With all the (overblown) fear mongering on the survival of the US automotive market, I figured I better get my warranty work done on my '08 MMH just in case. My concern is more on parts than auto companies, but I digress.

Here are the items I'm having them look at. If anyone knows root-cause for any of these.. feel free to jump in .

1. Faint grinding sound near front left tire on slow speed left turns – This issue is not consistently present but when the Mariner is at low idle speeds there are sometimes distinct grinding sounds originating from an area near the front left tire. The sound usually appears when in a slight left turn. The noise persists whether the brakes are applied or not and even persists while in neutral.
2. Distinct squeaking sound when the back left shocks are exercised – When putting our children in the back seat we can sometimes hear a distinct squeaking sound coming from the back left (or possibly right) tire. It sounds as if the shocks are old or need to be oiled, but I’m unsure of the exact nature of the problem.
3. Random resets of the in-dash trip MPG gauge – We are very consistent about resetting the MPG gauge on the in dash LCD at each fill-up. Normally when we are 200 – 300 miles into the tank the MPG gauge is very constant since it is averaging its MPG over a large aggregate. Recently we noticed that the gauge would appear to reset on occasion when we would drive it in the morning. This was apparent since the numbers would drop from 30 mpg the night before down to 10 mpg while pulling out of our subdivision with a tank that had over 200 miles on it. This would have to indicate a reset since averaging 10 mpg over 200 miles would imply that 20 gallons had been burned over that tank. Well in excess of the tanks capacity.
4. Random failures of the A/C compressor while “ECON” is off – During the summer there were 3 occasions where the compressor seemed to turn off and refuse to turn back on. In all cases “ECON” mode on the AC was disabled (no light on the LED). In all cases the temperature and fan speed were set to manual control. The only way to get the compressor to re-engage was to either:
   • Stop and turn the Mariner off then on.
   • Or to take the AC off manual control and switch it to “AUTO”.
5. Factory roof rack cross beams were delivered stripped and rusted – We recently had occasion to try to use our roof rack. We noticed that the thumb bolts on the cross beams were quite unusable. The bolts were rusted and possibly striped. The roof rack has never been used and shouldn’t have such excessive wear

It's heading into Tomball Ford, so I'll let you know how the dealer fairs on a 1-10 scale.

11011011

 

Dan,
I am interested if you were able to resolve the issue with the squeaking shock. I have a 2009 with 1500 miles that has loud squeaking noises as well. Not sure it is the shock but it sounds like a squeak I would expect to hear on an old pick-up that has been used for farm work.