I recently overpaid a hilarious amount for an EH. (Needed a car on very short notice; bad used market; inexperienced car buyer.) I've done the typical new car maintenance, and replaced a couple of worn CV axles (the front driver side one was a nightmare...apparently all the aftermarkets are a .5" too short. Get an OEM part if you replace this), the engine oil & filter, transaxle oil (twice...), and checked the (clean) engine and cabin air filters. I've done a rudimentary flush, drain and fill on the engine coolant. I have not yet changed the M/E coolant, but plan to do a drain and fill (replacing the existing orange / red (?) coolant with yellow, as recommended by a Ford dealer and the documents I found online).

The car had only 39,000 miles on it when I bought it; it was a former fleet vehicle for the NYS parks department. (Other than a dirty interior and severely corroded exhaust and driveshaft, the car looks alright; corrosion was luckily limited to easily replaceable parts, and the actual frame is in very good condition.) This hopefully bodes well for the battery.

I get about 30 mpg highway (70mph, I-95) and 26-34 mpg city, averaging around 28. 34 was the highest I could get hypermiling it to JFK and back; my commute to work in room temperature weather averages around 28). It's the 4WD so these are a bit lower, of course.

Finally, I did a quick check with Forscan to see if the battery was going to die on me soon. It was at about 49% SoC after my commute to work and back; driving it around the block at around 25 mph and testing accel and discharge revealed a peak discharge current of around 90A and peak charge current of around 50A, although the car would kick on the gas motor at around 50A of discharge (and the peak of 90A only occured when I floored it). This seems reasonable, based on posts in this forum, and hopefully the battery is still in very good condition, despite its advanced age (due to low miles)

Due to the unusual nature of the car (old and low miles), I'm curious as to what maintenance I ought to perform on it, and what I should expect to repair soon. I'm definitely going to need to replace some suspension components, as they're pretty heavily corroded; I've already replaced control arms and bushings. Here are my questions:

• Qualitatively, how does the battery sound? It seems like it's in decent condition. The car drives fine. When should I expect to need to replace it, and what will failure look like? Would I benefit from performing a balance with FORScan? What sort of mileage potential am I leaving on the table with a crusty battery?
• I intend to keep the car for quite a while; should I consider replacing the battery sooner, to take advantage of current stock?
• I'm an electronics hobbyist; is it worth it for me to prep the stuff to externally charge the HV battery in case it discharges and leaves me without a working car?
• Are there any courses of preventative maintenance I ought to perform now?

Just looking to gather advice and opinions here. Thanks for the help in advance.

 

sounds like you have a good handle on it. I do not know about the battery but would suggest the following mechanical stuff:
replace stabilizer end links [use oem] as they will start making noise sooner than later
PTU maintenance. I think you stated you changed oil. this should be done every 20k miles or so going forward
replace the MECS pump if it still has oem bosch unit fitted. it will fail
Check front brake flex lines. they are known to collapse internally and give errors that most shops will tell you requires a new HCU unit [big $$$]
Check the inner and outer tie rod ends. probably ok at your mileage but with NY road salt, suspension and steering stuff deteriorates fast

 

Discharge the battery to around 25% SoC if the car lets you by putting it in "N" and imparting loads. Watch the DEL_MOD_V value If you notice a slight increase in the value, that's a good sign. If you not a large increase (3X or more), it's a bad sign.

Recommend you engage the RMODE_BALANCE function to force the car to charge it to approximately 80-90% SoC to help rebalance the cells.

 

I forgot to mention, but I did already replace the stabilizers. The bushings had rotted out and they started making noise, as you said.
The MECS pump definitely sounds like it's on the way out; it's very noisy. I'll probably wait for it to go intermittent before I replace it (right now, I don't have too many tools available to me), but thanks for the heads up.

No errors from the brake system yet, and everything (including ABS) works fine for now, but thank you for the heads up.

Tie rods and other suspension components are pretty rusty. I'm going to replace these parts as I work on other things; the frame is alright, but the front shocks have torn boots and will eventually fail.


Thanks. I'll try and give this a shot today. What does DEL_MOD_V represent? Difference across cell voltages? Last time I looked at it I remember it looking very small. Would this just be equivalent to putting the car in N and turning on all the high-demand accessories (AC, defrosters, lamps, inverter, etc.?) How long should it take to get to that SoC (I would figure around 15 min, based on the 6-8A discharge I observed from the AC compressor and the 6Ah capacity of the battery)

Edit: Compressor drew about 9-10A, and took about 5 minutes to drop from ~40% SoC to 29% SoC, where it shut off. DEL_MOD_V oscillated between 0.00 and 0.06 V the entire time. Based on the change of SoC and curren draw it took to drop this much, I'd guess that the battery has much of its capacity remaining (approximately 9A * 10 min = 1.5Ah, assuming 15% drop that would suggest a capacity of 10Ah so likely the SoC or current reported in ForScan is incorrect).

Running a rebalance now. Update: the rebalance completed successfully after a couple dozen minutes with a final SoC, as reported by FORScan, in the low seventies.


The last thing I'd mention is that it sounds like the driver side front brake rotor is rubbing - the caliper isn't ceased, it's just a little noisy, especially with the windows rolled down. It's an old caliper, though, and they don't really lift off anyway. Not sure if I should bother replacing or looking into it.

 

The caliper might not be the problem, it might be the flex hoses mentioned previously as a know issue
They tend to collapse internally and even if they look ok, like mine did, the pressure doesn't release quickly when you take your foot off, and you'll think there's a stuck caliper.
$20 and I got both of them done quickly
Good luck

 

Any way to check them without taking them off? I don't have any of the equipment to bleed right now (no tools beyond the tire iron and death jack, I'm at a summer internship away from home). If I can just squeeze em or something that would work. I wouldn't be surprised if they failed, I beat the crap out of the brakes and calipers when changing the CV axles. Had to take them on or off a dozen times bc every aftermarket FL cv axle was 0.5" short.

 

I was hearing a creaking sound with my foot off the brake rolling away from a stop, and there was grabbing/resistance
You can do what I did, put it in N jack up one side, hit the brakes and promptly try to turn the wheel by hand
If it's stuck and then after a bit the fluid is able retract, so the wheel spins again it's probably the hose.
good luck

 

Thanks! I'll give this a shot.