[rant]2017 Ford Fusion Battery[rant]

Kenny Phillips said:
When I was in the car biz, you were the customer we did not want to see.
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I've bought my share of cars. I've been at times the worst, and the best customer you might have seen.

The absolute worst (Godwin's law alert) car buying experience was at the Chevrolet dealership buying a Colorado for the other person. The salesman was absolutely great to work with, and did a lot of leg work finding the right truck. Then it came time to do the paperwork. The final stop was the finance manager (I'm paying cash.) Biggest d***head I've ever met. Guy insists on on full coverage insurance out the door. I've never had to do that before, so we argue, and I say fine.

I call up USAA on the phone, and inform them that I want to bump the policy to full coverage. The guy grabs the phone from my hand, and ask them, 'is this USAA?'

I wanted to smash a chair over his head. I was that angry. The sales guy was kind of cowering and turned red. I ended up calming down and decided not to rip the paperwork up, which I was about to do. The price was right. I didn't want to have to endure another four hours of shopping, so I completed the transaction.

I didn't let it go though, I wrote a rather long letter to the owner, informing him that there would be no further company or personal purchases made at that dealership as long as the finance manager remained there.
 
denverpilot said:
Cool. I figured it was something like that since it’s a separate little booklet.

My dealer also wants to push me hard to come to them. Probably use a local Subie shop. But the ECU reset mine needed and reprogramming for high altitude was definitely a dealer only thing. Worked out great also, as a PIREP on that silliness that was disabling all the safety systems whenever the engine would barely misfire. So weak you couldn’t tell it misfired at all but that ECU screamed loud at the other computer to get off the buss.
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Of all the cars I've had, Subaru sure is making it hard to self maintain. Alldata (now owned by one of the chain auto parts stores) doesn't have the Subie info past about 2015 - and the service manuals are online from SOA at $35 for 3 days of access. They are, apparently, in HTML format (used to be PDFs and someone figured a way to do a script to download all of them -HTML makes that harder).

I'll get the right info as we go along, but it remains annoying that they have become like Apple in terms of servicing the product.
 
wsuffa said:
Of all the cars I've had, Subaru sure is making it hard to self maintain. Alldata (now owned by one of the chain auto parts stores) doesn't have the Subie info past about 2015 - and the service manuals are online from SOA at $35 for 3 days of access. They are, apparently, in HTML format (used to be PDFs and someone figured a way to do a script to download all of them -HTML makes that harder).

I'll get the right info as we go along, but it remains annoying that they have become like Apple in terms of servicing the product.
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All new stuff sucks IMHO.

 
At least the instructions don’t start with jacking up the car, and removing the wheel and wheel well.
 
-KLB- said:
At least the instructions don’t start with jacking up the car, and removing the wheel and wheel well.
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That was my former Doge Intrepid. The battery was hidden inside one of the front wheel wells.

Not like the Chevy HHR(? I think that's what it was called, unless they made another vehicle that looked like that), where the battery was behind the rear seat. To jump start it you had to connect to remote terminals. But, there was a stud inside the engine bay that looked exactly like a remote terminal, but wasn't. Try to jump start from there and you'd lose your power steering.

A guy at work had one of those, dead battery, jump start, doesn't work, reads the manual, gets it started, then discovers he doesn't have power steering anymore. He mentions that to me, I text my brother the Chevy mechanic, and the first thing he comes back with is, "I bet it's an xxx and he tried connecting to that stud in the engine compartment that looks exactly like at remote terminal but isn't."

Fortunately, it only required a new fuse.
 
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-KLB- said:
At least the instructions don’t start with jacking up the car, and removing the wheel and wheel well.
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That's the crankshaft sensor on my Frontier. Something else, too.
 
Update:

8/11

The mobile mechanic was supposed to come out and fix the car. But, there was some apparent miscommunication yesterday. 'Do you have the battery? I don't provide those.' That and I don't think admin fully communicated the scope of work that was required to complete the task so that has apparently fallen through. Failing finding another mobile mechanic, or working out something with the present, I guess it's going to the shop on the back of a flat bed truck.
 
Dave Arata said:
We've had a 2017 Fusion Platinum for about 2 years. One of the best and trouble free cars we've owned. Great in the snow. Roomy. Descent MPG. Sorry for your troubles.
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Same, bought ours new, now with 52k trouble free miles on it. It's a great car with AWD and the 2.0L turbo and a great value too.
 
wsuffa said:
Of all the cars I've had, Subaru sure is making it hard to self maintain. Alldata (now owned by one of the chain auto parts stores) doesn't have the Subie info past about 2015 - and the service manuals are online from SOA at $35 for 3 days of access. They are, apparently, in HTML format (used to be PDFs and someone figured a way to do a script to download all of them -HTML makes that harder).

I'll get the right info as we go along, but it remains annoying that they have become like Apple in terms of servicing the product.
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That's bad to hear. I had a 1974 Subaru DL that was simple to maintain. I could do a complete tune-up (remember those?), oil change and valve adjustment in about 15 minutes. All the information was in the owner's manual. I still have a dwell-tac and timing light out in the garage, not that you can use those on a new car these days.
 
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