Harig surface grinder on the right, South Bend lathe with a cabinet full of tooling on the left. Total "investment" was $1250. Just too good of a deal to pass up.
Harig surface grinder on the right, South Bend lathe with a cabinet full of tooling on the left. Total "investment" was $1250. Just too good of a deal to pass up.
The Lightning rolled over 20,000 miles over the holidays, which means it's time for another service.
Unlike the first service at 10,000 miles, which is just an inspection and tire rotation, this service is the first major one. Not only does Ford call for an inspection and tire rotation... but you have to change the cabin air filter, too!
I again completed this service at home, and my truck again passed the inspection with flying colors. Even the tires are hardly wearing--I'm still at almost 8/32nds all around. These tires supposedly have 10/32nds of tread depth when brand new.
At $21.29 for a new cabin air filter, this service was by far the most expensive one yet.
Once finished, I again filled out a Ford inspection form, signed and dated it, and uploaded it with my receipt to the Ford service history section of the owner dashboard.
I regularly get 80,000 miles out of my gas F150 tires.
In reply to chandler :
Yeah, I figured this thing would eat through tires, especially with how often I'm towing and how aggressively I'm driving, but it's really not too bad.
I got about 70k out of my Tundra tires, but the 2500 eats them about twice as fast because it's heavier and it's almost always towing. Use has a pretty big effect on tires.
Here is a report Motor Trend did , most of the grips were the charging stations out on the road , which I am sure ( must ) get better ,
Ohh and I found a hidden Tesla charging "lot" with about a dozen chargers , no sign from the street but I guess Tesla owners get there by the App ,
Tesla charging stations are often pretty low-key, but the cars know where they are. I don't think I've ever seen a sign directing to them.
Yeah, this isn't a perfect choice for everybody but after six months and 14,000 miles of ownership with three massive roadtrips in there, I couldn't be happier. It's cool that you can have an F-150 in pretty much whatever flavor you'd like (do they still make the diesel?)
@Tom - what are you expecting for typical annual mileage? I was shocked to see you're up to 20k already, but realize you've done some longer road trips. With you putting that many miles on it, I'm sure that's going to tilt the economics of the truck in your favor with the reduced running costs and maintenance.
I'm guesstimating about 20,000 miles per year, depending on how much I drive this vs. other cars. I drive a fair bit, which is one reason I chose this vs. a gas truck.
The Lightning went to another event, which is probably worth a tiny update. I dragged a booth and Tim's Bugeye Sprite up to Caffeine and Octane in Jacksonville this past weekend:
Our booth was only a hundred feet or so away from a DC Fast Charger, but I was feeling lazy (and cheap) and decided to skip charging, leave the truck in place, and fill up with cheap home electricity instead.
So let's do the numbers: For this 170-mile, all-highway round trip, I left my house with a 94% charge. I plugged into a friend's 120v house outlet overnight, which was good to add 9% to the battery, then continued on to the event and left the truck "idling" all day to run the wifi hotspot. Afterwards, we hitched back up and drove home, stopping along the way for a 12-minute long charge at a medium-speed (50kw) fast charger, not because we needed to charge, but because we wanted coffee and a bathroom break and the closest gas station had a charger. That added 6% to the battery, and we arrived back home with about a 10% full battery. Bottom line? Success!
Love that trailer.
Yeah, love the trailer - reminds me of vintage NHRA:
This morning, I was driving right by Buc-ee's so I stopped to check out a new charger. They announced a partnership with Mercedes-Benz a few months ago, and a Mercedes-branded charging station is now open at the corner of Buc-ee's parking lot.
I don't use any local chargers, since my truck is always full when I wake up in the morning, but it's still cool to see how quickly the infrastructure is growing. In a few years, Daytona has gone from two DCFC stations to sixteen, which is pretty remarkable.
The station has six Mercedes-branded ChargePoint 400kw DC fast chargers, and I plugged in for a quick test charge. In cold weather with a 70% starting SoC and no preconditioning, I was up to 120kw after two minutes. That's perfectly respectable, and I bet I'd get the full 180kw I'm owed if I'd showed up with a lower SoC or a warmer battery.
While I was checking it out, the guy in the red GMC next to me walked over to ask about EVs. He seemed genuinely curious, and mostly wanted to know how the money worked. Is it like a gallon of gas? Is it time based? What's a gallon of electricity cost? Etc. I explained it as best I could, but I'm wondering if people would understand EVs (and their own home electric bill) better if we taught literally any of this in schools. Maybe I'll open a school with a "how to do taxes and measure electricity" class.
Some of the challenge is that the answer is "it depends". From what I understand, selling electricity means you're a utility in some states, and there are rules as to how you can collect money for that. The result is that sometimes you are paying by the minute instead of the kWh.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Yeah, I started getting into that and then realized his eyes had glazed over.
I think we should add an anecdote to your Lightning thread here: Tom demonstrated the lathe that I was buying from him by plugging it into the Lightning. :-) Having a truck that functions as a backup power generator is a very cool thing. I wish my Tesla would do that.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that!
We needed 240v power in a storage unit that doesn't have any, and on an unrelated note was literally wired for 120v during a drug-fueled frenzy by its former tenant. So we just plugged the lathe into the Lightning and it fired right up.
Looks like you're going to be able to break up with EA pretty soon. Ford is gonna send you a free NACS adapter if you want!
https://www.threads.net/@jimfarley98/post/C2xNjhkLeAt/?igshid=MGQ5NDJhODMwMQ==
When we announced@Ford EVs would get access to teslamotors Superchargers, I said we'd send customers a Fast Charging Adapter. I'm pleased to confirm that eligible Mustang Mach-E & F-150 Lightning owners in the U.S. + Canada can reserve a complimentary adapter starting soon.
However, the picture that goes along with the post illustrates a problem. That Mach-E is taking up two spots because Tesla built their Superchargers using an internal assumption, that the charging port would be on the left rear (or right front) of the vehicle. v4 Superchargers have that solved with an extra 3' of cable and a symmetrical design, but it's going to remain an issue for existing chargers. I also learned that only v3 and v4 Superchargers will be open to non-Teslas, that's due to technical limitations on the v2 modems.
It won't be an immediate thing, but will be ramped.
Heyyyy, guess what I saw in the app this morning:
I punched in my shipping address, and they promised they'd send me one in a few months.
For anybody wondering "does a motorcycle fit in the bed?"
Well, kind of. I do miss my 6 3/4' bed, but this works fine and is way easier to park. I didn't notice a range hit with the bike in the back. There probably was one, but it wasn't significant enough to affect a two-hour round trip.
In reply to Tom Suddard :
I like your idea to teach this stuff in school, but wonder how it would play out. The number of adults I run into who can't read a ruler is shockingly high.
In reply to Tom Suddard :
Is that a five foot bed or five and a half?
Five and a half--same as any other short bed F-150.
There are times I'd love another foot, but I'm not sure what I'd be willing to give up to get it. Longer overall and the truck wouldn't fit in my garage. A smaller back seat seems obvious, but I love that Rubbermaid bins fit long-ways in it so you can carry tons of them in the dry interior. I guess I'd give up some frunk length, so maybe the answer is a forward-control F-150. With no engine, that layout would actually be pretty easy aside from crash safety and aero issues.
Spearfishin said:Look forward to it. We were fairly early into the $100 "reservation" for a new one, but in the intervening 15 months between pricing announcement vs call from dealer that it was our turn to order, the numbers grew so much that we just told the dealer "thanks but no". That was coupled with the towing range situation. I live in the sticks. My towing is often some distance worth talking about in the context of an electric truck.
Same here. Was in on the initial reservation, but by the time they came back around the prices were far above what I was looking to pay.
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