After 3 months of ownership, I've finally had a chance to take the car out for a longer run outside of the city. Learned some things tonight.

Adaptive cruise control is kinda cool. I tested it briefly before, but never really got to really use it. But tonight as I was on the interstate, I realized that I was going 58 following a slower car after setting cruise at 69. I decided to pass and noticed the mustang accelerated when I turned on the turn signal. I wasn't sure if that was correct, or just a coincidence that maybe the car in front of me was slightly out of view of its sensors. So I tried it again by staying directly in line with the car, and sure enough, it will speed up as soon as you use the turn signal to indicate that you're changing lanes. Kinda cool.

Then I got onto a two lane highway, and really got to test the car at night.

One, I'm going to have to figure out how to dim the large nav screen. It's still too bright, even on a dim setting. Second, I need to place a matte piece of something on the door handle. The ambient light bugs me reflecting off it. At the angle I see it, I can see the LED directly reflecting off it, not just the ambient lighting.

Then, what the hell was Ford thinking with the placement of the High Beam indicator? Took me a good 5 minutes to find it, and realize that it was under the tach. Cruising around 50mph, the high beam indicator is pretty much completely hidden. Why would they put it there?

But then I realized, high beams don't light up the road any more than the standard beams. They're only good for if you want to see the tops of trees as you drive by them.

I did notice that it appears that the lights are positioned in a way that they actually extend farther in your lane, and are pointed slightly downward for the oncoming lane. There was a clear line where I could see the lights further directly in front of me, and then left of the center line, they didn't go out as far. I'm assuming this was done on purpose, and then made me think back to the ****-poor placement of the high beam light, and thought "are they that smart?"

But that didn't matter, because about 50% of the people I passed were flashing me their high beams. I had to keep manually checking to see if my beams were on or not, because I couldn't see the indicator light.

I am also used to my '06, where you pull to turn on high beams. On this one pulling will only flash them. Pushing the lever will turn them on. Don't know how many times I flashed people, and turned on my turn signals. I miss the old way the arm worked.

So those are my thoughts for a first time country road night drive. Anyone else notice these issues too? Or just me?

 

If people are flashing you on low and the only difference you notice on high is lighting up tree tops, sounds like they might be out of adjustment. You wouldn't think so on a brand new car, but stranger things have happened, stuff slips by all the time. Might be a thought, maybe even have the dealer check it out.

 

Could be.

I just figured it's the LED headlights. I was paying attention to one's on the cars that I met, and you could tell the newer style headlights were much brighter than the old incandescent yellow ones.

I've also noticed that when I pull in my garage, there's a pretty solid line of where the headlights stop going up, and seems like no matter how far back I am, that line always seems to be just below parallel to my eye line.

 

That's what I was thinking. People used to flash me all the time when I'd use my driving lights from the first night I had the car. Once I realized they were adjustable (5...years...later) I aimed them right and haven't been flashed since.


That doesn't sound crazy out of alignment. They way I've always heard to check the aim is mark the headlight's height on a wall, then park 20 feet away. The bright spot should be 1-2" below the mark on the wall.

When you hit the high beams in the garage, how much higher do they go up?


-- On the highbeam indicator, to be honest I'd rather have it out of the way instead of right in the middle of the dash. The thing I hate about that on my '06 is it doesn't dim with the rest of the instrument cluster. When you're out in the middle of the nowhere, you set the cluster to red or green, dim it and let your eyes adjust, then turn on the high beams -- that little blue light is just STAB STAB STAB in your eyeballs. Maybe that's just me

 

My parents had a brand new Mercury Milan that had the headlights out of adjustment. It happens and the dealership should fix it no problem.

 

Don't most state vehicle inspections include checking the aim of the lights? I suppose you might get away with having them out of wack if you live in a state that doesn't have inspections, and that's one of the reasons I support having them. It's a basic safety issue.

 

I've lived in Ohio, Michigan (which, now I remember I never lived there long enough that I registered in MI), Illinois, and currently Indiana, and I've never had to have my car inspected. Never knew that was a thing until a few years ago.

Kinda wish we had to have it here. There's a lot of cars that would fail inspection. Brand new cars right off the lot that already have both their turn signals burnt out. And a lot of times, during dark raining days, their headlights are burnt out too.

 

Yeah, a lot of cars here suffer from the same thing, especially the burnt out turn signals. Even cop cars.

 

Michigan used to have inspections (emissions anyway) until some time in the late 1990's. Since then if you have a VIN you don't need inspection. Which is why you will see cars held together with duct tape and Gorilla glue. And why Fiat and Chrysler cars are on the road.

 

Was riding with a friend who turned right in a "No turn on on red" intersection from the south. While we pulled up to the intersection, I noticed a cop car who was sitting in the left hand turn lane on the east side. He was already there in that lane before we got to the intersection, but noticed that he never had his turn signal on.

After we made the turn, that cop pulled a U, and pulled us over. He asked if my friend knew why he was pulled over. Neither one of us realized it was a no turn on red. After giving my friend a ticket, i SOOOOOOOO wanted to point out that he was not using his turn signal in the left hand turn lane. But decided that'd probably not be the best thing to say at that moment.

 

Being an old LEO that is the ones that **** me off the worse. I can just hear my old Sgt. chewing my *** out if I didn't use my turn signals.

Woody, does your car have the auto high beams? My incoming one will, and I was was wondering how they work.

 

As far as I know, they don't. Guess I should look in the manual to be sure, but don't remember anything that said anything about that on the sticker. Would assume there'd have to be an "automatic" setting somewhere, just like how the windshield wipers have an automatic setting to switch to.

I know it has the autodiming rearview mirror. I don't quite care for that. It dims it too much, and makes it harder to determine how far back cars are. I only need it dimmed if headlights are extremely bright.

Also, while I haven't done any official testing to see if my headlights are improperly aligned, I'm going to say they are pretty close to where they need to be. Nothing that I've seen while out and about in parking lots pointed towards buildings shows that the lights don't point upward when on low beams.

 

Woody, if you have the "safe and smart package" it will have the auto high beams. All these new fangled do-dads are going to take me awhile to learn. As far as the "rain sensing" wipers I hope they have been tweaked since the '13 F-150. They were so aggravating to the point I turned them off on the truck. They never seemed to wipe when I wanted them to, and went in to super sonic speed to often.

 

Well, on my '17, I HATE them. I keep forgetting to turn them off to the normal mode where I can select the speed.

Windshield covered in a light mist. Nothing. One drop of rain, ON.

 

That's it bud. I highly suspect they will be turned off on the new one which BTW is in Ohio now. Hopefully it will get the North Carolina one day.