Leaderboard

Answer for future readers. On my 2016 MKZ, production date 11/15, the hinge pin does NOT look like the picture above by jmcgliss. Mine is a small diameter keyed plastic pin that presses into a plastic sleeve with blind end. So there is nothing you can put a cotter pin into. Fortunately my pin had backed out part way but was not broken. As far as removing the pocket assembly from the car: 1. Take out the wheel and fender liner, remove torx screw holding fuel pipe. You need the pipe loose. 2. Cut slits where there are little marks molded into the flange of the pocket. There are 4. I only needed to cut the upper and lower rear ones. Like shown on this Edge video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYxonwPwLks Then pry with 2 small screwdrivers as shown in that video. Once it pops out at the back, you can use plastic pry bars like in my previous post. You may or may not crack the plastic when doing this. I cracked only one spot, not too bad and chose to reuse the pocket. This is clearly Ford's intention for removal. It's also shown in a factory manual for another Lincoln product. In that factory manual they do say it will be damaged and needs to be replaced. With care and luck you may be able to save it. I did. 3. Tape all adjacent painted surfaces so you don't scratch them. From the back side, release the large rubber surround from the surrounding sheetmetal. Then carefully wiggle the pocket around to free it from the filler pipe and slide it out. There is barely enough room and you may have to tinker around a bit. 4. If your hinge pin is like mine and has backed out, remove it completely by gently wiggling it as you pull it out by hand. Mark the clocking of the slot in the receiving sleeve as it's harder to see later. Then press the pin back in using a clamp. A Bessey DuoKlamp or similar one-handed clamp is ideal for this. Use it gently. Mine took a bit of force to press back in so will probably be fine for a long time. Clearly if yours is loose going in you may want to put some superglue on it or something so it doesn't back out again. 5. Reassemble in reverse order. Sorry no pictures.

Little did I know how prescient the last sentence of my prior post would turn out to be. As noted above, I left the car at the dealer on 2/23. I just got it back Friday, 4/28. When I left off, they'd replaced the BCM and a battery cable to no avail. I don't have an itemized list of parts replaced, but one thing that stands out in my mind is that they replaced the main wiring harness. I was horrified at this because after visiting the old Wixom Lincoln assembly plant in MI years ago with my LS owner's club (at Lincoln's invitation), we observed that the main wiring harness goes into the vehicle when it's still just a shell. The tour guide mentioned that these harnesses were fragile and required careful handling. While he was telling us this, the line workers were tossing the harnesses through the windshield openings, where they landed on the bare steel floors of the body shells with a resounding bang. A member of our group made him aware of this, and he promised to deal with it later. I only mention this, as it may play into the story later. As I said, I don't yet have a list of things of work was done or parts replaced. My SA periodically called me over the course of the 8+ weeks to keep me apprised of what was going on. I know that there were phone calls to Lincoln engineers in MI, as well as visits from Lincoln field engineers. I got a call last week to say that they'd replaced "some sensors," but still no luck. At that point, I was ready to ask Lincoln to just buy the car from me, and we'd part company. Ironically, I'd just bought the car off lease a few days before it went in for service. He told me to call Lincoln, but before I did that, he would call his liaison that he'd been dealing with first. He advised me to wait until I heard back from him. On Friday morning, he called to tell me that, hallelujah, they finally fixed it. End result: a FoMoCo field guy spent a whole day with it and found that the replacement main wiring harness was defective. That's when I recalled that harness tossing incident at Wixom 20 years ago. Also on Friday, I got a voice mail from the SA's guy at Lincoln advising me to call them, which I did. The person (Lincoln concierge) took all of my particulars. I told her that the car was now fixed, but that IMO, I thought that I deserve some kind of compensation for the loss of use of my car, despite the loaner I had. I asked for reimbursement for at least one month's payment. She asked for documentation of the amount and that they'd get together to see what they could do. It was so good to be back in my MKZ! The Corsair was nice enough, but boring. It had 700 miles on it when I got it and was fully optioned. It was also a good opportunity to make extensive use of the Lincoln+Alexa app so that I could continue listening to SiriusXM. Just not my cup of 10w-30. I'm not a CUV/SUV person, and my time with it only served to reaffirm my feelings about that. I just don't understand the American public's infatuation with them. Amazingly, everything works as it should and there are no squeaks or rattles. It even retained all of my settings. There are no obvious signs that the inside of the car was apart. I'll update when I hear from Lincoln.