Helium
Well-known member
- Thread starter
- #1
Welp, ladies and gentlemen it has been awhile since I've last spoken to you. My baby's three year anniversary is coming up in a few days and she thought it might be nice to go ahead and update her many fans even though she hasn't reached the 150,000 mile mark.
As you might expect, the world is still spinning and I'm still white knuckling the steering wheel most days. One of the neighbors recently tried to make fun of me and my baby. I just reminded him that I have certainly saved over $30,000 in "fuel" cost because baby's juice is so cheap and I even get it for free. Heck, if I plan ahead, I can leave the house on a half charge (I just unhook one of those big orange cables and let the electrons pour into a bucket) I then come home filled up with free electrons from some right neighborly business along my journey. Never once, have I been given free gasoline for my Silverado, or my M56, nor diesel for any tractor trailer I have ever driven.
I'm pretty certain about 25% of the electricity used by baby has been free over the past year and half.
I had reported (most certainly complained) in the past about having a string of flat tires and such. I switched those tires out a bit early at 53,000 miles even though there was still tread. I remember distinctly some varmint called Electric Viking saying that I was scoundrel and didn't know how to take care of baby. I was leaving the tires on way too long because electric vehicles are heavy. POPPYCOCK! How dare he cast aspersion on my honor and reputation, dag nabbit! My hatred for him burns deep, deep I SAY! I hear he is from that upside down continent that slanders right and proper pickup trucks by calling them "utes", whatever that is.
I'm certain he'll be telling tall tales about me from Alice Springs all of the way out to Perth when he finds out what a properly maintained vehicle can do with a good set of tires.
As I said above, before I got distracted by that eclectic viking guy (aren't Vikings from Norway or somewhere like it), I changed out the tires at 53,000 miles and am still on the second set. Yep, you read that right. I have had a couple of flats but that is a distant echo in my rear view mirror. The current set of tires have 84,150 miles on them. Now before you go and get all excited by this apparent miracle (not going to say they weren't blessed by 7 pastors, preachers, fathers, exorcists, or monks, Rabbis, Imams and one drunk friar, just not going to talk about it) the tires are warrantied out to 70,000 miles and the miles are primarily secondary highway and interstate highway with the occasional gravel road thrown in. Insignificant (by percentage of total roadway) amount of city driving sprinkled in.
One oddity I did notice is the passenger side tires wear much quicker, so much quicker that I may just buy two tires and have the driver's side tires put on the back for another 10,000 miles. Squeeze every mile out of them.
Over Christmas, I had to take it into the big city to get the software updated. For whatever reason it would not take OTA updates anymore. It was way more annoying for the service writer than it was for me, but the scheduling software used by that dealership really needs some intellingence built into it. The update took 4 hours longer than scheduled.
At this time (actually in a week or so) I am not going to sign up for any of the connected services once the 3 year free trial ends. I'm not getting much value out it now from what I can see. I'll see what I'm missing when everything gets cut off. One thing I'll never pay for is the map functionality, it needs a serious make over. I could go on forever about how much I dislike it.
I think the Christmas update forces the driver assist features to default to being on which is annoying. I need to look for the setting for that and just turn it off. Once I didn't realise it was on when I was going around a fairly sharp corner and it tried to help me. For that split second, I thought the steering wheel came loose from the steering shaft. Instant flashback to my childhood gokart crash. "Mable, I'm coming home to you!" may or may not have been screamed by either me or my non-existent passengers.
Blue Cruise on the interstate is good enough to use regularly, anywhere else, the downgraded version is too annoying to use but it seems like it only needs 10% or 15% improvement to make it viable to use on secondary highways regularly.
I don't have pictures at the moment because she is on the charger, but tomorrow I may add photos of the HVB SOC, HVB SOH, etc. I didn't think to snap a photo this morning before I left after I charged to 100% for todays trip. The last time I checked, the HVB SOH was reading 97.5% on April 23nd. When I charge it to 100% (according to the dash) my app says the HVB SOC is 96.4% with HVB Energy reading 130.81 kWh. When I charge to 100% the estimate range is always 320 miles or more, though I'm very, very certain I could squeeze 351 miles or more from a charge on the slow roads out amongst the fields where I wouldn't annoy any one for puttering around. Holding 2.9 m/kWh for nearly an hour a few days ago was new for me.
My only change in behavior on charging is that I have started charging to 100% once or twice a month. On those days, I'm trying to get to and from my destinations without having to stop for any reason. The reasons why I have chosen to do this are very convoluted and just remind me even though I try to remain your most humble white knuckling electrified hermit, the outside world intrudes into my nirvana in ways that can border on the absurd.
Back a couple of months ago there was a deep cold snap in my area. When I went out that morning there was a giant fishhook crack from a rock peck near where mirror attaches to the windshield to within a couple of inches of the bottom then looping half way back up the glass in front of the passenger seat. I don't have the quote handy but the windshield is only something like ~$600 to replace.
Backup beeper speaker under the front of the truck has mysteriously stopped working. Ford Dealership offered to remove some tape that just so happen to catch on to the speaker cable and pull it loose. I unfortunately had to cry poor boy (something I find very easy to do these days) and say I couldn't afford to pay for the young man's time to fix it. I thanked him anyway though because it never hurts to be polite and respectful.
I still get surprised looks when I go into the frunk when I'm in a store parking lot. When I go to pick up groceries, the guy\girl that brings them out invariably calls over one of their coworkers to ponder the amazement that is a Lightning Frunk. (I'm thinking some of those tire blessing have rubbed off on the frunk to make it appear even more glorious than it is).
Driver's seat is starting to lose some if its cushion...I may have gained a couple of pounds....naw can't be that.
I am coming up on the 140,000 mile maintenance where Ford will pull the "gear" filters and replace them. I also think they will do a bunch of checks at 140,000 miles. I'll let you know how much it cost. I'll probably have to go to the big city for that service since the local Ford dealerships have lost the one EV tech they had. By local I mean to say the ones within a fifty mile radius.
When it goes in for the 140,000 mile maintenance cycle, I may have them replace the shocks. The truck feels a bit more wobbly than it should. I'm wondering if I should take more extensive maintenance on the suspension components. Recommendations?
Onto other topics, I recently asked Carvana to give me an estimate on what they would give me for my baby. Well lets just say that I was a bit surprised they didn't value my baby as much as I do. In fact, it was so bad, I won't let anyone talk about it around her bad. If I wasn't such an upright and righteous man, I might just have to go down to Carvana and slap whatever SOB chose to insult my baby like that. What is the world coming to when a fine pickup truck like baby is devalued by so much. It was so hard to maintain my manly bearing when I read the quote. I'm not crying, you're crying!
$17,000
Well on that sour note, I'll bid you good night. If you see an old guy out there white knuckling his steering wheel with one hand and eating a Five Guys burger with the other, never mind the ghostly apparitions in the passenger seats. They are just some friends that I picked up along the way to keep me company.
gn
p.s. Electric Viking guy, I hope you wake up tomorrow with three flat tires, and the fourth one flat the next day. Check your mail in a couple of weeks, I'll be sending baby's 80,000 miles tires down to you so you'll have plenty of evidence that not all EV manufactures put cheap tires on their cars.
p.s. p.s. nothing in this post should be construed as a call to action to harm, or cause to be harmed, either Electric Viking guy (in Australia? really?), his vehicle, or his vehicle's tires. Though putting a Tennessee Vols sticker on his car's rear driver's side door window would be hysterical.
As you might expect, the world is still spinning and I'm still white knuckling the steering wheel most days. One of the neighbors recently tried to make fun of me and my baby. I just reminded him that I have certainly saved over $30,000 in "fuel" cost because baby's juice is so cheap and I even get it for free. Heck, if I plan ahead, I can leave the house on a half charge (I just unhook one of those big orange cables and let the electrons pour into a bucket) I then come home filled up with free electrons from some right neighborly business along my journey. Never once, have I been given free gasoline for my Silverado, or my M56, nor diesel for any tractor trailer I have ever driven.
I'm pretty certain about 25% of the electricity used by baby has been free over the past year and half.
I had reported (most certainly complained) in the past about having a string of flat tires and such. I switched those tires out a bit early at 53,000 miles even though there was still tread. I remember distinctly some varmint called Electric Viking saying that I was scoundrel and didn't know how to take care of baby. I was leaving the tires on way too long because electric vehicles are heavy. POPPYCOCK! How dare he cast aspersion on my honor and reputation, dag nabbit! My hatred for him burns deep, deep I SAY! I hear he is from that upside down continent that slanders right and proper pickup trucks by calling them "utes", whatever that is.
I'm certain he'll be telling tall tales about me from Alice Springs all of the way out to Perth when he finds out what a properly maintained vehicle can do with a good set of tires.
As I said above, before I got distracted by that eclectic viking guy (aren't Vikings from Norway or somewhere like it), I changed out the tires at 53,000 miles and am still on the second set. Yep, you read that right. I have had a couple of flats but that is a distant echo in my rear view mirror. The current set of tires have 84,150 miles on them. Now before you go and get all excited by this apparent miracle (not going to say they weren't blessed by 7 pastors, preachers, fathers, exorcists, or monks, Rabbis, Imams and one drunk friar, just not going to talk about it) the tires are warrantied out to 70,000 miles and the miles are primarily secondary highway and interstate highway with the occasional gravel road thrown in. Insignificant (by percentage of total roadway) amount of city driving sprinkled in.
One oddity I did notice is the passenger side tires wear much quicker, so much quicker that I may just buy two tires and have the driver's side tires put on the back for another 10,000 miles. Squeeze every mile out of them.
Over Christmas, I had to take it into the big city to get the software updated. For whatever reason it would not take OTA updates anymore. It was way more annoying for the service writer than it was for me, but the scheduling software used by that dealership really needs some intellingence built into it. The update took 4 hours longer than scheduled.
At this time (actually in a week or so) I am not going to sign up for any of the connected services once the 3 year free trial ends. I'm not getting much value out it now from what I can see. I'll see what I'm missing when everything gets cut off. One thing I'll never pay for is the map functionality, it needs a serious make over. I could go on forever about how much I dislike it.
I think the Christmas update forces the driver assist features to default to being on which is annoying. I need to look for the setting for that and just turn it off. Once I didn't realise it was on when I was going around a fairly sharp corner and it tried to help me. For that split second, I thought the steering wheel came loose from the steering shaft. Instant flashback to my childhood gokart crash. "Mable, I'm coming home to you!" may or may not have been screamed by either me or my non-existent passengers.
Blue Cruise on the interstate is good enough to use regularly, anywhere else, the downgraded version is too annoying to use but it seems like it only needs 10% or 15% improvement to make it viable to use on secondary highways regularly.
I don't have pictures at the moment because she is on the charger, but tomorrow I may add photos of the HVB SOC, HVB SOH, etc. I didn't think to snap a photo this morning before I left after I charged to 100% for todays trip. The last time I checked, the HVB SOH was reading 97.5% on April 23nd. When I charge it to 100% (according to the dash) my app says the HVB SOC is 96.4% with HVB Energy reading 130.81 kWh. When I charge to 100% the estimate range is always 320 miles or more, though I'm very, very certain I could squeeze 351 miles or more from a charge on the slow roads out amongst the fields where I wouldn't annoy any one for puttering around. Holding 2.9 m/kWh for nearly an hour a few days ago was new for me.
My only change in behavior on charging is that I have started charging to 100% once or twice a month. On those days, I'm trying to get to and from my destinations without having to stop for any reason. The reasons why I have chosen to do this are very convoluted and just remind me even though I try to remain your most humble white knuckling electrified hermit, the outside world intrudes into my nirvana in ways that can border on the absurd.
Back a couple of months ago there was a deep cold snap in my area. When I went out that morning there was a giant fishhook crack from a rock peck near where mirror attaches to the windshield to within a couple of inches of the bottom then looping half way back up the glass in front of the passenger seat. I don't have the quote handy but the windshield is only something like ~$600 to replace.
Backup beeper speaker under the front of the truck has mysteriously stopped working. Ford Dealership offered to remove some tape that just so happen to catch on to the speaker cable and pull it loose. I unfortunately had to cry poor boy (something I find very easy to do these days) and say I couldn't afford to pay for the young man's time to fix it. I thanked him anyway though because it never hurts to be polite and respectful.
I still get surprised looks when I go into the frunk when I'm in a store parking lot. When I go to pick up groceries, the guy\girl that brings them out invariably calls over one of their coworkers to ponder the amazement that is a Lightning Frunk. (I'm thinking some of those tire blessing have rubbed off on the frunk to make it appear even more glorious than it is).
Driver's seat is starting to lose some if its cushion...I may have gained a couple of pounds....naw can't be that.
I am coming up on the 140,000 mile maintenance where Ford will pull the "gear" filters and replace them. I also think they will do a bunch of checks at 140,000 miles. I'll let you know how much it cost. I'll probably have to go to the big city for that service since the local Ford dealerships have lost the one EV tech they had. By local I mean to say the ones within a fifty mile radius.
When it goes in for the 140,000 mile maintenance cycle, I may have them replace the shocks. The truck feels a bit more wobbly than it should. I'm wondering if I should take more extensive maintenance on the suspension components. Recommendations?
Onto other topics, I recently asked Carvana to give me an estimate on what they would give me for my baby. Well lets just say that I was a bit surprised they didn't value my baby as much as I do. In fact, it was so bad, I won't let anyone talk about it around her bad. If I wasn't such an upright and righteous man, I might just have to go down to Carvana and slap whatever SOB chose to insult my baby like that. What is the world coming to when a fine pickup truck like baby is devalued by so much. It was so hard to maintain my manly bearing when I read the quote. I'm not crying, you're crying!
$17,000
Well on that sour note, I'll bid you good night. If you see an old guy out there white knuckling his steering wheel with one hand and eating a Five Guys burger with the other, never mind the ghostly apparitions in the passenger seats. They are just some friends that I picked up along the way to keep me company.
gn
p.s. Electric Viking guy, I hope you wake up tomorrow with three flat tires, and the fourth one flat the next day. Check your mail in a couple of weeks, I'll be sending baby's 80,000 miles tires down to you so you'll have plenty of evidence that not all EV manufactures put cheap tires on their cars.
p.s. p.s. nothing in this post should be construed as a call to action to harm, or cause to be harmed, either Electric Viking guy (in Australia? really?), his vehicle, or his vehicle's tires. Though putting a Tennessee Vols sticker on his car's rear driver's side door window would be hysterical.
Sponsored
Last edited:
$17,000 for such a fine piece of machinery . . .them there are fightin words 
. . well, there outta be a law against that . . .
you definitely need to add a TLDR section. Paragraph 12 was the info that I was interested in. I guess you have a gift of writing.
