alphaman

I’m not a Sams Club member, and as mentioned, Costco doesn’t have anything. We’ve been nursing the MotorCraft battery along for a few months now, occasionally having to throw a trickle charger on it when it starts to display the infamous “shutting down to preserve battery” messages. All kludgy hacks must come to an end... I went to AutoZone last night, when systems started doing things too weird for my wife. (Too weird for me, actually -- an electrical engineer, and way too disconcerting for her!) Their website said they had 2 batteries for the FFE-T in stock (though not an AGM), so it seemed like a good enough option. They brought out one, a T4, and I knew it wouldn’t fit. I asked if they’d install it, and they declined, saying it was corporate policy not to do swaps on hybrids! (?) I asked if they had a socket set I could borrow, and they were happy to oblige me. I pulled the old battery, and sure enough, their model was like an inch or more too short, way too small to be locked securely in the tray. The sales guy said that my battery looked like an H5, and that they did have that in an AGM. Long story short, 20 minutes later my new Duralast Platinum H5-AGM battery with 3 year warranty was in the trunk and the Energi was good to go. CCA's are 680, up from the 590 on the MotorCraft. Two notes: The hold down strap barely fits, as the H5 is a bit taller than the MotorCraft. A little fiddling and I was able to get the two straps to interlock. The door over the battery compartment has an odd piece of plastic that looks like a clip sticking out of it that blocked latching the door correctly. I snipped off the lower part of the clip and it fit perfectly (see linked pics for the before and after). Because I had to install the battery myself, the sales guy gave me 10% off the price; nice guy. YMMV. Photos available on my iCloud "Car Stuff" album.

I've been playing my music / podcasts / nav through CarPlay, and then flipping back to Settings > Charging to see if I can actually increase the HVB voltage % while triple-clicking through EV-later. So far, the most I've been able to add back to the battery is about 4% on a 100+ mile highway trip. But I agree -- the Power Flow is cool, and I miss it being available when using CarPlay.

What did you use for paint? I've been toying with the idea of doing that, too, and these photos have just about clinched the deal for me.

I was having issues setting the Go Time, which eventually devolved into the car not talking to Ford's servers at all, and timeouts from MFM. Popped these 2 fuses out and back in, and it works again, including the Go Times (both ways, set via MFM or set via the dash). Thanks! Hope Ford gets a watchdog programmed for this so we don't have to continue to do these hard resets.

I drive most often in D. I use the Grade Assist when I want to maintain a max speed going downhill. I use L when braking to a stop or before a sharp turn, but flip back to D immediately after. It would be nice if Ford had put all 3 of these modes in one place, like what Mercedes does with their B250e using the steering wheel paddle shifters (a brilliant design, fwiw).