We waited about two years for Ford to get the parts to replace the defective passenger side Takata air bag in my wife's 2007 Ford Edge. A couple of years later, Ford is now saying they'll also replace the the driver side airbag (not sure if this is also a gov-mandated recall), and will let us know when the parts come in. Ford offered to pay for a rental car while we waited for the passenger side fix; we declined. No such offer for the driver side recall, and the repair offer is said to cover vehicles "up to 15 years old". Not sure whether they'll fix it all if they don't fix it in the next 5 weeks before its 15th birthday.
Maybe. The transmission has been acting weird for a while. Fluid was black. Performance improved a good bit after I drained and added new fluid twice. (Draining by drain plug removes only 6 quarts, but it holds 11 quarts, so you can't get all the old fluid out.) But the fluid was still pretty black, so I drained and added 6 new quarts again (for the 3rd time) today. So the fluid should be about 84% new now.
Overall, the Ford Edge has been a pretty good car for her.
But our #3 and #4 have been driving Toyota Avalons (the best car in the world, IMO) for years, and a couple of months ago #5 got a brand new Toyota RAV4. When StraitWoman saw it, she said "I want a Toyota."
But the newer RAV4's with their inline 4-cylinder engines are too slow for her. A faster 2012 model with a V6 would work, but 2012's had the spare tire mounted on the rear door, which she doesn't like.
I can't stand all the safety and "driver assist" stuff they put on new cars today, or the big LCD computer screen in the middle of the dash, or the Automatic Stop-Stop, etc.
I don't think you can go wrong with any of the Japanese or S. Korean badges. They just make great vehicles. I used cargurus.com for our last four purchases, CPO with reasonable to low mileage rides.
My buddy told me that he sent some Snap-On battery paks to BatterysPlus to be rebuilt. I asked him how much it costs and it seemed to be about 75% of a new one.
I saw some EweToob vids about how to "spot weld" standard batts [I don't remember the number] to do that. You're a smart young fella that's motivated to do something like that.
It'll make you money! I've got a shitpot to practice on.
I've designed quite a few battery powered products, and Battery Management Systems for electric vehicles and other applications. I know how the spot welding works for assembling battery packs, but have never done it myself. I think there are some YouTube videos on that.
I am looking to diversify. For the last 16 years, I've been designing electronic products -- mostly consumer, but also some industrial and aftermarket automotive products. And some product and system studies and analysis. But in Biden economy, that work has pretty much dried up (for me anyway), and I'm not real good at selling myself (partly because I haven't had to -- yet). So about Jan-Feb I might need to do something else to make a living, at least until things pick back up.
These Snap-On battery packs -- the "rebuild" involves replacing all the cells, right? Seems like a big outfit like BatterysPlus would be able to get the cells pretty cheap.