u/Technical_Union_1692

My 2016 Limited running errands earlier today 🫠 not bad for a 10 year old car that just hit 113k miles

My grandpa was a great woodworker and many years ago made a John Deere Tractor out of wood with a cart too. All these years later I still have it 🚜

About 3 months ago my 16 limited had a weird vibration in the steering wheel and I had all the front suspension components/steering rack looked over and they all looked good. I did notice a shock absorber looking part near the front crossmember area. I decided to try and look up a replacement part and I removed the old part and slide in the new dampener. It did fix the vibration issue. The old one had excessive play at the jounts and was leaking a bit of fluid.

*Picture of part number, old part and location of where the new one went

The stock rims on my 16 limited were pretty corroded and 2 of them were bent. Back in January I did have a tire shop install some new Ford oem rims along with new center caps and had the tires roadforce balanced. Id say Im happy with the look of them!

Nothing beats an afternoon mow 🚜

If you have a 5th gen 4WD explorer this for you guys! If you have have what looks like grease build up and wet spots on the front cover of your rear differential or even your rear cv axles seeping a bit of gear oil most likely your differential vent plug is clogged/bad causing these issues.

Thankfully the repair is pretty easy. You'll need a new vent plug and an 7/16 (11mm will work too) open end wrench as a socket won't fit over the cap. I reached over the rear crossmember and one turn a time I loosened the vent cap and I opted to wrap the new part threads will blue monster tape and installed opposite of removal. All in all this took about 15 minutes and when i added a little gear oil back into the fill plug I added some uv dye and thoroughly cleaned off the rear cover with brake cleaner and after 2 days the uv light showed no leaks! Hope this helps! *pictures of vent location, old part removal, replacement part number, tape and uv dye

Out of curiosity to those who do their own service work. Do you guys prefer a jack/jacket stands or driving up on ramps? I don't always have access to a garage at home but use rhino Ramos with bricks in front to prevent sliding. So far I find it faster and easier when doing oil changes after work or in this case draining the radiator. Also that under hood light and spill proof funnels are worth their weight in gold.

Hey everyone, was just wanting to make a general topic post about the transmission adaptive learning. Has anyone had good success disabling it via forscan or with the appropriate scantool?

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I only ask as any modern Ford vehicle Ive driven it seems to run better with it off vs on. Ive probably done it on 15 plus different Fords ranging from Explorers (mainly the 5th gens especially with the 6f35), Escapes, F 150s (with both the 6r80 and 10r80) and a few others. The main reason being they bought their vehicles used and thought the transmission seemed off in terms of shift quality. Id go in and do a test drive to confirm then with their permission would clear the TCM tables and disable the learning if the option was available. Id tell them to drive it for a week and let me know how its running and its always been positive feedback.

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Id love to hear opinions and experiences. And for those who didn't know about this might learn something they didn't know.

Had a very unusual issue happen on a 2016 limited 2.3l this week.

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Here were the symptoms:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday: hard/slam shifts, harsh reverse to drive engagement, jerky throttle input/response

Tuesday/Thursday: no heated/cooled seats and loose feeling power steering

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Prior to the diagnosis the valve body/leadframe was replaced in the 6f35, transmission was serviced multiple times, Seat control module was replaced and programmed and the suspension was checked along with an alignment. NONE OF THIS fixed anything. The owner was getting mad about the intermittent randomized behavior and was about ready to just sell the car. I wanted to investigate.

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Here's what I did:

Verified fuse 72 and the connector were good (they were), check the fuse box under the dash for that loose black connector (it was plugged in), and unplugged and plugged back in the seat control module under the driver seat. Buttons for the heated/cooled seats would light up but scantool data said the temperature wasn't changing.

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I did check the front and rear suspension and everything was tight and the tires had even wear but the steering wheel felt loose and liked to fall to the left even when the car was going straight.

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For the transmission the fluid was clean and the transmission/engine mounts were replaced last month with oem parts.

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I did test drive it and noted the shifts were very inconsistent and the throttle response bordered on both overly sensitive while being very laggy at the same time. I was stumped, I thought something is causing multiple modules to not want to function like there a communication/network issue. I got to digging online and heard about the data link/gateway module can play a factor in making a vehicle behave like a flood car. Keep in mind there were no codes when i scanned the vehicle. I decided if the gateway module is possibly bad im gonna unplug it and do a very brief test drive.

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What followed was craziness but confirmed the issue. With it unplugged the transmission shifted perfect and the steering was nice and tight (but eventually got almosy locked up due to module being disconnected so i pulled over and plugged it back in). When i plugged it back in the heated/cooled seats were working again (until i turned the car off then back on they stopped working) and the transmission was back to being all over the place. As of today the shop replaced his gateway module and everything works again! Ive never seen a gateway fail in this way and cause so many intermittent issues that come and go with every key cycle that through no codes.

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I did note that at times my scantool wouldn't communicate with the ecu but it wasn't everytime. Since the module was replaced its back to running normal. Heres a picture of what the part looks like and the communication error message I was getting. If anyone is having a similar set of issues this might be playing a factor and the shop bill was about 500 bucks. Hope this helps someone out!

Ordered some 9005 Auxbeam Bicolor Switchback LED bulbs for my friends 2016 limited. Fun fact for 2017 to 2019 LED fog lights became standard equipment on certain trim levels and had an LED board instead of a swappable bulb in case anybody was wondering. Installing these fog lights was pretty easy and straight forward, lift up the cover in the wheel liner and unplug the electrical connector and twist out the old bulb and plug in the new one and slide the cover back on. Heres a short video demo of the Switchback fog lights in action 🎬

Did some lighting upgrades for my friend whos brakes I did the other day. We installed all led lights for the interior and got upgraded puddle lights and had the rear dome light converted to LED via a company called Drive Bright (through a guy named Dan Smith). I also got home some 9005 led bulbs off Amazon and found a 45 degree set of pliers really makes getting those high beam bulbs out much easier.

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*I do apologize in advance about the picture quality due to glare and my phones camera lens was dirty 😑

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Next on the agenda he wants bi color fog lights which are already on order. Overall hes happy with the lighting output especially with all the deer we got on the backroads.

In my opinion I feel the lettering just makes the front end pop! I added this on a friend's 16 limited

Just hauling things to the burn site and taking in the sunset 🚜 🌇 🚜

Was doing brakes on a 2017 limited and the owner said he could hear a high pitched grinding noise at any speed and it would only go away when he would press his brakes. The driver side rear pad was stuck against the rotor (slide pins were stuck). After new pads, rotors, hardware and getting the old brake fluid pumped out its like new!

Melted butter with garlic powder and Italian herb seasoning then mixed in grated Parmasean. Good toss up in the bowl... they never last long!

I love when a proper diagnosis leads to actually fixing a problem! Even by accident lol

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A friend of a friend has a 2017 sport with heated/cooled seats and ever since he bought it 6 months ago they haven't worked correctly. He brought it to the dealership and was told "yeah those never work properly, sorry" (Im glad he got a second opinion)

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I pulled the live data with my gearwrench scantool and noted that the buttons had power but the data said the seats on both cooled/heated were only about 75 to 80 degrees but the blower motors were on, I could hear them.

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I next checked fuse 72 in the engine fuse box (wasn't blown). I pulled apart the fuse box and checked the big white connector going to fuse 72 for a burnt pin (it was good too).

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I unplugged all 6 connector going to the seat module under the driver seat then plugged them back with no change.

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I was in the driver footwell area diagnosing another issue when I saw a black connector going to the fuse panel under the dash. I actually lightly pushed down on it and heard a click like it wasn't plugged in all the way. Thinking what I did with reseating that plug I plugged back in my scantool and tried the seats again and to my and the owners surprise both seats were working correctly. I pulled live data again and the cooled seats were below 60 degrees and the heated seats stayed above 168 degrees consistently. He could tell an immediate difference.

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I don't know why that plug wasn't seated in the fuse panel fully but it seemed to fix the issue 🤔

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I did take a picture of its location along with my data readings. I also did screenshot the step by step I did after selecting "Auto scan" from the scantool main menu. Going forward if I have to diagnose heated/cooled seat issues im checking this plug 🔌

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Hope this helps someone out who is having these issues on a 2016 to 2019 explorer with heated/cooled seat issues!

Throwback to when I had to adjust the governor on my 99 LX277. Always had an issue where at full throttle it felt like the power missing and it would almost stall out when the pto was engaged. Adjusted the spring tension on the throttle plate and the video doesn't do it justice but at WOT you can hear the power out of it. All better now!

In case anyone was wondering, here's a picture for reference for the fluid capacities when doing a drain and fill on a 2016 to 2019 explorer 4wd with the 2.3l 4 cylinder ecoboost. It also has the socket sizes and torque specs. Hope this helpful to someone 🙂

I do work on several vehicles for family and friends and something I find helpful is to use a marked container when draining say engine oil or transmission fluid. I recently did an oil change on a 17 sport with about 95k miles and used the container and instead of the usual six quarts draining out (I did replace the filter first) I only got about 4.5 quarts out of the oil pan after getting it warmed up. Turns out the pcv valve went bad and just noticing the oil amount being off did help. Another good application is when doing a drain and fill on the 6f35 transmission (whereas the 6f50/55 both have dipsticks) its usually between 4 to 4.5 quarts. Just a tool Ive been using the last few years which helps with a good starting point BUT doesn't replace the need to still check the dipstick or side level plug it just tells me around how many quarts im gonna need to start with prior. (That picture is from the transmission service I also did on that 17 sport)