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'13 Sport Review

NimbleNadzz

Active Member
Joined
October 11, 2012
Messages
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Year, Model & Trim Level
13 Explorer Sport
I took delivery of my tuxedo black '13 sport back on November 16th and wanted to share my experiences with it. I've been driving it to work and I've also done a short road-trip with it fully loaded ( wife/ 3 kids/1 dog/light luggage ).
Setup
Tuxedo Black
402A Package
Dual Moonroof
Tow package
Adaptive Cruise Control/BLIS
All-weather floor mats
Cargo shade
Front/Rear molded mud guards
Roof rack cross bars
Hood deflector
Rear bumper protector
Cargo area protector


General Looks/Presentation
I must say - this is one sharp looking ride! Everything is put together extremely well. I still haven't figured out why they chose chrome door handles - but this is an ongoing discussion.

Performance
I was pleasantly surprised with the power - get on the gas a little and it pulls hard. As others have reported, the torque steer requires some getting used to. I made some aggressive passes on a two lane road and it required quite a bit of interaction to keep it from flying off the road. My previous ride was a Honda Accord EX-L ( 290HP FWD ) and the torque steer on it was nothing compared to this.

Gas Mileage
So far, I'm a little underwhelmed with the gas mileage. The 16/22 rating is based on a very specific driving style that I obviously don't possess. So far, the best I've been able to achieve is 17.8 - with 90% of that driving on the highway. Then again, I like to take advantage of that sport emblem whenever I can...

Comfort
Fantastic! Driving this thing is a dream - super quiet/smooth ride at all speeds. 90mph feels like 65. The steering controls are well thought out and helpful to prevent reaching over to the console. I haven't found any use for the Sony component below the touch screen. I also found it to be rather sensitive and have mistakenly ejected the CD, changed songs, etc. I found this to be rather frustrating considering they ( Ford ) intentionally designed the touch screen to require deliberate touches for it to work. I think that was a smart design decision - but they apparently forgot about the Sony control panel below it :(.

My Ford Touch
I certainly haven't explored all of the features this offers, but by general impression is that it is a very good system. I have had a few problems:

- I put all my music on a 64GB usb key ( 50GB used ) and every time there a maintenance reset ( it seems like every other day ), it resets where I am in the folder structure/song of my key. This really sucks because I have to explore back to the song I was listening to just about every time I get into the car. To make matters worse, I like listening to unusually long mixes ( 60-300mins ) and I'm getting tired of listening to the first 50mins of it due to the resets. Since scanning 80mins into a song is a futile effort - I'm stuck. The system manages to save other things after a reset - why not which song you were last listening to ( and where in the song )?

- Finding a destination. Granted, this just may not be something I have figured out yet, but as well as they did with the other voice commands with the phone/BT system, I was pretty discouraged. I would expect to be able to say 'Destination Walmart' and it would find the nearest Walmart. Not so - you have to go through a whole categorical process selection which often requires you to look at the center touch screen to select a # ( by voice ) which corresponds to your destination. I don't understand why I can tell it to call a person in my phone book and it magically does it but I can't say 'Destination Walmart' without going through 20 questions and still not getting there. I'm hoping that I'm just an uneducated user...

Entertainment
The sound system is very nice. I'm no audio enthusiast - but I found the range to be very good. I have many songs that require noise-cancelling/isolated headphones to really catch all the subtleties of the song. I can say with confidence that I can now just hop in the explorer to get similar sound reproduction. If you are looking to boom your way through town - you won't be disappointed either. The USB ports are a nice touch - being able to dispense with the CDs and use a flash drive was a smart decision. I was initially concerned with only having a single CD in the dash. Not anymore - I've crossed over to the dark side - CD's are useless!

Bluetooth-Phone
This was probably one of the things I was most impressed with. Ford really nailed this one. Using it through voice is ridiculously easy and the sound quality is phenomenal. Used to having people say you sound like you are in a tunnel of some sort? Never again - my wife can't tell one way or the other anymore. The other welcomed surprise was the fact that I didn't have to provide additional voice recordings for people in my address book ( I had to do this with my Honda ). It is as simple as downloading your address book ( happens when you pair ) and saying who you want to call. Done.

Navigation
I really liked the nav in my Honda - but I must say - Ford also did a good job on the completeness and the display of where you are. I haven't set any destinations - so this still needs to be experimented with. As I mentioned previously - I'm not overly impressed with the voice portion of nav.

Climate
Works as expected - I particularly appreciate the remote starting and climate adjustment. It's nice to get into the vehicle and have the seat already warmed up for you. I also tried the cooling feature of the seats and whoah! Come summertime - that feature will be very useful.

Adaptive Cruise Control
Also does as advertised. I was surprised that I became less engaged in my highway driving as I'm usually on top of everything that is going on. On numerous occasions, I found myself going well below the set speed stuck behind someone. Usually I would be proactive and change lanes prior to riding up on someone. Good or bad - it definitely takes care of the pedals for you and is one less thing you have to worry about while using cruise control.

BLIS
Perfect. Nothing complicated - does exactly what I want and has already saved me from attempting something I shouldn't have.

Travel
I took a 1.5 hour trip for Thanksgiving and was super impressed. I have a wife, 3 kids ( 14, 9, 1.5 ), and a dog. I threw the 9yo in the 3rd row, put a crate in the other 3rd row seat ( folded down ) and the other two kids in the second row ( bench seat ). Everyone was super comfortable. I was, however, concerned about storage for the luggage. To my surprise, there was a lot of space available behind just one 3rd row seat ( there is also under-seat storage that I was unaware of ) and there is also some storage between the 2nd row and the folded down 3rd row seat. Because of how the window on the tailgate sits, you actually get a lot more room than you think. I was always convinced that the tailgate would compress the luggage - but it never even touched it. There was also room on the floor below the car-set for my 1.5 yo. In summary - I was worried about space, but there was an abundance of it. Now we are ready for the 12 hour trip for x-mas!

Hope this helps for those in the market! I'll update as I explore more of the features.
 



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I took delivery of my tuxedo black '13 sport back on November 16th and wanted to share my experiences with it. I've been driving it to work and I've also done a short road-trip with it fully loaded ( wife/ 3 kids/1 dog/light luggage ).
With 3 kids I'd strongly recommend that you get the Husky or WeatherTech fitted floor mats. They are much superior to the Ford all-weather ones.
Congratulations on the new member of the family.;)

Peter
 












Great review! I agree completely with the gas mileage. Holy crap this thing is a guzzling pig. The best I am seeing is 17.3 & unfortunately I do mostly city driving so I know this will not get much better. I am loving everything else about the Sport. It fun to watch heads turn as you drive by. I have gotten a lot of that's an explorer.
 






The best I have seen with this is 19.2 and that is with 90% highway. Again, if I could stay out of the turbos.... OTA update? That sounds like a "maintenance reboot" that you'll learn to hate!
 






LOL, I read that and immediately thought reboot.

Thats exactly what I was getting at, I just wanted him to try and explain it:D

Perhaps that's what his dealership told him it was.....
 






I have a 65 mile trip to work and I consistantly get 21-22 mpg with my Sport with the adaptive cruise set to 70 mph. I currently have over 4600 miles on the car but I have gotten this kind of fuel mileage since it was very new. I use 87 octane gas which usually has 10% ethanol added. Basically I haven't done anything special I just drive the car. I have been very satisfied with the mileage it is exactly what the EPA rates it at.
 






NimbleNadzz: Great and totally awesome review. Congrats and best wishes on your new Ford Explorer!
 






Thats exactly what I was getting at, I just wanted him to try and explain it:D

Perhaps that's what his dealership told him it was.....
I think you guys are right. Taking a step back and thinking about it - over-the-air updates wouldn't make much sense technologically. I still had the vehicle health report process in my head when I saw the maintenance screen....

I got into the car today and of course, everything had reset. Two minutes into my journey to work - black screen. On reboot, my phone didn't connect and froze in the 'connecting' state. I got pictures of both. Note that the picture of the phone connecting is not a snapshot of a moving progress indicator - the progress indicator is frozen.

My feeling about MFT just went down a few notches. If the system is going to do system maintenance every day - fine - just don't lose the current state. When you have 50GB of music to browse through - it's not welcomed every time I get in my vehicle. Additionally, it has to re-index/build voice commands for the flash drive each time too - which takes forever on 50GB. The system manages to save other things - like climate settings - why not which song and where in it? This seems pretty silly to me....

I'll update my original post to fix the OTA reference - I was giving Ford too much credit.
Sync_Reset.jpg

Phone_Connect_Frozen.jpg
 






If you don't already have the newest 3.5.1 update and A4 Nav card, get it to the dealer for them to perform the update. This should help with the multiple reboots you are experiencing. If you do in fact have the latest software, try performing a master reset, fuse pull, or disconnect negative battery cable. One of the 3......if that all fails, still get it in to the dealership.......


This look familiar?

 






If you don't already have the newest 3.5.1 update and A4 Nav card, get it to the dealer for them to perform the update. This should help with the multiple reboots you are experiencing. If you do in fact have the latest software, try performing a master reset, fuse pull, or disconnect negative battery cable. One of the 3......if that all fails, still get it in to the dealership.......
I have 3.5.1 and A4 nav card - I made sure of this when I took delivery. I've done a master reset once already for other reasons. I'm starting to think it has something to do with the 64GB usb flash drive I'm using. I had the car for a week before I threw that in - no problems. Then again, it could have been rebooting but I never noticed it because song settings didn't reset.

I'll try another master reset, since the last one was well before I was experiencing this issue.
 






Please post pics of your ride
 






I have a 65 mile trip to work and I consistantly get 21-22 mpg with my Sport with the adaptive cruise set to 70 mph. I currently have over 4600 miles on the car but I have gotten this kind of fuel mileage since it was very new. I use 87 octane gas which usually has 10% ethanol added. Basically I haven't done anything special I just drive the car. I have been very satisfied with the mileage it is exactly what the EPA rates it at.

Interesting - I cruise at about 80 ( w/o cruise control ) and use premium ( 15 miles each way ). Perhaps I should try with the cc on at 70 and see if I get similar #s.

Razziel24 said:
Please post pics of your ride
I'll try to get to it this weekend. Are you looking for any particular shots? I know zackcrazy posted pics of his sport here - same color.
 






Interesting - I cruise at about 80 ( w/o cruise control ) and use premium ( 15 miles each way ). Perhaps I should try with the cc on at 70 and see if I get similar #s.
Not sure how anyone driving 80mph can be upset with gas mileage.

http://mpgforspeed.com/

At 70 mph your fuel efficiency will be about 17% less than 55mph.
At 80, your efficiency is 28% less than driving at 55mph.
I'm not advocating everyone should drive at 55 but you can see the large drop-off in fuel efficiency as the speed goes up, not to mention extra wear on the brakes and tires.
10% ethanol is pretty well standard here and that doesn't help mileage either.

Peter
 






Not sure how anyone driving 80mph can be upset with gas mileage.

http://mpgforspeed.com/

At 70 mph your fuel efficiency will be about 17% less than 55mph.
At 80, your efficiency is 28% less than driving at 55mph.
I'm not advocating everyone should drive at 55 but you can see the large drop-off in fuel efficiency as the speed goes up, not to mention extra wear on the brakes and tires.
10% ethanol is pretty well standard here and that doesn't help mileage either.

Peter
My apologies if I came across as upset over the gas mileage. I'm well aware of the fact that I'm not conservative in the least bit when it comes to driving. While I was a bit surprised at the discrepancy, I certainly didn't intend to imply that Ford is misleading customers - nor do I think this is the case. Think of it as FYI for those who travel a bit on the faster side. :)
 






My apologies if I came across as upset over the gas mileage. I'm well aware of the fact that I'm not conservative in the least bit when it comes to driving. While I was a bit surprised at the discrepancy, I certainly didn't intend to imply that Ford is misleading customers - nor do I think this is the case. Think of it as FYI for those who travel a bit on the faster side. :)
No apology necessary. Perhaps I misinterpreted your post. Speed has indeed a very great impact on fuel mileage. Most people don't realize just how much. Perhaps some day that won't be so much the case. All the highway limits here are 60mph (100 kph) but very few travel at that speed. Modern highways and vehicles are safer at higher speeds than they used to be many years ago :)

Peter
 






NibbleNadzz, I would agree with your post regarding the torque steer. I tried turning off trailer sway control to see if this was it. Nope. I also wonder if it's the tires. I have the Hankooks on mine and they don't get favorable reviews on TireRack. One thing I did try that helped was to put the 4wd in snow mode. Straight as an arrow. I monitored the 4wd mode on normal and it appears to put power to the rear under hard acceleration, but maybe not as much as snow mode.
 






As requested, here are some pics of my ride...
257.jpg

179.jpg

348.jpg

438.jpg

527.jpg

617.jpg

716.jpg

812.jpg

Bumper protector - not a great shot, but you can make it out slightly:
912.jpg
 



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Very nice, except the dealers brand slapped on it. Take that crap off!! :)
 






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