While driving to work one morning on a two-lane highway I came across a fellow in a Dakota driving in the oncoming lane. My lane. I ended up slowing down and pulling off to the shoulder as he just casually cruised by with nothing but a stoic expression on his face.

I’m on engine #3 now, but I’ll readily admit that #1 and #2 died to mistakes I made in assembly. I purchased the car in pieces because it had suffered the dreaded rod bearing failure.

What makes it run? The tears and constant effort of their owners to keep them on the road. Blood, sweat, tears and cash; lots of cash.

FCA’s situation is starting to sound strikingly similar to AMC. Reasonably popular at the time, but lacking the budget necessary to stay on top of changing regulations and needs which led to a decline in sales.

Well, you have to dig a bit deeper into the problems themselves to understand why they’re not a recall level.

The car has been around long enough that if there were a solution it would have been figured out by now.

The car already has a lower grill shutter and a smaller than normal upper grill (it's the Eco model). I can certainly choke it down more, but it's already cooling through an 8" square hole.

My wife’s 2012 SRX with the 3.6 has absolutely no trouble at all warming up and is, in my experience, unusually fast. There’s just not rhyme or reason it seems.

I’m pretty well the same. The car usually takes about 30 seconds to idle down and then once I’m on the road I try to keep it under 3000 rpm until it warms up.

True, it looks like this time they relied on Tremec to provide the transmission while the Focus used a jointly designed unit between Ford and Gretrag.

Here’s hoping it performs better than the DCT they saddled the Focus with.

The truck still has mirrors...

Ew.

I recommend against selling it as a “v4 Ecoboost” in that case.

Must be written by the same people who have Craigslist ads claiming their cars have V4's.

I mean, they do exist. Just not in a Terrain, Tacoma, Isuzu NPR, Sonata, Impala, Mustang, Lexus 200H, Rogue, Golf, and a host of other cars on the local CL.

Ignoring reliability, yes. The Demon engine would be a great towing powerplant (the Demon chassis, however, is not).

You need to stop thinking about torque at the crank and start thinking about torque at the wheels. Let’s look at that peak torque number of 1000 ft-lbs at 1800 RPM; that calculates out to 343 hp. Now…

I like how it’s repeatedly referred to as an ooze, despite appearing to be just water (probably on top of a container of dirt).

I have noticed them on all DRW trucks, but I was speaking on the assumption of the lights being optional on SRW trucks that were over 80" wide. Now as to how many 80"+ SRW trucks are out there...

Yeah, I’ve always seen them on dually’s and knew it was because of width. I just never knew the srw trucks were wide enough to require them.

It’s probably a bit of a grey area in terms of enforcement. If the truck is used for commercial duty I would absolutely buy the lights. If it’s a personal vehicle... I don’t think I’d bother.