Silver Bullet

Well! What a revolting development! Folks like GrySqrl are supposed to go on forever providing insight and pointing us to the references we may already have right under our noses or that he's unearthed from somewhere obscure. Dave, I certainly share the views of fellow forum members who've beat me to replying here, most of whom have been very positive contributors like you. I gotta say, however, that I've gotten more good tips from you this past couple of years than anyone else. I sure am grateful. Thanks! We can sure understand your dropping the moderator bit, but hope very much you'll stay in touch. Terry

Our 2014 FFHSE is Ingot Silver and drives beautifully as fast as I want to go (which is rarely above the posted limit these days). Silver Bullet just seemed right...no connection to the Lone Ranger.

Looks mighty good to me! I like that pretty new gray car and the panned shot really makes the car stand out from the background. Nice job!

To belatedly address Waldo's question, I've given up trying to figure WHY Ford does many things, but I'm personally very grateful that they left the spare wheel tub in the spare-less Fusion hybrids so that I had a place to put the spare that I now carry.

Thanks, GrySqrl, for the face-saving fix, but most of all for taking the time to show me (and others) how to do it in the future. Us old geezers need all the help we can get!

Waldo, you're right! I just had to go out and prove it to myself. I wonder if I'll ever begin to understand this wonderful little vehicle and how to operate it! Thanks!

I've been following this topic here since taking delivery of my 2014 FFHSE on December 24, 2013. Early on I asked the service manager at Jim Wilson Motors in Yreka, CA if the DRLs could be activated. The now-familiar check of the computer yielded the standard, "Sorry, no, since it was not a fleet order." Silver Bullet finally has daytime running lights! Recently I took the car in for its 30,000 mile service armed with five pages of copies of various posts from this thread, starting with GrySqrl's now famous No. 57, and asked a new service writer, Cody,to look into it. When I picked the car up following the oil change, he said that it looked as though the ambient light sensor for the automatic headlights (a feature we'd never tried using) didn't seem to be working, so we made an appointment for a warranty check on that. A two-hour session the following week confirmed a faulty sensor and one was placed on order. I told my wife that I didn't give better than 1 in 10 odds of our getting DRLs out of this exercise, but I was wrong! Sure enough, after about a one-hour appointment Cody presented me with car with functioning automatic headlights AND daytime running lights. With the headlight switch in Automatic in daylight conditions with ignition on and gear selector in anything but park, low beams are on at 80% power! Cody confided that he assigned the job to tech "JR", because "JR" doesn't like to accept "it can't be done". No charge -- part of warranty on defective sensor. I'm grateful to this fine Forum and lucky to have a very small local Ford dealer with people who care!

I agree, Hybrid Bear. Here in NoCal we've been stable at $3.39 for a week now and wonder how much higher it'll go.

Winter tires. This subject is so much a function of one's individual situation, I'll just tell you about ours. We live in far northern California mountains, 12 miles from town, 1 mile off the paved road, at 3000 ft elevation. Winter weather is very variable, from mild, like last winter with one 12-in. drop of snow in December, to the previous winter with two storms bringing 3 ft. of snow each. When the snow is heavy, we simply park the Fusion and use either the '97 Explorer or '91 F-150, both of which are 4WD with studded snow tires. We have a tractor to plow the drive. The question is how to equip the FFH for the rest of the winter when snow depth precludes its use. Our choice this year was to replace the Michelin LRR 225/50R-17's with studded Cooper Glacier Grips of the same dimension. We'll have the tires switched in the spring at a cost of about $50 including balancing. Our bill for the new snow tires came to $638.13 with all the California taxes and fees. We expect to get two, maybe 3 seasons from the Glacier Grips. We go with the studs more for ice than snow. This morning, for example, one week after the studs went on, wife reported driving through fog on black ice the first twelve miles of her commute to work. She really appreciated the studs. We enjoy a situation that I do not think is too common. Our two-man independent tire shop stores our off-season tires. The Explorer and F-150 have two sets of wheels, one summer one winter. The tire shop swaps them for us each fall and spring at no charge. With the Fusion they store the unmounted tires between seasons. Really neat. If we lived where there was snow most all winter, I'd seriously consider a set of narrower 16"wheels with snow tires (either studded or studdless) for the Fusion. (Making sure the tire diameter was close to that of the 225/50R-17.)

Has anyone out there run P225/55R17 tires? They have a 26.7 in. dia. vs the Original P225/50R17's 25.9 in.

Thanks, billford, Your helpful post is just another example of the utility of this great forum.

I appreciate GrySql's starting this thread on a subject on which I wasn't very well informed. I decided to try to find out what various rental car companies charged for damage waiver. Of the four I checked, only Budget had a fixed price, $27.99/day. The three others had prices that varied with the rental location. Avis was $9 to $30 and Enterprise was $11 to $25. Thrifty was unable to give me their range, so I threw out Chicago Midway and was told $13.50. I also checked with my insurance carrier, USAA, and learned that using my own car insurance would cover rental repairs, but no diminished value or loss of use. Finally I checked with my credit card company, American Express, with whom I carry a premium rental car coverage that ads $17.95 to any rental car bill. That covers repair and loss of use, but not diminished value. I was also advised that the credit card company is considered my primary coverage and should be used first and hopefully in lieu of involving my own car insurance. Just a little more to chew on.

Happy to report we got our 775 check today via FedEx. Ordered our 2014 FFH SE Oct. 2013, took delivery 12/24/2013, and are currently averaging 41.9 mpg. No squawks; happy campers.

Congratulations on a great choice. We are very much enjoying our 2014 FFH SE on which we took delivery last Christmas Eve. This forum has been exceptionally helpful, especially on items such a replacing the can of tire goo with a proper size donut spare, jack, and lug wrench. We have just over 12k miles on ours now and are seeing about 42 mpg while driving very normally in a more luxurious vehicle than we ever expected to own. Hope you enjoy your as much!