5 hours Step 2. Get a helper and drop the track/tray assembly that is bolted to the roof. Given the size of the F150 and the huge window this piece was huge and not easy to remove from the truck. Alot of people said to remove the passenger seat and sub woofer but I left both in to save time and maybe yelled a few more curse words in order to pull the assembly out... about 45 mins. Step 3. Disassembly the track and tray assembly and clean and prep for new parts...1 hour Step 4. Install new parts, grease, reassemble, and manually test the track and adjust...1 hour Step 5. Get my buddy to help me reinstall the track assembly in the truck and bolt up...30 min Step 6. Hook everything backup, double check everything, and reinstall interior parts...1.5 hours Step 7. Test sun roof and make adjustments to track and glass alignment for final fit...30 min Step 8. Clean interior of the truck since it was a total mess from the job...30 min That made for over a 7 hour job, probably closer to 8 with breaks and other screwing around. All spread out over 3 days. Easy to see why this is a +$1000 repair when it takes a full day of labor. I didn't take many pictures since I was in total "get the job done" mode. Here's one with the headliner dropped and the track/tray assembly removed. You can see the massive side curtain airbags covering the entire cab. Here's the track and tray assembly removed from the truck. I had just drilled the rivets out holding the back portion on when this picture was taken, explaining all the metal shavings. Otherwise the truck has been doing great. I towed 6000 lbs a few weeks ago from Madison to Green Bay and it drove excellent. With a heavy wind on my tail and towing that load I got upwards of 20mpg. (Empty 2200 lb trailer into the wind got me 14 mpg)

Thanks Jeff. That blue jeans color has a way of hiding all the salt spray I couldn't be happier with the truck so far, no complaints in the 2 years of ownership yet with the exception for the crappy Sync 2 system. The only things on the wish list for it now are: Sync 3 upgrade Bilstein 5100 shocks (just to bump the front end up an inch or so) I'd maybe consider a 87 octane tune and an aluminum intercooler once its out of warranty but there are no mountains and the air isn't usually that hot here. Besides I am quite happy with the output of the Ecoboost where its at right now. We did have a pretty good winter here this year, alot more than the last few years but nothing to crazy. A lot more ice than usual too. The Dueler Alenzas are a good street tire but they lack any major grip in poor conditions. The KO2s tread is a little softer and grabs into the snow and ice much better, helps that the tread depth is like 16/32nds too.

I got some new shoes...or boots for the F150. Also replaced the cracked and rusting stock lugs nuts with a set of black locking Gorilla lug nuts. LT 275/60/R20 BFG KO2s (33s, for reference the Raptor runs 35s stock) Its absolutely amazing the difference these tires make. The truck rides like a truck now and they look awesome. I got it up to 80mph on the highway and the difference in noise compared to the Dueler street tires is barely noticeable, they are super quiet for how aggressive the tread is. I wasn't 100% sure on how the black lugs would look on the chrome rims but I trusted my gut and I think I made the right choice. Gotta like how the Gorilla locking lug nut looks like a normal lug nut too. Set me back $255 a tire fully installed.

I wonder if all the engineers evening working on the new Aluminum body vehicles know this exists. One would think they would want to examine as many of those older aluminum bodies as possible. Maybe since Ford played with a lot of aluminum in the past 20 years they don't need too. I see everyday on older Mustangs, Explorers, F150s, Expeditions, you name it. All had the same paint peeling and oxidizing issue, lol. The hood on my truck is looking good yet though.

I bought the F150 in March of 2017 with 38,000 miles. It currently has almost 58,000 on it. A few cross country trips really rolled them up.

Did a little PM work and some computer related modifications to the F150 this weekend. Started out with a transmission fluid change/pan drop and filter change on the 6R80 since I'm closing in on 60k miles. Overall it was actually pretty straightforward. Ford could have made it way easier by putting a real dipstick on the transmission but whatever I managed to reach up in between the cat and the side of the transmission with an heavy leather glove to check the fluid level without getting burned. Others who have driven vehicles equipped with the 6R80 could probably confirm how good of a job Ford did on its shift schedule and quality but with the fresh fluid it was really smooth and crisp. The Ecoboost/6R80 combo is so quiet and smooth you couldn't even feel the shifts or engine change speed, the RPMs would drop and you'd just keep moving faster. (I know that sounds like a CVT equipped car but it really just goes to show the refinement that Ford put into a pickup truck.) Manually downshifting with the toggle switch was equally satisfying. Most of the bolts removed and draining out over the exhaust...the dumbest part of the whole design and job. Inside the 6R80. You can see the dipstick in the far left front corner of the transmission, notice the massive catalytic converter right behind it where the dipstick access point is. The 6R80 is sealed well, when you crack the 19mm cover nut you can hear the transmission suck in air releasing the vacuum. Then I got to work on the some programming work with Forscan, I had previously activated DRL fog lights, so I continued with adjusting the code to allow the fog lights to remain on with the high beams. I then activated the compass feature in the IPC screen, so I have the full compass app in the IPC and a direction readout all the time on the IPC screen as well as the compass readout on the MFT screen. Several days ago I also installed the Hill Descent Control switch, turns out I didn't have to activate it using Forscan as it was already activated in my truck, just needed the switch. Needless to say that feature works pretty well, it uses ABS to keep the truck from going over a set speed. HDC and Traction Control combo switch. IPC compass app. A nice touch as the vehicle shown is actually a pickup truck.

Probably double that noise because I doubt the Fusion has 2 - 15 or 16 inch fans.

The F150s A/C is kinda fussy like that. Its kinda lame and struggles to produce cold air when its just sitting still or driving slow but when your at cruising speed on the highway the A/C blows ice cold. Its almost obnoxious how loud the high speed cooling fan is on the F150 too, I don't understand how a fan that big roaring that fast can't move enough air over that huge opening but I guess it doesn't quite cut it.

Not to often that I have put the 1500lbs of payload capacity to real work, but these old railroad ties were really heavy. I bet that was a solid 900-1000lbs of old wood. Truck rode like an absolute dream with that weight.

In case anyone is wondering what a good oil sample looks like from a 3.5L Ecoboost. I thought I should get a base line for the truck, this oil had between 5000 and 6000 miles on it, a good mix of regular driving, moderate to heavy towing 5000-8000lbs, and a long 2000 mile road trip. No wear metals, no fuel (good sign for the Ecoboost since they suffer from oil dilution due to the high pressure), no coolant, and no water.

So I did a rear brake job on my sisters car, 2014 Mazda CX-5. Rotors were trashed, lots of pulsing, very rusty, etc. Pretty straight forward and easy job. I take the passengers side rear caliper apart and find one slide pin is bent, and one is all full of brown goop and corroded. So I went to the Mazda dealer in hopes of finding OEM slide pins...I'll just say, don't waste your time with Mazda and their parts department, their only option was to buy a whole new caliper bracket for over $120, and apparently there are only 18 of those in the whole USA. So luckily O'Reilly had what I needed. Put it all back together and wow what a difference, that car has really snappy brakes when they are actually working. I'm not sure how many miles were on those brakes, there was lots of pad left but they were all chopped up and uneven. I read a few things online and I would have to agree with others that Mazda skimped on the brake lubricant from the factory. So I really loaded them up with the good Motorcraft silicone brake lube. New pads and rotors were Wagner TQ ceramic and Wagner Premium E-Coat. So hopefully no dust and no rust.

The front rim is from the Gen 4 (2000-2003 MY cars) the rear "step ledge" rim is from the Gen 4.5 (2004-2007 MY cars).