TheRaven

UPDATE: Problem still exists. So really, it only gets weirder. I've discovered that when I disconnect those two connectors at the underhood fuse box, leave them out for like 10 minutes, then reconnect them, the wipers work perfectly, but if I leave them running, they slowly die over a period of about 30 minutes. Then, the low speed is completely gone. No low, int, or park functions...only high works. I can repeat this cycle ad nauseum. WTF?!

Wow this forum is a ghost town. Well i'll do my best to contribute at least... Disassembled the wiper system this weekend so I could test the motor. Test was inconclusive, voltages at motor make no sense. It doesn't appear to be wired the way every other wiper motor ever has always been wired...no surprise. I then decided I would simply buy a new motor and just plug it in for testing, see if the different speeds work but OF COURSE no one has any in stock. So I put everything back together because I need to drive it this week and guess what?! It all works perfectly now. High, low, int, and auto...all working as they should. Neat. So, assuming it STAYS working, my guess is connectors. In addition to unplugging the motor, I also had to unplug the two large bus connectors at the engine bay fuse block in order to get to the fuses UNDERNEATH the fuse block (awesome idea Ford). So perhaps re-seating all of those connectors alleviated the issue. This week promises to test the wipers hard so i'll report back in a few days.

What if I pull the motor and test at the connector? I should be able to meter two different voltage levels depending on the position of the wiper switch. If it's not the motor, theoretically I should see no voltage on the low setting and some voltage on the high setting...if I see voltage on both settings then the motor is the problem. Right?

Yeah I am ruling out the switch based on my knowledge of switches and the fact that a bad switch cannot account for a very slow failing of a motor on one particular speed but not on another. If it had just abruptly stopped working then I would actually bet on it being the switch. Now that is unless someone comes along with knowledge that the "switch" is not really a switch at all but something that can actually regulate the voltage received by the motor. That would be a different story (and a really dumb design). Now if there's a single motor then I cannot rule it out. Electric motors generally have starting solenoids and/or caps and in a two-speed situation may have multiple sets for the different speeds. It would be a poor application of this design to use it on a modern car since automakers tend to use external modules for this sort of thing anymore. Nonetheless, it's possible that a dead solenoid or cap could cause one speed of the motor to "go out". We'll see if anyone here knows more than we do about this. I'm betting there has to be a "wiper module" somewhere, and it probably got water in it somehow.

Why would you say I can't rule out the switch or relay? Also, Fusions have two wiper motors so my assumption would be that the MKZ is the same. Wouldn't blow my mind to find out that i'm wrong about that though. But it is also my thinking that the motors must be ok because the high setting works perfectly every time.

I searched all over the net and I could not find a Ford with a problem like i'm having. Lots of wiper issues but nothing that quite matches what happened to my car. So here goes - Monday morning, driving to work, had the wipers on low setting. About halfway through my drive I noticed the wipers were acting weird - on the return side of each swipe it looked like they were struggling to get down. They swept up fine but kinda "ran out of juice" on the down swipe. I turned them off and back on, same. Tried intermittent, same. Tried high speed, and that worked perfectly. My immediate thought was maybe the alternator was dying but then the high setting should be affected too, but it wasn't. To finish the story - over a two-day period, they just kept getting worse until they completely stopped working on intermittent/low. High speed still works perfectly and reliably every time, but now they will not move at all on low/intermittent. This is apparently unique because of the way they died a "slow death". Every instance I see online is either the switch, relay, or motors. But it seems like my situation rules them all out: - Can't be the switch because they would have just stopped working, or stopped working reliably. The switch can't make them slowly die. - Can't be the relay for the same reason. When a relay quits things just stop. - Can't be the motors because they both died in the exact same manner and rate. No way two motors will go that way. Is my logic sound? And if so, is there a wiper module that could be responsible? A speed controller perhaps?

It gets even better - I don't have a "vehicle info" menu option. I wonder if that's the problem...perhaps I have to somehow enable that menu section in ForSCAN. Well I definitely have the TPMS system. I receive alerts on the dash cluster when a tire is low on air. So are you saying that the display can only be enabled by ForSCAN on 2015 and up? The senseless-ness of that would be astounding. But knowing Ford, I wouldn't rule it out.

3.7L AWD. I will look again but i'm positive it's not there.

Could you perhaps explain exactly what you did to make the TPMS work? I used the spreadsheet posted in the Fusion ForScan forum. Also, WHERE exactly does this display show up? Right or left screen? And do you have to find it in the menu or what? I went through all the menus on both screens and can't find it.

I did those hacks also, and they didn't work. None of them actually show up. I'm assuming you have confirmed that your hacks actually worked? A few of the changes I made actually did work - like the mirror drop in reverse, and changing the "accent light" behavior. But I supposedly added the TPMS display, and the active AWD display, changed the heated steering wheel temp, and added right cluster screen functionality, and none of those actually worked.

I had a 2012 Buick Lacrosse CXL (3.6L AWD) and traded it for a 2013 MKZ select (3.7L AWD). What i've seen - the Buick was much better quality, much more comfortable, best stereo i've ever heard in a car. The MKZ is the better performer though, and has alot of options you couldn't even get on the Buick. I'm seeing slightly worse MPGs (19 instead of 20) on my MKZ as compared to the Lacrosse. It's worked out to be a net-even swap for me. I miss the comfort, quality and sound system of the Buick (the MKZ system is frikin terrible), but I really enjoy the performance and features of the MKZ.

Progress!! So i've been researching using everything I can find on this sound system. Not surprisingly, complaints are plenty, so I knew that if I searched enough, I would find other audiophiles who chose to do something about this system. I found a hint in one driver's evaluation where he said it sounded like the center channel level was just too high. Then I evaluated same on my own system and realized that it did indeed seem as though the center channel was overpowering everything. This was reinforced by the fact that as I faded the sound to the rear, it started to sound better. So I decided to take a look at what lays under that trapezoidal grille. Turns out theres actually an array of speakers under there. two 2.5" drivers and what appears to be a tactile transducer of sorts...all this covered by a heavy gauge steel plate? Tough to wrap my mind around this design - take two low-quality, tiny speakers, cover them with a steel plate, and expect good sound? Perhaps there is some magic here but it's tough for me to see. I decided to test my hunch and simply disconnect the whole mess. So after taking apart the entire center section of the dash, I was able to access the wire harness and disconnect the speaker. Guess what? MAJOR improvement. I rebalanced the system (ended up with fader at -2) and re-tuned using the crappy EQ, and I now have passable sound! It's still very meh for what is billed as a super-high-end system, but it's at least meeting modern standards. I can live with this. The next issue that I plan to tackle is the super-harsh metal-dome tweeters. I'm not positive the issue lies completely with the tweeters themselves, but swapping them for fabric dome units with better range can only help. Then I will find out if there is in fact an underlying crossover issue.

Datacenter Engineer.

Having owned Cadillac, Buick, BMW, Lexus, and Infiniti...let me add some perspective. There are two aspects to "quality" - perceived and actual. Perceived quality is how well the car makes you FEEL and actual quality is an objective look at the car. This is separate from reliability and durability. As for perceived quality - current Lincolns seem to have accomplished the opposite of what automakers strive for. What you WANT as an automaker is to use cheap materials that APPEAR premium. My MKZ (select with preferred package) has a dash that LOOKS like hard plastic. It's actually soft-touch vinyl. In fact, this vinyl appears on 80% of the car's interior surfaces. So cost-wise they spent more, and objectively speaking, they've used a more premium material...HOWEVER, it LOOKS like hard plastic! To contrast, the Lacrosse that I traded for it made extensive use of vinyl all-over the place, but thanks to the grain stamped in it, and a very clever fake french seam trick, it LOOKS like the entire interior is wrapped in real leather. Buick also used metal-look and wood-grained plastic all over the place, but until you touched it, you would swear it was real metal and wood. Lexus and Infiniti use similar tricks. Cadillac and BMW actually use the real thing (granted the wood is paper-thin veneer but it is real), but they are also in a completely different price class. As for actual quality - so far i'm finding Lincoln to be pretty competitive in that department. Lexus is not what it used to be (long gone are the days of the "solid door" sound) and Buick has made massive improvements here, but when you look at things like panel gaps and fastener quality, Lincoln appears to be using the same tricks and methods as their competitors. One thing that is severely lacking though is the "N" and "H" in the ever obsessed-over NVH factor. They need to work on this big time. My Lacrosse had the 303hp 3.6l and until 4000rpm you never had a clue it was even running. Conversely my 3.7l MKZ sounds like it has a lumberjack sawing something under the hood at startup (WTF is with that starter?) and there is no mistaking that it's running at any point during idle. Once revs cross the 1000rpm mark the engine is clearly audible and harsh, and worse yet, it sounds like a Hyundai Accent. If there's anything needing immediate attention it is this because Lincoln is getting killed by the competition in this category. As for long term reliability and durability, I'm pretty confident my MKZ will be every bit as solid as the Lacrosse it replaced, or as my LS and STS-V were. I actually hope it's better than my M5 was, that thing was a big disappointment in this category.

First post here, and reviving an old thread, but this is why I came here. I traded in my 2012 Lacrosse daily driver on a low-mileage MKZ Select (with the Panoramic roof preferred package) and I was extremely disappointed in the billion-speaker million-watt THX sound system. I'm a big audiophile and as such, I know that an automobile is among the worst environments available to engineer a quality sound system for, but it can be done at least to the point where it sounds pleasing to the ear. The MKZ is not one such example. Granted, i'm coming from the Buick Harman Kardon system which, to date, is hands down the best system i've ever heard in an automobile (and this includes Cadillac, BMW, Lexus, Infinity, and Porsche which all have pricey "premium" audio), however I never expected the MKZ's system to compare to that HK system. Even with lowered expectations, i'm extremely disappointed. It's unacceptable for it to be this bad. The 4-speaker "monsoon" system in my 1996 Grand Prix had better sound quality. Objectively - the crossover frequencies are far too high and the EQ is lacking enough range and resolution to fix anything. As a result, you can't adjust bass without seriously muddying the midrange and you can't help ANYTHING by adjusting the treble. Basically the treble adjustment is there to temper the insanely harsh metal-dome tweeters. Currently I have the midrange setting all the way up with the treble at 0 and the bass at roughly +2. This has gotten me to a point where it sounds like there is a thin pillow over the speakers (as opposed to a pile of feather pillows...or perhaps listening with the tweeters half-submerged). There is just enough bass for some punch, but if I turn up the bass any higher those feather pillows come back, and if I turn down the midrange or turn up the treble the tweeters take knives to my ears. This system needs fabric-dome tweeters and at least a 5-band EQ with 2x the range (even more would be best). Hopefully with a 5-band they could get the dividing frequencies closer to ideal. I'm going to be looking into aftermarket options.