Posted on 10/13/2021 2:37:58 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
I have to hand it to Ford: This is a genuinely new and unprecedented use of taillights
...A lone figure, an older woman, rose up from the pile of broken chairs and shattered taillight lenses. “New F-150 taillights do something no taillight has ever done before!”
Here’s what those lights are indicating: weight. Yes, weight. Ford has a system they introduced earlier this year called Onboard Scales. It weighs how much is being loaded into the truck and then displays that as a little four-part graph in the taillights, based on the truck’s payload capacity, so you can see easily how much more you can load, right there by the back of the truck. No outside scales necessary.
Smart taillamps operate like the battery charge indicator on a mobile phone, displaying the percentage of payload capacity by illuminating LEDs arranged in a built-in vertical bar. As the truck is loaded, all four lights illuminate,
(Excerpt) Read more at jalopnik.com ...
A bunch of us shoveled it into the bed of his BRAND NEW half-ton Chevy.
Before going ten feet he realized his rims were on the ground!
120 PSI in all four helped a lot.
A change of plans, he drove and we shoveled into the gravel lane I live on until he felt it was OK.
Pea gravel is about 3,000 a cubic yard. It was slightly overloaded. If he drove slow he might have made it home?
I would think a bottle opener on the tail lights would beat this ...
... but I guess all bottles have twist-off caps now.
So everyone can see if you are overloaded?
No thanks.
“Yo’ mama so fat — she got all four lights in her taillight lit up!”
Oh, so she was on a diet?
guess it’s an interesting addition, but the cumulative list of these cool, but mostly unnecessary ‘features’ is driving up the cost so high they are becoming unaffordable, and the higher the price, the higher the profit.
Just build me a basic truck, don’t need lcd screens, don’t need cameras, don’t need power windows, don’t need heated seats or surround sound etc and barely need AC - and definitely don’t need the truck to tell me when I put too much of a load into it.
Sell me a solid truck that will last and is easy to fix. Until then, I’ll keep what I have.
No wonder there is not enough computer chips available.
The trend around me is cans. I just cant get used to canned beer. Just ain’t right. But I guess small brewers can get mobile canners to come in and can for them cheaper than bottling.
In that case a can crusher built into the tail gate would be the ideal accessory. :)
—”Just build me a basic truck, don’t need lcd screens, don’t need cameras, don’t need power windows, don’t need heated seats or surround sound etc and barely need AC - and definitely don’t need the truck to tell me when I put too much of a load into it.”
More crap to break as the truck ages.
I had a power window go down and stay at a toll gate 100 miles from my home in the dead of winter.
I have never wanted them since.
—”$117,185 MSRP!
And I thought the King Ranch was insane.
—”No wonder there is not enough computer chips available.”
Clearly, you are on to something.
A Shelby F-150?
Is that like having a kickstarter on a vibrator?
The bottle opener is an aftermarket bolt-on, since they don’t exactly know where you’d like it best.
One guy’s got his below the driver’s side tail light; the next guy puts his in that blank space by the A/C controls.
;-)
Home Depot rental trucks won’t run if they’re overloaded. They don’t take much either - don’t ask me how I know.
Has anyone seen rear tail lights that flash when the person puts on the brakes? I’ve seen this more often than usual and wondering whether it is just more people feathering the brakes or is some new innovation that is supposedly to increase safety, but is just annoying.
You clearly appreciate freedom of choice. It’s the American way! 🇺🇸
As an engineer all i can think of when I see stuff like this is “greater complexity = gonna break more and be more expensive to fix”. Sometimes it’s worth it. Not a pickup driver so won’t try to claim an opinion on this one.
Going with excess weight is hard on a lot of truck components but let’s just look at wheel bearings....
The equation from ISO 281 or the American Bearing Manufacturers Association (ABMA) Standards 9 and 11 figures basic, nonadjusted rating life by:
L10 = (C ⁄ P)p in millions of revolutions
where C = basic dynamic load rating, lb; P = equivalent dynamic bearing load, lb; p = life-equation exponent ( p = 3 for ball bearings; and p = 10/3 for roller bearings)
My apologies for the formatting of the formula but ‘p’ is the exponent that (C/P) is raised to.... 3 for ball bearings and 3.3333 for roller bearings. Double the load on the bearings and the life essentially is reduced to 1/8 the revolutions (or distance travelled).
Exponents will come back to bite you every time....
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