Ford Transit van with3.5L Ecoboost

[KennyG]

Here's a Car & Driver review of the Transit. They liked it.

Full Review of the 2015 Ford Transit XLT Van ? Review ? Car and Driver

 

[Renze]

Ford's made these transit vans in other countries for decades, but they started building them here with this recent redesign. I see them everywhere now, in all shapes and forms. Contractors seem to love them.
Last night we were watching an old movie and just as I noticed the car styles from back in the 70's/80's, an Econoline pulls into the picture. Sort of odd looking, since the cars looked decades old and the Econoline looked like last year's model.

Here is the evolution of the Ford Transit from 1953 to this day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Transit

The performance of the early ones was quite underwhelming with their 1.3 liter V4 engine carried over from the Ford Taunus 12M

 

[Garandman]

This afternoon I insulated/sound proofed the cargo area. It turns out we had enough of the Soundown material for the whole back, so we only used the NOICO mat for the rear doors and a few hard to get areas.

Started by removing the front left trim panels.

This was a "good enough" project so I didn't spend a lot of time trying to trim pieces to cover everything, just damp the big panels and improve insulation. Same process was repeated for each of the six panels.

Then I started in on the ceiling.

The front panel had to be trimmed to fit around some other pieces, but the other four were rectangular.

The final step was sealing the edges with some 4" Mylar rip-stop tape.

This is the third van we've done this way. Makes the heating and cooling work a lot better (driving or camping) and the back a lot quieter.

 

[Garandman]

We've now got 1,438 miles on it so four tanks of fuel: our experience is that the first two tanks on a new vehicle are very low.

For the last tank we used 18.6 gallons to go 327 miles for an average of 17.6mpg. The trip computer showed 18.8mpg so it was 21% optimistic. The computer also shows running time for the trip so you can calculate average speed as an indicator of highway/traffic use. Run time was 7:50 so average speed was 41.9mph and there was about 800 lbs of cargo.

We have trip two set since new (it will reset at 10,000) and it shows 40.51 run time for 1,438 miles so an average of 35.3mph. Computer mpg is 17.1. Actual may be lower but we need one more fuel receipt.

Discovered a nice (albeit not unique) feature with the backup camera. When you buy Nav you get a 7" touch screen. When you go into reverse you get this view.

But if you touch the icon in the corner it gives you a zoomed-in view so you can see where the rear bumper is a little better.

 

[Ford850]

It's more of a 'zoom' feature than a 'top down' view. I love that on my truck (F150 with 5.0). It makes for 100% perfect alignments when hooking up a trailer.

A couple weeks ago I was driving though PA on the long rolling mountainous highways. There seems to be a LOT of these Transits on the road now. I learned to recognize the grill in my mirror, and kindly moved back to the right lane so they could float by me going up those inclines. It took the first couple before I realized the pattern... Ecoboost.