StoBro2

It'll be another 4 or 5 weeks before we can put out any tender vegetation around here. The oak trees in my yard are still clinging to their autumn leaves. Which, as it turns out, can be perfect cover for certain birds, like this one in my side yard:

I had a couple of cars with light gray leather seats. I had a terrible time with dye transfer into the leather from my clothes. Denim jeans were the main culprit, but I've also had times when the (dark) leather jacket I was wearing would have to be peeled from the seat back, depositing dye along the way. My SE C-Max is the first one in several years with cloth seats. The fabric seems sturdy enough- much better than the mouse-fur velour of years past. Time will tell.

44MPG and 497 miles between fill-ups! Now that it's April and we're finally getting March level temperatures around here, I managed to get a personal best tank! It's still a few MPG shy of the 47.4MPG I got one time with my VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI, but it's within reach.

Just as a point of comparison, my winter wheel and tire combo weighed in at 41.5 lbs. I'm using 205/60-16 winter tires on 6.5X16 wheels. I guess the closer a wheel gets to being a solid disc the more aerodynamic it becomes, but there still needs to be a way to get cooling air to the brakes. Didn't the EV-1 from GM and the 1st generation Honda Insight have fender skirts over the back wheels? In the grand scheme of things I'd probably be better off just shedding some of my own pounds. One or two fewer cheeseburgers a month ought to do it....

"I don't think we need to go down the political route here." "So I created an online whitehouse petition." I'm just saying there are people who will resist anything that any authority figure thrusts upon them. Even things that are obvious good ideas like wearing seat belts or motorcycle helmets.

I was thinking more along the lines of better fuel economy and a smoother ride.

In case anyone is curious, the OEM wheels are 22.5 lbs. This is based on the 44.5 lbs. I measured with tires mounted and inflated to 38 PSI, not including lug nuts or center caps. According to tire rack, the OEM Michelins weigh 22 lbs., so 44.5-22=22.5. It's a little on the heavy side for a 17" wheel. There are lighter wheels available in the aftermarket. I've always heard that reducing unsprung weight has a whole host of benefits. At some point I may decide to test that theory, but it'll have to wait until I have a sizable amount of un-spoken-for funds available. Truly lightweight wheels can be a bit pricey.

Remember we're dealing with electricity here: "Ohmmmmmmmmm"

If it was required to have that sort of display, I think you would have a large number of people competing to get the worst possible score. Stick it to the man!

My "My View" has the tachometer and the coolant temperature. This is my first non-manual transmission car and I don't feel right without an engine speed display. However, depending on my mood I'll switch around between the Empower, Engage, My View and Trip 1 data.

The best "cure" I've had for tailgaters was the windshield washers on a mid 90's Chevy pickup. When driving at highway speeds if I "washed the windshield" about two thirds of the washer fluid blew over the cab and landed on the car behind me. The "blue goo" spray caused many a tailgater to back off... :) Maybe I need to realign the rear window windshield washer on the C-Max.... ;) Obviously the only reason someone is tailgating is because their windshield is so dirty they can't see you. So you're helping them out by giving them some of your washer fluid!

I guess I'm a Basset Hound kind of guy. Her name happens to be Jelly, which work out well with the jellybean shaped C-Max she rides in. I adopted her from a rescue group a few years ago. Before Jelly, I had a rough-coated lurcher named Chrissie Hound who was also a rescue.

I don't have NAV, so there is no "Synch to GPS" with my system. Since my last report, the calendar that was a day ahead (reading March 19 when it was actually March 18) was stuck on March 19 for three days, so it eventually became a day late. Then it jumped ahead to the correct date-almost. Now it thinks 12 noon is 12 midnight, with the calendar date not changing until lunch time every day. Oh, and the clock loses a minute or two every day. I'll bet if I waited a month to reset it, it would be off by a half an hour. That's assuming it would actually keep running for a month.

Getting back the the original poster's mention of an upcoming long highway trip, I wouldn't get my hopes up about getting stellar fuel economy on the highway. Once you get up to steady highway speed, it's been my experience that the C-Max behaves pretty much like any 3600 pound vehicle with a large frontal area. If you can stick to the speed limit, you'll probably see MPGs in the mid-to-upper 30s. If you let your speed creep up, which is easy to do in a C-Max because it's so smooth running, mileage takes a big hit. I've taken a couple of road trips that included fighting some headwinds while keeping up with 70mph traffic and I saw lower 30s, which dragged down my lifetime mileage. Hybrids in general are designed to compensate for inefficiencies in everyday, low to medium speed stop and go traffic. For sustained long distance driving, diesels are the fuel economy champs.

When you-re in the profile for your vehicle in Fuelly, there is a small yellow/gold badge-shaped icon below the log book and above the EPA estimates that you click on. That brings up an array of badges you can copy and paste a link to in your forum signature.

Internal Combustion Engine

The main reason I got the MyFord Touch In-frustr-ainment system in my C-Max was to get the Sirius satellite radio. When I get tired of listening to stuff I already own on my iPod, I usually have Real Jazz, Bluesville, Sinatra, Underground Garage, Deep Tracks or Outlaw Country dialed up. The kind of stuff you never hear on terrestrial radio, even in a major metropolitan market like Chicago. It's nice that the C-Max is so quiet, because you need a quiet car if you want to hear the double bass solos in those old jazz recordings.

It'll fit down there but it's a pain to retrieve it. It's not as tall as a bottle or a soda can, so it's an extra-long reach. The only passenger I have in my car on a regular basis is my dog, and she rides in back.

My most recent fill-up calculated out to 38.2 MPG while my Trip 1 display showed 39.4 MPG. So it's about 97% accurate. I didn't check the computer's estimate of gallons consumed vs. what I was actually able to get into the tank. I think variations in the sensitivity of the automatic shutoff devices will always make the numbers different.

I keep my coins in a coin holder that I bought at K-mart. It's cylindrical and has places on the top where you can load and dispense nickels, dimes and quarters. Pennies go in a cup that forms the bottom of the device. It occupies one of the cupholders in the center console. I think I paid around 5 bucks for it a few years ago.

...and today marks the 10th time my clock/calendar has malfunctioned! This time it happened when I was eating lunch. I drove home from work at noon, clock working normally. I shut the car off, go inside and eat lunch, come back to the car and now the clock is 20 minutes slow. AM/PM is correct. Out of curiosity I check the calendar and this time it isn't a day or two behind. It's actually a day ahead! What the...? I just performed a master reset on Saturday and the clock/calendar performed as it should all the way up until today at lunchtime.

I looked at your photo. I'm envious of anyone with a clean car right now. But you might want to double check the alignment of the letters HYBR and ID. Something's not quite right there.

I remember from years ago a good rule of thumb was to allow two seconds of space between yourself and the car you are following on the highway. It's much easier to gauge than a certain number of car lengths at a certain speed. At 60mph (88fps) that translates to 176 feet, or about the length of three eighteen wheelers. According to the Mythbusters data: To get an MPG gain of approximately 20% (say, from 36mpg to 43mpg) you would have to cut that interval to 50 feet, or a little more than half a second at 60mph. To get an MPG gain of approximately 27% (say, from 36mpg to 46mpg) you would have to cut that interval to 20 feet, or a little less than a quarter of a second at 60mph. I"ll stick with my 1.5 to 2 second interval.

Today marks the ninth time my clock has frozen at the time I shut it off the night before. At 7:45AM on March 15, my clock read 11:17PM March 14. I left it as is all day, which included starting and shutting off the car 4 separate times and the clock and calendar are still operating as if the time between last night's shut down and the morning's start up never happened. I guess I'll have to perform yet another master reset and then go through the hassle of re-pairing my phone and reloading all of my satellite radio presets and MFT screen wallpapers. Where's the new software update? Time's running out on the first quarter of the year!

I did a master reset a few weeks ago and the clock and calendar were fine up until this morning. When I started the car for the first time since the switch to daylight saving time, I noticed that the car was displaying the correct (one hour ahead) time, even though I had the daylight saving feature turned off. I pressed the daylight saving on button and the clock jumped ahead another hour. I decided to leave it in the on position and reset the clock back one hour to the correct daylight saving time. When I checked the calendar I found that it was telling me today is Sunday, March 10. Great, I thought. That means I'll have to do yet another master reset to get the calendar to display the correct date. I didn't have time for that nonsense this morning, so I left it the way it was when I shut it off at work. Then at lunchtime I discovered that the calendar had reset itself to the correct date. The time was also correct, including AM/PM. On the way home tonight the audio system spontaneously started playing my ipod, even though I hadn't switched that on for at least a couple of days. The Ford works in mysterious ways.