Waldo

Ford used the same RDU on just about everything in that era, Edge, Fusion, Explorer, Flex and all the Lincoln products. The first generation of that part (Ford Five Hundred, first gen Edge and so on) was a wet clutch (so the viscous couple definition fit), but at some point it evolved into a dry clutch system, so technically it's not a viscous coupler anymore, but I'm sure they didn't update the parts catalogue. But it doesn't really matter, as long as you're getting the right part. It's pretty rare to find people reporting failures with the RDU though, especially considering how common it is on other Ford vehicles. I wonder if there's something a little unique about the Fusion that causes issues.

Well there is a third option - you just pay to buy the modem and have it installed and carry on with the new version of Ford's App. Not sure what story you're getting that says you can't buy it. The part number is listed here and you can just order it online. But Ford has offered a solution to the problem, the only thing that people aren't happy about (and for good reason) is that they have to fork out money for this solution. Let's also remember that while you did pay a premium for your "EV", the real premium cost of that "EV" was shared by taxpayers and other Ford ICE customers. Ford has to sell PHEVs to offset the CAFE impact of the more profitable trucks and SUVs, so in essence they can sell PHEVs at a loss which is subsidized by the folks paying premiums for the Platinum F150s.

There are two tight areas around the front wheel in a 1st gen Fusion. 1 is the between the top of the tire and the ball joint stud on the upper control arm. The second is when you turn the steering wheel one full turn in either direction. The tire on the inside of the turn gets very close to the flange that joins the firewall to the body side (you can't see the flange, it's behind the plastic wheel liner, but if you rub through the wheel liner, the tire will be scrapping on metal). So you can take a look and see if you feel comfortable with those dimensions. But keep in mind tire math is not as simple as the numbers printed on the sidewall. Those numbers are just "guidelines" and actual tire dimensions can vary significantly. The manufacturing guidelines for tires are so broad that you could in theory produce a tire labelled a 205/60 and it would actually be taller than a tire that is labelled a 205/70. And then combined with the spring rate of the tire which will determine the compressed height, you may or may not get any noticeable difference in ground clearance with a tire size change.

Never. The timing chain is designed to last just as long as every other part on the car.

Well if by day 1 you mean day 3, the 1st and 2nd gen did from 2006-2012. But I'd be surprised if you can find any car that had a key lock for the trunk in 2019.

You can also fold down the back seat and climb through the trunk to pull the emergency release.

The Fusion transmission doesn't adapt to your driving habits. It is designed to adapt to it's own internal tolerances, doesn't matter how you drive. It's also designed to hold gears when warming up specifically so that it (and the engine) can warm up faster. This helps emissions and also gets the climate control system warmer air sooner. You can disconnect the battery and some of the settings will reset, or you can use the tools and reset even more things, but more than likely it's just going to learn itself back to the same place again.

But what you feel is the vibrations of the engine when it's operating at lower than normal revs. Because an engine (that's not an I6 or V12) is not perfectly balanced, it will always have a vibration when it is running. The faster the engine turns, the higher the frequency of those vibrations. The engine mounts can then be tuned to those frequencies of normal engine operation, but they don't necessarily work as well as the engine passes through the low rpms of startup. So the energy that you "feel" isn't causing engine wear, it's just the natural frequency of the moving parts. For reference, go try a hybrid (like my 2014 Fusion Hybrid). It has a different type of starter motor (42V) and spins up the engine much faster. It gets through that low rpm phase of the engine rotation so quickly that you don't feel anything at all.

I always find it funny that this argument is so common. We're talking about a system that STOPS the ENGINE. How much wear is happening on your engine when it is STOPPED?? An engine that is spinning around at idle is wearing itself a whole lot more than an engine that is STOPPED. Sure the starter sees more use, but as noted those are adjusted to compensate. A fully warmed up engine (which is always the case when the system is used), doesn't see any significant wear from a start event, so it's really not anything anyone should worry about.

The start-stop feature is essentially regulated by the EPA, so the way it works has to meet the definitions set out by the regulations. The system isn't smart enough to be able to predict how long you will be stopped for, so it's designed to strike a balance between shutting off too much in stop-and-go traffic vs waiting too long and missing out on fuel savings. It's used as an "off-cycle" credit for CAFE purposes, meaning that it doesn't directly factor into the fuel or emissions testing for any particular vehicle, but based on the number of vehicles that an OME sells that have it, they get a credit to improve their average fleet fuel economy. Now a lot of people like to politicize anything that's part of a government regulation, but the facts are that it does save fuel and it does add up over the lifetime of a vehicle and over the millions of vehicles on the road. It's also a fact that many, many people find it annoying and would gladly trade off the small amount of savings to avoid the nuisance. But remember that every bit of fuel saved by every person in every car results in better air quality for all of us and lower fuel prices for all of us. My data is not made up, it comes directly from an engineer who's career is devoted to understanding fuel economy.

Sorry, but your "experts" are full of BS. The "gulp" of gas is equivalent to the amount of fuel consumed at idle in 0.6 seconds. So any stop longer than 1 second is clearly saving gas. And that same "gulp" produces just as much "emissions" as it would if burned while idling, so your theory doesn't make any sense.

I recently replaced the rear shocks on my Fusion Hybrid. One of them was completely dead. Yet my tire wear was still perfectly even. So another vote for the alignment.

4 inches!!!! That's crazy, the Fusion suspension doesn't even have that much travel. The Fusion is a unibody vehicle with an independent suspension setup, it is not designed to have a lift kit installed. Unfortunately if you're having trouble bottoming in your daily routine, then the Fusion is just not the right car for your needs.

The codes you're getting seem to be pretty random - as in they don't point to one specific system, but rather to an overall network issue. I'd agree that your most likely issue is a short or bad connection in some wiring somewhere. Bad wiring could even cause the system to stay "awake" which is what's causing your battery drain issues. A bad wheel speed sensor wouldn't cause those codes you're seeing now and it could never cause the car to stall.

I think your big problem is you have the wrong car for the job. The 2016 Fusion is rated to tow at most 2000lbs. A 2000lb trailer set up properly should not cause the car to sag so much that it needs lifting. How much does your trailer weigh?

It really depends on how much you plan to drive. If you're going to keep it under 10K miles/year, you might get away with the higher mileage car for 4-5 years without any major repairs. But if you are like most mid-west college students, you're more likely to be in the 20-25K/year range, which means in just a couple years you'll be at 200K miles which is really beyond the reliable life of the car. So that $5-6K you think you'll be saving will be spent in maintenance and repairs before your 5 years is up. The best thing to do would be to look at refinancing to see if you can get the interest rate down. Based on the numbers you've provided, looks like you're in the 7% range. My credit union is advertising used car loans "as low as 2.99%". If you're credit is good enough to qualify for that, you could drop your payments to about $230 and save over $2000 over the course of the loan.

Worn struts will never cause a tire to rub. The suspension is designed to allow the wheel to move up and down and left and right and never hit anything no matter what you do to it, so if it's rubbing, than something must be physically out of place and/or not to the original factory spec.

The price you paid for a car has no direct relation to it's value when you sell it. The difference in value between your car and a similar car with a 2.0L doesn't depend on the price you paid. The bottom line is the cost difference in trading your car for a 2.0L is still going to be less than the cost of acquiring and installing a 2.0L into the car you have unless you really do everything yourself. And that would include a lot of software programming, which chances are if you're asking on this forum, you don't have the experience or tools to do that.

Yes the cooling issues I was referring to can cause the head gasket failures. I don't know too much about it though, I'm sure you can search on this forum and others for a bit more details. And there's no reason you need to buy the warranty from the same place you buy the car. You can get a genuine Ford warranty on just about any Ford vehicle at any time no matter where you purchase it.

What kind of warranty are you expecting on a 7 year old car with 80k miles? And what do you mean by "dealer"? A Ford Dealer? Any brand OEM dealer? A licensed used car dealer? You can buy a car from a private party and then by a Ford extended warranty and you can find dealers who only offer a basic one-week, a few hundred mile "warranty". One option you might want to consider would be the rental companies. Avis, Enterprise, Hertz all have direct sales with really good deals on 2019 or 2020 Fusions. The 1.5L has been the bread-and-butter engine in the Fusion and Escape for 8 years. Plenty of them out there. The only issues I've heard of are related to cooling, but I think that if you're buying a higher mileage one, chances are if it hasn't had a problem by then, it won't in the future.

Nope, just for the China market only. There is no point in Ford using up it's limited manufacturing capacity to produce a product that won't make any money.

What does the fuel filler cap on a 2009 Milan look like anyway? They all came from the factory with capless fuel fill nozzles.

Hopefully you'll be fine, but keep in mind the calibration is to make sure it works in all the difficult situations, not the easy ones like following your friend. Cars in another lane when you enter a sweeping curve, fog or rain, motorcycles riding in one side of the lane and trucks that are high off the ground are all scenarios that require careful calibration.

But how do you know there is no calibration needed? Plugging it in and not having error codes is one thing, but driving down the road and having it slam on the brakes when you try to pass a car in the other lane is another.

If you are only planning on keeping the car to 100,000 miles, you really don't even need to change the oil filter at all. It will likely easily make it to 100K miles on the same filter if you just keep changing the oil normally and especially if you're changing it as often as 5000 miles. Now if you want something decent to pass on to the next user, that's a different story.