Leaderboard

Update on my issue: after having the car for a day and a half, service manager contacted me. It looks like the sound I heard was indeed the bearing/transfer shaft issue and they're replacing the entire transmission under warranty! It appears that being under 8 years/100,000 miles with the extended coverage on the Energi was what made the difference. It should be replaced with the current (mid 2015 and later) HF35 transmission. Should take about a week to get the part and get it installed. In retrospect, getting the first gen (2013 MY) of this new transmission was a risk, but I knew it wasn't an entirely new design, just an evolution of the earlier design so I thought I'd be good. I vaguely remember the extended plug in hybrid warranty powertrain coverage being an incentive to buy, and it looks like I wasn't wrong. This service experience makes me more likely to look at a new Mach-E as my next car, I'll tell you that . . . definitely heard from Tesla owners that the service experience is awful.

Had my first warranty claim on our 2017 C-Max (still under warranty under miles and months) for a dead LED running light in the headlight display. Ford approved it in less than an hour and it was done the next day. They replace the whole front headlight - $1,500 retail new. First time I've had a Ford warranty claim.

Great news.

I haven't seen or heard of too many C-MAX pack failures yet. Some 2nd Generation Prius (2005-2009) owners are experiencing pack failures now with 15 year old NiMH packs and more than 200K mi on their cars. One person got rid of a 2006 Prius with 250K mi not because of the battery, but because the catalytic converter replacement would have cost $3K. A pack replacement would probably be comparable to the cost of a transmission -- $2-5K depending on whether you buy a new pack or get one rebuilt. C-MAX uses Lithium ion battery pack so it may not be directly comparable but I am more worried about transmission failure than HVB battery failure in my C-MAX.