What have you done to your car today?

mfennell said:
Pricing on 360s that came from the factory with manual transmissions has gone full ludicrous. I stumbled on a '17 GTC4Lusso for sale locally and I've always wanted a V12 so I stopped by the dealer to check it out. Car wasn't there but when I mentioned what I had to trade, the dude was immediately on the phone with the owner, who has been driving it himself. We arranged to meet at his storage area about 15 minutes away so I cleaned the car up, hopped in an .... crank, crank, crank. No start. I've owned the car for almost 16 years and it's never failed to start.

I think it's mad at me. 🙂

Anyway, I'm deep into the intricacies of Bosch/Ferrari engine management. Since it has 2 MAFs, it has two ECUs and essentially runs as two coordinated 4 cylinder engines. The left side ECU is the master so at least I can concentrate on that one.

So far, I found a blown fuse that (confusingly) powers the interior lights, door lights, and ... the OBD2 port. That did nothing to fix the car but did confirm that both ECUs are alive. I've confirmed that the fuel pump is priming. I bought a 'noid' kit that's used to check if fuel injectors are getting triggered but I have to pull the fuel rail to access the connectors so that's on the back burner for now.

It turns out that there are multiple 12V inputs to the ECU so it's possible for it to be responsive to OBD2 but not actually run the car, so that's cool.
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As an aside... are you the same mfennell on the GRM forum?
 
iman29 said:
I mostly agree with this but it’s unavoidable in all cars today.

One of the reasons I liked the car I just got aside from the color, size, performance (the body style kinda grew on me a little more) is the center console still has tactile buttons for the most basic things i need quick access to (temp controls, audio, air flow, etc. ) that I could also bring up on the screen if I wanted to. And I do prefer a physical shifter but getting used to the buttons so far hasn’t been too bad. After a few days of actually driving it, I am getting used to the combination of touch screen vs. non touch screen functions and it seems to be a good balance. I had my other car for 10 years so like anything else I need time to adapt to everything in this one.

This is a generic pic of the console from the web not my car but for sure not everyone’s cup of tea. speaking of cups there is another deeper cupholder under the little door panel in front of the one you can see which happens to hold my 20oz Contigo insulated water cup perfectly.🙂

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This is probably a little bit of what will sell the Slate truck. Simple vehicle. I barely drive anymore so a simple electric car fits my needs better than my gas car.

Slate is actually appealing to me except I want a damn radio and I'm willing to bet it would sell 10x better if they just put a simple radio in that was Bluetooth only. Who wants to listen to their phone speaker while driving?
 
they do offer integrated speakers on the slate as an option (i think its like $400 for the full set) which i can only assume pairs through bluetooth, but i agree it seems like a stupid thing to leave out of the base configuration.
 
I hadn't really looked at the Slate much since the bed isn't really long enough to be useful for much of anything... when they do a minivan version it'll get my attention.

And a few of the "safety" features I could do without...

The "Audio Friendly" dash panels might allow for installation of a standard DIN unit:
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so my 2012 focus has a ford door keypad....I love it, lock my keys in the car when I ride, never have to carry them on me. Well about 2 month ago, it finally stopped working....I have just been lazy and hadnt gotten around to troubleshooting it. Last night, I go for a ride and my keys fell out of my pocket somehow.....Thankfully, after 15min of back tracking I was able to find them. But now im like, ok, I need to fix this door keypad. I had assumed it was wired and that the buttons just wore out after 14 years....New one from ford is about $100....but when I looked at it I realized, shit its wireless? Its just glued onto the door on my car? (several ford, its integrated into the door).....So I went home, popped the bezel apart and what do you know? a 2032 coin battery. Replaced the battery and it works again. How about that shit lol
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UtahJoe said:
so my 2012 focus has a ford door keypad....I love it, lock my keys in the car when I ride, never have to carry them on me. Well about 2 month ago, it finally stopped working....I have just been lazy and hadnt gotten around to troubleshooting it. Last night, I go for a ride and my keys fell out of my pocket somehow.....Thankfully, after 15min of back tracking I was able to find them. But now im like, ok, I need to fix this door keypad. I had assumed it was wired and that the buttons just wore out after 14 years....New one from ford is about $100....but when I looked at it I realized, shit its wireless? Its just glued onto the door on my car? (several ford, its integrated into the door).....So I went home, popped the bezel apart and what do you know? a 2032 coin battery. Replaced the battery and it works again. How about that shit lol
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So it's a jitterbug version of a key fob glued to the door?
 
UtahJoe said:
so my 2012 focus has a ford door keypad....I love it, lock my keys in the car when I ride, never have to carry them on me. Well about 2 month ago, it finally stopped working....I have just been lazy and hadnt gotten around to troubleshooting it. Last night, I go for a ride and my keys fell out of my pocket somehow.....Thankfully, after 15min of back tracking I was able to find them. But now im like, ok, I need to fix this door keypad. I had assumed it was wired and that the buttons just wore out after 14 years....New one from ford is about $100....but when I looked at it I realized, shit its wireless? Its just glued onto the door on my car? (several ford, its integrated into the door).....So I went home, popped the bezel apart and what do you know? a 2032 coin battery. Replaced the battery and it works again. How about that shit lol
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Key fob batteries don't last a year. That's incredible....
 
UtahJoe said:
so my 2012 focus has a ford door keypad....I love it, lock my keys in the car when I ride, never have to carry them on me. Well about 2 month ago, it finally stopped working....I have just been lazy and hadnt gotten around to troubleshooting it. Last night, I go for a ride and my keys fell out of my pocket somehow.....Thankfully, after 15min of back tracking I was able to find them. But now im like, ok, I need to fix this door keypad. I had assumed it was wired and that the buttons just wore out after 14 years....New one from ford is about $100....but when I looked at it I realized, shit its wireless? Its just glued onto the door on my car? (several ford, its integrated into the door).....So I went home, popped the bezel apart and what do you know? a 2032 coin battery. Replaced the battery and it works again. How about that shit lol
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My '23 Ford Transit had that exact setup. Every time I pushed the buttons, thought it was going to fall off the door. My '25 Expedition has it integrated standard in the door pillar. However, as of the '26 Expedition model year, Ford has eliminated it and the only option is the stick-on version. Expedition buyers on the FB group are going ballistic about it. I don't disagree, an $80k+ SUV and that's the cost cutting move. They also removed wireless phone charging in the console, which I do have.
 
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