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A thread over on Energi prompted me to use a picture I found on Reddit of the milky way over Mt Rainer as my first self-provided wallpaper. (Original: http://pcdn.500px.net/40109718/01ac381a3aa822fa468d1a371bcf340fa6dfa9b7/2048.jpg ) It had just the right amount of light and darkness that should allow for easy viewing of text. I took the original excellent photo and cropped it to the required 800x384, put it in a USB drive and loaded it up using the simple menu. So do you have a great wallpaper? Let's see it!

All, I just finished my Remove and Replace of my HF35 ECVT on my 2013 SEL C-Max Hybrid and will firstly report the effort appears successful on all parameters. I want to thank Snowstorm for his extensive posting of his journey to accomplish the same thing. Many things I mention are things I learned from Snowstorm's thread on his R&R, so please read his thread also. My C-Max Hybrid SEL is 2013 now with 126,300 miles on the clock. I will break down this event in a few different aspects: 1) SOURCING A SALVAGE ECVT I followed Snowstorms links to a site that show the actual donor vehicle pictures that you can have an idea what type of accident totalled the vehicle. You will have to read Snowstorms thread to find it, but it is critical that the vendor you buy from can provide with full authority the VIN of the donor vehicle. The ecvt was still in the donor vehicle when I bought/reserved it. I would be wary of buying a transmission with a picture of it on a shelf as those are stock photos and you must have the VIN or the donor car. I chose to buy a 2016 vehicles ecvt as the TSB on the early hybrid drives seems to run into early 2015, the vehicle has 22K miles when rear-ended and totalled. I’m adding this point later, I recall it was from a Fusion. Once you think you have a match, the Plug In ecvts are different, so you must be Hybrid to Hybrid, and Plug-In to Plug-In, then you get the VIN on the donor car and call your Ford Dealer and ask them to order a new transmission for both vehicles, your C-Max and the Donor vehicle. If the parts counter comes back with the same part number for both, then you can use the tranny out of the donor. This sounds strange, but the salvage sites software will -not- work like this, they will want your vin and will tell you that the 2016 unit will not fit, their software would want to sell you one of the defective designs of year models 2013 through 2014 and going into 2015. Like kind for Like Kind. So to trick the system into getting the upgraded and new design HF35 ecvt you must follow this method. I paid $1,600 shipped from their yard in WA state to the shop doing the work in League City Texas. 2) LABOR This topic I found interesting. I found out quickly that Ford Dealership Service Departments can swap in salvage units if they desire. My local dealer did not desire and instead quoted me 7-8K for a new one put in. The dealer who sold me the car is small and never had a tech certified in high voltage so they could not do the swap, yet there were willing to swap in a salvage unit. So I began a rather extensive search to find a Ford Dealer, or anyone who would do this swap. Here's what I found: 1) Ford Dealer near one of my businesses in League City TX area: $2,400 labor. 2) Ford Dealer Abilene TX: $2,300 labor and 130 miles away. 3) Local and trusted transmission shop in San Angelo: $1,960 Labor 4) Local Ford Dealer in San Angelo: $1,960 Labor, requiring new HF 35 Ecvt at $5,000 plus 'Incidentals' 5) Transmission Shop in San Antonio claiming expertise in Hybrid Drivetrains, The manager said they maintain a fleet of C-Max hybrid taxis: $2,000. 5) What I settled on was a Transmission Shop in League City Texas, the town I grew up in and have a business I work once per month but 420 miles from where I live in San Angelo: $1,000 labor. I also have a friend in this town that has a family auto mechanics shop there for nearly 40 years and asked him if this transmission shop would be OK to do this R&R, he said yes. He had another shop he would have recommended if an actual transmission rebuild was in order (which I contacted in person and they never got back to me), but for an R&R job Snider's in League City would be fine. My takeaway is that this job is not that big of a deal for a transmission shop. They must have done a hybrid drive before and be comfortable with a tech who understands High Voltage and how to disable the battery, but outside of that, this job is apparently nothing special. 3) Timeframe My ecvt was growling louder and louder on REGEN and EV Mode and loud in ICE Mode, but I drove about 4 months after recognizing I need to do the swap, I did change the Mercon LV and it was not discolored, but that was at the beginning of the 4 months I'm discussing, and the unit was getting progressively louder. All this well after 100,000 miles, if yours is making -any- noise and is under 100K miles, take it to the dealer and make them fix it under warranty. OTW, if you are after 100K and on your dime, then these ecvts don't seem to fail catastrophically. I had Snider Transmission in League City TX do the swap, I left it with them Monday morning 03JUN19 about 9AM, they had received the HF35 about 10 days earlier along with 6 qts of Amsoil Signature ATF for the HF 35 which had also been received. I picked up the C-Max Thursday about noon 06JUN19 and all has been well since. When I was paying she offered me $100 off for a good Google Recommendation, I agreed, so my total labor was $900.00 USD's. So all in I bought an ecvt with 22K miles from a rear ended Fusion that I saw the pics of for $1,600 shipped inc TTL. I paid the shop I found $900 and about $100 for the Amsoil ATF. I did rent a car for 4 days for $140 which you could put in my math or not, my travel back and forth from San Angelo TX to League City TX is a monthly business expense for me that I cannot avoid. So $2,600 and I'm running great, drove the C-Max around the Houston Galveston area and then drove the 420 miles home yesterday: wonderful. I had my BlueDrive OBD2 Scanner pulling data to my iphone as I drove and all parameters, temp, %power, etc were nominal. So my takeaway from all this is the early C-Max's affected by the TSB on the early HF35's are worth R&Ring the hybrid drive with a salvage unit if you are willing to search out a shop that will do it well and affordably. The variation on labor costs as I showed was wide. I don't know this for sure, but it seems possible that the transmission repair industry realize the hybrid drive is the future, and that the longer they wait in learning these units, the further behind they get. The shop I chose had done a number of Priuses before and seemed eager to do this R&R at a relatively great price. Thanks to Snowstorm to saving me some time and heading me to saving my C-Max, hopefully this info can help someone else.

I’ll look in the SM on seat removal. I use AC with car on for up to an hour at a time for our dog when traveling when we stop for meals. It works fine. I assume you have a hybrid and not the Energi. So, the hybrid battery has a very small usable kWh range between charging / discharging. It will not charge full (full is about 70% SOC ) with ICE but only around 50 % or so and then ICE shuts down. One may get about 15% usable SOC or so to run AC and other load before ICE has to start. The climate usage demand will depend mostly on outside temperature and set point temperature which likely yields between 250 - 400 Watts if Ambient temps aren’t too high. Add the parasitic load when ICE is off, but car is on - likely several 100 Watts - and the total demand might be around 500 - 800 Watts. This means ICE might start around 3-4 times a hour for maybe 2-4 minutes each time. If ICE charges at 6 kW, it would take about 2 minutes to replace 200 Wh of energy consumed from the HVB (15% x 1. 4 kWh new HVB capacity). These are nominal values and depends on climate conditions and set point temperatures of the AC.

Congrats on selling it. It is indeed a nice car, and sadly an unloved one....and this is why prices are depressed when compared with other Hybrid autos. I would like to say it is because of the early Transmission reliability, but I don't find many people who even know this issue existed (beyond the owners who were burned by it) and so it must be something else. As a Ford stock holder, it bugs me that the company was not able to effectively market a car with such great utility.