Laminar

Mine was a St. Louis car until I bought it in 2017, so I'm assuming it started out getting less salt/brine than it does now. I got an old pickup this year that I've been driving a bit more in the winter, but the MKZ has the snow tires so I'm still driving it on "inclement" days.

I remember looking up retail price for replacement shocks a few years back and could have sworn they were ~$1000 each, so seeing them available for $215 was actually kind of a relief. The rattling may have been the spare tire...it was definitely loose under carpet, so I tightened up the hub that holds it in place and the rattling has subsided considerably. My only thought now is that if the shock has lost all of its rebound damping, over large bumps it's letting the spring go to full extension and the shock clatters against its limit. I suppose I'd have to pull the shock out and see if it has any resistance left.

I'm trying to track down a rattle in my rear suspension. In the process, I pulled down the bumpstops/rod boots and found that my passenger rear shock rod is pitted pretty significantly. The bump stop was wet, but I couldn't tell if that was shock fluid or just water/mud from driving in the melting snowy weather we've had. The driver's side had some pitting as well, but it was at the very top in the area covered by the bump stop, I wouldn't be worried about that part messing up the shock seals like I would the passenger side. Anyone else had a shock fail with only 72,000 on it? Too bad my extended CPO ran out last year, I never even got to use it. ? New shocks are $215 each from RockAuto, I may have to just go ahead and do both. But if I could address the rattling at the same time, that'd be ideal.

What were the symptoms you had that led you to replace the control arm? I'm dealing with a rattling rear suspension over bumps and I'm wondering how you knew to look at the LCA.

Has anyone found a resolution to this? I'm experiencing the exact same issue with my 2016 MKX.

Very interesting! I was having trouble tracking down which trans was used. The tow ratings, in America at least, are more related to chassis and typical highway speed than they are drivetrain power. The same 2.0 EcoBoost in the Explorer is rated to tow 2000lbs.

That's not what you said here: The brochure specifically calls out "unique sport-tuned Lincoln Drive Control," implying the suspension tuning is unique to the Summer Tire Handling Package. Also, That's not a question I asked. I wondered if the unique sport tuning affected only the AWD system's stability control/torque vectoring, or if some aspect of the unique sport tuning would benefit a FWD model as well, perhaps with more permissive stability control or adjusted damping rates.

No, I don't believe it's just summer tires on an AWD model - the suspension and stability control also have unique tuning, theoretically. That's how it was able to out-slalom an M5.

Interesting - and I wonder if the changes are only applicable to AWD systems or if there's something in the suspension that's modified as well. I spent a couple of days looking for SHP cars on Autotrader but couldn't find any for sure.

If someone knew how to turn off stability control or enable the special "driver's package" suspension tuning, they'd be my hero.

Why is that? If I'm not mistaken, both engines use the 6F50 transmission. The 2.0 makes better power down low than the V6 - when you're towing, peak horsepower at 6500rpm doesn't matter.

Thanks for posting this! I had played with Forscan on my Focus a bit but hadn't touched the MKZ yet. So last night I turned off the "honk if the engine is still running" as I was tired of getting blapped at every time I tried to leave the car running for two seconds. Of course, now that winter's over that won't happen as often but it's nice to be rid of. Unfortunately it looks like my OBD device isn't one of the good ones. I don't see the lower modules, and rescanning with the switch set to "MS" doesn't turn up any more modules. I bought this one, which is the exact module Dan recommends in his how-to thread, but it's not doing the trick for some reason.

I found the same kind of spots on my headliner! I bought some shampoo/spot cleaner and was able to clean the spots off. If they show back up I'll know to take it in!

I picked up a dashcam a couple of years ago, wanting to get in on all of the great YouTube videos of meteorites, and explosions, and cars flipping over, and everything else that definitely happens during my daily commute. I've mounted it temporarily in a couple of cars, but never permanently. After picking up the MKZ last week, I decided to get it in there for real, because otherwise I'm going to see Bigfoot and have no proof. I bought this dashcam, which offers full HD recording and a host of other nice features. The first step was to find a good mounting location for the camera. I wanted to give it a good view of the road, but also try and hide it from my view to minimize any blind spots created by extra junk on the windshield. I ended up putting it on the passenger side of the rear view mirror. I have the lane-keeping feature which means I have a bulky camera housing behind the rear view mirror, which made things a bit more difficult. In the end, I have some of the housing in the dashcam's view, but it should block any important area of the frame. From the front of the car, the camera is mostly hidden in the mirror's outline, which will hopefully reduce any attention it gets from potential thieves or police thinking it's a radar detector. With the camera mounted, I was ready to wire. My primary goal here was to leave the car untouched - no holes drilled and no wires tapped, spliced, or cut. I started at the fuse box trying to find a circuit that was on with the ignition. The fuse box is under the dash to the left of the steering column. I found that dropping the lower dash down provided the easiest access. There are two clips on the left side of the steering wheel and one on the right. Yank the dash carefully, as close to the clips as possible, and it pops out and folds down. I settled on fuse #37 - heated steering wheel and all-wheel-drive relay. My car has neither of those, so I didn't mind messing with that circuit. The add-a-circuit kit will allow you to keep the stock circuit functional, but I'd rather not mess with something important like steering or seat belts or the ignition. The MKZ uses "Micro2" size fuses, so I picked up a Micro2 add-a-circuit kit with a 5A fuse. The kit works by taking power from the original power feed and splitting it across two fuses. The first fuse is the original fuse, and power gets routed back down into the fuse box. The second fuse goes to a pigtail that can be crimped or soldered to your new circuit. That gives me +12V, now I need a ground. Any bare metal on the car is generally a ground, so I found a hole in the metal structure behind the dash and slipped an M5 bolt through it. I crimped a ring terminal onto a short length of wire and tested with my multimeter to ensure a good ground. The camera came with a cigarette lighter power adapter and an extra long USB cable. I popped open the power plug and soldered positive and ground leads to the circuit board to replace the standard contacts. In hindsight, it would have been easier to pick up a hardwire kit like this one, but a few minutes of soldering beats two days of waiting for Amazon. With the add-a-circuit in place, I tested for voltage with the ignition on and off to confirm it worked as designed, and everything was perfect. I crimped a spade terminal onto the end of the ground pigtail and the add-a-circuit so that the power to the cam could be unplugged if needed. Time to route the USB cable! I started at the camera and, after leaving just a little slack, tucked it between the windshield and headliner headed toward the driver's side of the car. Once I got to the A pillar, I grabbed that trim at the top and pulled down and toward the passenger side of the car, and the top of the trim popped out. This gave me enough access to route the cable across to the outside of the A pillar and then down toward the dashboard. The triangular piece of trim that caps the part of the dashboard hidden by the door when it's closed popped out with a little persuasion. I sent the cable in through that area and right in front of the fuse box. From there it was a matter of plugging my spade terminals into one another and securing the plug to the dash bracing with some zip ties. I popped the trim back into place and everything now not only looks factory, but can easily be returned to 100% factory condition in just a few minutes with no permanent modifications to the car. Here are a couple of quick clips to help give you an idea of the picture quality. The second clip shows the Pre-Collision Warning Avoidance feature in action when the car in front of me slows down to allow a truck to merge. The camera records video in 5 minute chunks and once the SD card is full, it just overwrites the oldest chunks. I have an older 8GB MicroSD card in the camera, and it was able to hold 2-3 hours of video before the oldest files were overwritten. My goal is to be able to hold an entire day's typical driving on one card so that I can save the video once I'm home. I ran some extra errands yesterday and the beginning of my morning commute where someone tried to plow into me in a roundabout was gone. I ordered this 32GB MicroSD card so that I'll be able to easily hold a couple days of driving. So bring it on, erratic drivers and apocalyptic events, just please happen in front of my car.

Before buying my MKZ I was expecting to install a couple of 8" IB subs in the rear deck but after living with the THX system for a week, I don't think I'll go through the trouble. The bass is loud enough to rattle the interior trim and certainly loud enough to enjoy listening to music; making it any louder would only benefit those outside of my car.

eBay, car-parts or somewhere else? I have some automated searches set up for eBay and when I'm ready I may start calling around to some yards from car-part to see what they'll do on prices. Dan seems like the expert on the Fusion forum, I see that he'll remote into your laptop and program with Forscan. Keep an eye on what he does and report back if you can ;).

The Fusion forum has a helpful thread. There was a 3.10 update that existed for just a little bit. I have it on my Edge, no noticeable changes but it's there. http://www.2gfusions.net/showthread.php?pid=98942

Did you source the parts yourself or buy a kit? Who's doing the programming?

Here's a fun scavenger hunt: Can anyone find the VIN of an MKZ with the sport-tuned suspension? With the VIN, you can generate the car's as-built data, which may have the suspension programming in it. With Forscan, that info could be theoretically programmed into any MKZ's body module. From the MKZ brochure, an MKZ with the sport-tuned suspension will have: A while back I went through every MKZ for sale that had AWD and the dark wheels and used the VIN to do a window sticker search and see if the summer handling package was listed. At the time, I didn't find anything, but there's got to be one out there somewhere, right?