Yeah, since they missed them in their own pre-sale inspection they're fixing them for free even though I bought it as-is. What's a tad obnoxious is that I diagnosed everything and priced parts out at around $150. This will be my third trip to the dealership, meaning I'll have spent over 3 hours just taking the truck in for service when I could have had everything fixed myself in less time than this. I suppose it's the principle that matters...

No roll bar, tires are Hankook DynaPro AT2, OE tires on the 21+ Sport with 20" wheels. They're definitely worn, I'm just letting them ride until I do snow tires next month, then I'll get a fresh set on these wheels next spring.

 

Another week, another service loaner. This one is a well-equipped XLT with the Coyote. I like the 360 cameras and again wireless CarPlay is a nice feature. The first time lane-centering wiggled my steering wheel I got mad and turned it off, but later when I got on the interstate and it told me BlueCruise was available I gave it a shot. It turned out to be pretty cool and somehow it took me no time at all to trust it. It only got confused one time in a construction zone - I was in the right-most lane and and a temporary on-ramp merged into my lane, but there were no lines noting the division between lanes, so all of a sudden my lane got double wide and then narrowed up. The system tried to center itself in the double-wide lane and then gave control back over to me.



Also, the Coyote! I drove my Coyote truck for years and I've driven several Coyote Mustangs in anger, but I've never driven a newer F-150 Coyote. This thing is much much closer to the Mustangs than to my truck. It feels rowdy, there's a lot more NVH than my truck, it revs to 7000 before shifting! I picked my wife up from the airport and after giving the truck some beans she mentioned how the engine is so much louder than my truck's.



Also I know the Ford-upgraded B&O stereos get a lot of hate, but the step up from the base stereo like this XLT has is very significant. I'm not saying it's worth the ridiculous premium they put on it, but it's a totally different experience. Not saying I won't upgrade it at some point, but the step up from base to B&O is drastic.

 

I stumbled on the Expedition radio bezel upgrade. Found this one on eBay listed as being for an Explorer, but a quick Google confirmed they just mis-listed it. Installation was a snap, no programming or other changes required. Main drivers for me were being able to see the temperature setting and the set the heated steering wheel without switching away from CarPlay.






My only hitch is that now the auto start/stop cancel button doesn't work as I only had two buttons/connectors from the old bezel and this one has three. I did go in last night and enable Hill Descent Control in the ABS module via FORScan. I'm sure I'll never use it but at least the button does something! The only other downside is that the volume **** is a tad lower profile than the F-150 version, I really liked the factory ****.

 

Oh, and obviously I got my truck back from the dealer on Friday, finally got the parking sensors and heated seat situation fixed. Grateful that Granger did that for free even though the truck was out of warranty.

Final notes on the 2024 Coyote:


I'm conflicted on the XLT and below front end. I think this generation has the most drastic distinction between lower and higher trim levels. I think I prefer the Lariat-up fascia.

Not a fan of the cloth seats - it's a specific smell that's kind of "new car"ish but I just like leather. The seats were also much squishier than mine. Getting back into my truck I was surprised by how firm the seat was but I like it.

The Coyote is wild. A full throttle shift from 2-3 is about 65mph, speeding everywhere but the interstate. At full throttle it revs out to 7000rpm, making the shift from 3-4 happen at over 90mph. I'd have to have the 3.73 just to get a little more shiftiness. The Coyote is a little flat under 3000rpm so gears would help that too. Engine noise and vibration is several orders of magnitude higher on the Coyote. Not sure if that's just an engine thing or if it's a Lariat vs. XLT thing, but at heavy throttle, the only sounds I can hear in my truck are the fake engine noises they pipe through the stereo. The Coyote moans and howls at even part throttle, and vibrations through the steering wheel and body are significant. The Coyote truck feels like a Mustang, mine feels like a Lincoln. The Coyote truck also felt much more agile on its feet than mine. Not sure if that's suspension or steering/throttle tuning or what but it felt sprightly and eager to zoom where my truck feels heavier and more planted.

When I got the Coyote truck it had about 400 miles on it and was showing a lifetime average of 20.3mpg. I reset that and in all of my travels and hooning and driving like an idiot I stood at 16.3mpg. Perusing Fuelly shows that ~20mpg tank average is typical for the 2024 Coyotes, which is great! On tanks where I'm not towing, I'm seeing 16-17mpg on my truck.

Random nitpicks on the 2024 - every time the truck starts, it sits on the seatbelt minder screen for a while, I'd hope you can turn that off in Forscan. Every time it starts, if you want to see the 1-10 gear indicator you have to re-enable it by hitting the shifter + or - button, it doesn't remember between startups like my truck does. When the truck stops, it urgently dings a bunch to remind me to check for kids in the back seats. Again, I'd hope that could be turned off. I'm past the infant stage so any offspring in the back seat can make their own way out. My loaner had the full digital gauge cluster, which overall is smaller than the version from my truck that has two real gauges plus the screen in the middle. It feel scrunched. The big digital speedo was nice, but still trying to keep some kind of circular speed indication was pointless without speed markers around it. There's just a "120" at the max point of the gauge, but the 120 text is actually touching the cruise indicator and is too close to the cruise set speed and speed limit. It's too busy and takes more than just a quick glance to decipher the area, which becomes distracting.



I think the most egregious issue is the door ajar alert - for all of the fancy zooming graphics and digital dash effects the door ajar alert only ever shows a static icon of a single cab truck with the driver's door open. So if the right rear door is ajar, it will show a picture of the front driver's door open with the text "passenger rear door ajar."



The first time I saw that it was because my daughter was getting in the right rear door, but based on the picture I reached back and opened/closed the driver's rear door just based on the image itself. It took a few seconds to realize that the text didn't match the image. The old trucks could show it correctly so I'm not sure why they went away from that.



All that said, I could definitely live with a Coyote truck, though I would have to have a Lariat-up for the leather and 4A transfer case. I priced one out just for fun - Lariat, Coyote, 3.73, black appearance pack (gotta have that dual exhaust) came out to just a hair under $70k. Maybe in 10 years or so...

 

TECHNICAL SERVICE BULLETIN 19-2345
Water Leaking On Right Front Floor During Or After A/C Use - Built On Or After 31-Aug-2018

According to my window sticker, I think I'm a 9/27/18 build. Either way I definitely have a wet passenger carpet with plenty of mold underneath.
My local dealer had one of the TSB elbows in stock so I already have that, but I'll definitely need to get the mold cleaned up.

On the test drive I smelled something odd for a second or two and asked my wife if it smelled like a smoker's car...not smoke.

 

Bugger, unlucky on that leak, i hate how much effort it takes to get the clean up done right, but i know you're more than capable.

 

I'm back on the chrome grille.



Went ahead and threw the TSB elbow in place. I've clearly had some liquid running back onto the firewall and into the cab:


I was able to take the front passenger tire off and just hold the wheel liner back to reach in and take care of it.


The TSB actually calls for foil HVAC tape to hold the elbow in place...cool cool cool.


Still need to go in and get that mold cleaned out.

But in the meantime...stereo. No good pics because it gets dark too early but I scored a couple of used/open box items that should be nice additions. Now the downside is that I have a lot of rattles to take care of.

 

Spent some time tinkering. To finish off the damp carpet TSB, I had to address the stank/mold in the passenger footwell. Here's what I saw when I peeled the carpet back:



I made a ~30% vinegar/water solution and sprayed down the floor pan, the underlayment and the carpet and let that soak for a while. Then I took a big nylon brush and gave everything a really good scrub until it looked like new. I left the doors open most of the day and put a fan in to get everything aired out really well.



It still smelled like vinegar, though, so then I sprinkled baking soda everywhere that vinegar went and let that sit for a while. Once I vacuumed that up, I put the fan back and let it keep airing out. The vinegar smell is 99% gone at this point, I think I need to just take a carpet cleaner to the area to get rid of whatever residual is still there.

Next up was the driver's seat. The dealer put a new heat pad in it but there was something poking up right between my legs:



I pulled the seat cover back and found it was the plastic rib that's supposed to retain the pad. You can see the orange clip here that's supposed to hold the pad under the seat cushion:



I tucked that in properly and put the seat cover back in place and all was well. Side note - these two white clips connecting the seat springs were both broken. I'm not sure if they just retain the connectors or if they're supposed to be providing some strength. The previous owner of my truck may have been a bigger guy, just based on some of the bolster wear on the seat. The parts are molded directly onto the springs so I couldn't unclip them. If I get really into it someday I'll have to cut them off and 3D print some clip-on replacements.



And lastly, I have the stereo in a place I'm happy with for stage 1. As is typical, I scrounged and made do with what I could find. I made the amp plate out of some 3/4" MDF I had lying around. The amp itself is a Kenwood KAC-511 I found open box at Best Buy for $112. It's capable of 500W RMS at 2 ohms, which should be plenty.



I bought the PAC APH-FD02 adapter that goes inline with the stock B&O amp and breaks out those wires. It's intended to let you power your existing speakers from a different source, but I used it to capture the high-level sub outputs from the amp. I could have clipped the old sub connector off and just pulled from there but this way I can unplug everything and it's back to factory. Because the amp was open-box, it didn't come with the high-level wiring harness, so I had to order one online for like $12. Once it came I wired everything up but it didn't work, there was no signal at all. I ran out and grabbed a cheap LOC, sent the high levels into that and then line-level RCAs into the amp and all was well.

I don't actually have any pictures of the sub - it's a JL 12TW3-D4, a shallow 12" sub in a custom box built to go under an F-150 seat. I got that setup on Marketplace for $200 - the sub alone retails for $550 and while I can build a box, it was nice to have something ready-built. I really wanted to put something in place of the existing factory sub, but nothing I found would give me a minimum 10" driver, keep the factory amp in place, and still let me fold the seat all of the way up.

I had the under-seat storage bin that stretched the full width of the seat and didn't want to lose any more of that than I had to. I marked how much needed to leave and cut the bin at that point. The sub slotted in place nicely, though because it's a 12" it does stick out a tad. It's not enough to bother the kids though, so I'm counting it as a win.



From the other side, including the bass adjustment ****:



I spent the time on my last setup to put the bass **** up by the driver but found that once it was set where I liked I never adjusted it. This one I can still reach from the driver's seat if I really need to get to it for some reason.

I'm overall extremely pleased with the system output. The sub hits HARD, definitely the loudest setup I've ever had. This is my first 12" sub, my other setups have always been a 10 or an 8 and I think this one gets deeper. I was at less than half volume this morning when I had to stop at home real quick, and my son said he heard me pull up from inside the house .

Phase 2 will be to pull off the door panels, do some sound deadening, and make some solid plates to plug the big door cavity holes. This should help with road noise, reduce rattles, and improve the response of the factory speakers.

 

Changed spark plugs yesterday. The old ones were probably original, and I figured 69k was probably a decent time to get a new set in there. The only ones didn't look bad at all - nice and tan, no oil, no wetness.



The only thing I did notice was some oil down in the valve cover by the front cylinder on the driver's side. I snugged up the intake bolts but they definitely weren't loose. Something to keep my eye on, I guess.

 

ent and got my snow tires swapped around.



I forgot how bad my old 2011 wheels were looking, the aluminum was in rough shape. The 2017 wheels look much nicer, but the bead seats were really bad. Apparently these Ford wheels with painted inners trap junk between the paint and the aluminum and the corrosion basically foams up. My friend had to wire wheel quite a bit of the seats to get them clean enough for the beads to sit properly.

First predicted snowfall is a week from Wednesday, so this weekend might be wheel swap time.

Old wheels with old tires swapped on, currently for sale on Marketplace for the price of "get them out of my garage" dollars.

This was after taking them to the car wash and giving them a really good scrub and blast. No way these were going on the new truck.