GaryM

My son just went to open my hatch last week and I heard the crack and the handle tipped a bit. It was not too tough to remove the inside trim, just 2 screws to remover the handle at the bottom right side. Then I took off the covers where the bulbs are, and saw all the snaps. Just carefully pull and pry a bit and it all snaps off. 4 nuts and the outside handle comes free. What a weak crappy design. The 4 bridges from top to bottom of the handle trim piece ar about 1/2 inch wide, but only contact the bulk of the handle with a strip about 1/16 of an inch thick. Looks like one was cracked by the factory and was glued with a putty. 3 of my 4 were cracked through at the bottom, including the one with the putty that was broken loose again. I cleaned it all up and used a coarse sandpaper to make a rough area under both ends of each plastic ridge. I also roughened up the back side of the bridges. Since one end of each was still intact, I had no trouble getting them lined up where they belong. I used a fair sized ball of "Quick Steel" Epoxy putty at both ends of each bridge, even where it did not break yet. I got their kit for fixing plastic tanks. They claim it will seal up cracks in radiator end tanks. If it can take that kind of pressure and temperature swings, I figured it should hold this handle. All of the repair work is inside of the handle so the outside still looks all original, I also used some clear coat touch up paint where the handle hits the hatch. I could see a few places where it had rubbed through into primer. I tried to get touch up paint, but Dupli Color does not have the Candy Blue. None of the marks are visible as the handle covers them, so the clear coat is there to make sure it does not rust. I can't understand how they could figure the design of this handle would last at all. I am shocked mine made it 4 years with how flimsy it looks.

My 2004 Camry SE 4 cyl. manual trans came originally with Michelin MXV4 215 65 16 tires. I played with tire pressure and at best, they would squeal on corners and at the stock pressure, it would wash out in understeer. Even with a 600+ treadwear rating, my front left tire had cords showing on the shoulder at just 25,000 miles. With the Pirelli P7+ tires in the same size with a tread wear rating of just 420, the car would take the same curves at a higher speed with no tire squeal and much better feel. I found myself taking exit ramps much quicker with confidence. Braking and acceleration grip were also much better. I did rotate them every 15,000 which I didn't do on the factory tires as I didn't expect to need to until 20,000 but by then the fronts were already looking bad and I didn't want them on the back. At 45,000 miles, I was showing the wear bars on the pirellis, and much more even across the tires, not the ripped up shoulders I had on the Michelins. Even running higher pressure could not keep the stock tires from rolling over and tearing up the edges. I am not as confident in the C-Max to corner as hard as I did in the Camry. The extra 600 pounds sure makes a difference. The feel on the stock Michelin tires is close to the original tires on the Camry with a little less squeal, but I do think I am going a tick slower than I did on the OEM tires but it was a long time ago. The Camry was also a much lower seating position and it cornered very flat withthe larger SE sway bars etc. The C-Max corners very flat as well, and the weight balance might even be better, but the higher driver position just feels un-natural for me to push hard into a corner. A few weeks ago, I was on a back road and I hit some sand at the apex of a turn, and it was very strange to feel the tail end drift out again. The fact it did that does lead me to believe the chassis is pretty well tuned. Most cars on the road today will always wash out the front end first, and usually by a big margin. Once I get a set of tires on it that don't squeal when pushed, I may get more confidence in the chassis to push it harder on a few bends and find the true limits. When the tires moan now, the steering gets very numb so I can't tell how much the slip angle is increasing. With the Pirellis on the Camry, I could feel the limit very easilly, and hold the car on the very edge with confidence. The lower tread wear rating is due to a much grippier compound. And when you drive at higher cornering forces, the hard compound sliding will wear faster than a soft compound that is still gripping. If you never corner (or brake or accelerate) near the grip limits, then the higher treadwear rating hard compound will last longer from just rolling wear. I don't think I will ever drive the C-Max as hard as I drove my Camry, but I will always enjoy taking highway ramps at decent speeds. It was always fun to pass Porsches and even motorcycles on the 2 lane cloverleaf ramps here. Even in the C-Max, I pulled 6 car lengths on a Mercedes SLK around the ramp, and he was weaving through traffic like a nut and ripped past me diving to the exit lane, but once in the turn, I carried speed, and drove around, passed him, and pulled away. When we got onto the straight highway, he got back on it and proceeded to weave through cars like an idiot again. I was just up the the point where I heard a low moan from the front tires, and the steering was getting numb, so I don't try to go any faster than that on the stock tires.

I have not been on the forums in a while and have not kept up with my Fuelly either, work has had me driving all over the place. I am now at over 19,000 miles and plenty of tanks since the software update. I know it took as I can easily get into EV at speeds over 70 mph. What is odd is that I have seen no improvement in my MPG at all with the update. I can't say it is any worse, but my average is down to 43.3 due to a lot of long highway trips that pull it down. I can barely break 40 mpg if I cruise at 70 mph. Now my drives into Los Angeles in traffic are actually up a bit, I see over 60 mpg fairly easily if I have just a bit of traffic to keep the speeds under 60 mph. Of course, this is the downhill direction and I always did very well there. Coming back home going uphill, I used to get right at 40 mpg, now I see it range from 37 to 40 depending on traffic speeds. It is much harder to keep it in High ICE on the way home, it goes into EV, sucks the battery down very quickly, and then get's under 20 mpg charging it back up again. I actually have been forcing it to fire up the engine to try and keep the battery up more. On my last long trip with more level highway, I got it to hold in High ICE and stay over 50 MPG at 70 mph. Watching the altitude on the info page, it did show I was dropping, but just 10 feet in nearly a mile, so just a hair down slope. Going the other way, I was holding about 40 MPG on the same stretch. So even that slight slope shows big on the MPG. This is still a 2 way average of 45 MPG at 70 mph as long as I can keep it in High ICE. If I let it drop to EV and fire back up to charge, the result is a bit worse. I really like being able to go EV on down hills at over 70 mpg, but for distance cruise, it does not help at all. Please Ford, give us a mode button.

I am at 19,000 miles on my C-Max SE Hybrid and the tires still have a lot of tread left, so I am not in a hurry to replace them just yet, but I have also been thinking about this. I really liked the road feel of the new Pirelli P7 LRR EcoImpact all season. I put a set of them on my Camry and they handled very well. Did not see a mileage improvement over the BFG G-Force all season tires, but the car did have 150,000 miles on it. They have thistire in a run flat version in the right size for the C-Max. The stock size Michelin 225 50 17 is 25.9" diameter. Rated 93V for load and 1433 pounds. Going to the Pirelli 205 55 17 comes in at 25.9 inches tall, close enough to be tread wear, but drops load ratings to 91V and 1366 pounds. The Max gross axle weight is the front at 2414 pounds, this is fully loaded. Assuming reasonable balance side to side, that is 1207 pounds per tire, carrying a full tank of gas, 5 passengers, and cargo load. The max cargo load does seem a bit low though, rated at just 852 pounds for people and cargo total. In any case, I certainly do not think it is unsafe to run the 205 tires. There is no 215 at the correct diameter. Going up or down 1/2 inch is not too big of a deal and seems like it would clear. As for rim fit, the 225 50 stock size tire is rated for 6 to 8 inch rims, but trust me, jamming a 225 onto a 6 inch is an serious pain. I used to run 225 50 14 on my 14 x 6 wheels when I autocross raced. The 205 is rated for rim sizes 5.5 to 7.5 inch. Putting them on a 7 inch is a very good fit. I also ran 205 60 14 on 14 x 7 inch rims, the side walls were near dead straight and the grip was excellent. The tread on the Pirelli is 7.1 inches wide with a max section width of 8.3 inches. I just may try the Pirelli in the 205 55 17 size, when I wear out the stock tires.

I have seen that simulation for the Prius a few times, but the ratios are wrong for the C-Max. I would love to find out the speeds of each part in our cars and see what is going on at the 50 mph to 85 area where they can now go EV only. What is the RMP limits of our MG units? I have had my C-Max over 90, but obviously, it was not in EV mode with the old software and all. I race very high performance electric 1/8 scale RC cars. The motors are the exact same technology as the ones in our cars. They have very strictly defined characteristics. Any given wind / rotor combination will have a specific RPM / Volt rating and a torque / amp rating. These do not change unless the magnet starts to lose strength, which does happen from over heat and/or large over current events. When the magnet gets weaker, the rpm for a given voltage will go up, but the torque for a given current will go down. The result is the power drops a bit until the magnet is way too weak, then the efficiency goes to crap. So many new racers gear way too high to go faster, and when the motor is fresh, they seem to run great, but kill the rotor fast. This is only dealing with about 1400 watts or just under 2 HP in an 8 pound car. In the C-Max, we are shoving around 3,600 pounds with 33,000 watts of electricity. The electronics need to monitor the rotor and winding temps and make sure they don't demagnatize it in a few second if something goes wrong. The voltage limit is the battery pack at full state of charge. This limits the rpm the motors can produce any torque out. In theory, you could spin them faster and still use it as a generator for charging, but the system will have to throw away some of the power as the batteries can't accept the charge too fast or at too high of a voltage.I know the cells are just under 5 amp hour each, and even the good high current racing cells can only be charged at 5 times the amp hour, most are limited to 1 or 2 times. The pack in the C-Max hybrid it 76 cells in series, for a nominal terminal voltage of about 245 volts, and a max voltage at full charge could hit about 310 volts. Good race cells can dump out up to 30 times amp hour current, but I doubt highly our cars would ever even try to do that. Most cells are more in the range of 5 to 10 times for long life. so the battery can theoretically put out around 300 volts at 50 amps for 6 minutes, that works out to 1,500 watt hours, the spec says 1400 wh, so I am pretty close with the simpler numbers. The problem is the battery can't accept current at near that rate, which is why you need to brake gentle to get a 100% recovery score. Most of the power MG1 generates, has to go straight to MG2 to help push the car. The Battery is only seeing at most 1/2 of the power at any time. The charge rate, even at 5C is 25 amps at 300 volts, or 7500 watts, or only about 10 hp of braking force. Under maximum acceleration, they do claim 33 KW out of the 1,400 wh battery. Wow, that is about 24C rate discharge, right up with the racing RC cells that last just 300 charge cycles. And that amount of power will only last 2.5 minutes going from 10% to 0%, and the C-Max will only do 80% tops down to 30 or 40% at the bottom. So figure you get that power for just 1 minute. Well, that is plenty to get up to 80 mph accelerating onto the freeway. By the way, 33KW is almost 44 hp with a 98% efficient electric motor. So our ICE engine is also making 144 hp to get the 188 rating to the wheels. Not too shabby. My whole point of all this, the math all works, the battery, motor, gearing, etc. all has to be carefully chosen to get this kind of performance. You can't just say program this motor for more rpm and change physics. If the data Ford is gettign off real world cars in use shows an issue, they could maybe get a little better with software alone (13B07) but to make any bigger change will require different gearing and/or motor(MG1 MG2) windings to move the rpm ranges much at all. And yes, BOTH MG units can act as motor or generator depending on where in the power range the car is. MG1 is mostly generating and MG2 is mostly a motor, but the roles do change with conditions. Any time the MG1 is trying to reverse to make the engine turn slower, it is consuming energy, and adding it to the wheels through the PSD. This energy either has to come from the battery, or use the MG2 as a generator, dragging that power from the wheels, making the efficiency seems pretty weak. Without knowing all the ratios involved, I can't calculate how efficient the trasfer would be, but trying to force a big over drive sounds like a losing proposition. The goal when in this mode is to not be using any battery power. So all the power used by MG1 will be coming from MG2. When the engine is turning faster, doing a low gear, the opposite is true. The MG1 is only acting as a generator, slowing the inner gear of the PSD and therefore producing output torque to the wheels at the outer gear of the PSD. This generated power can charge the battery, or feed to MG2 to add even more torque to the wheels. This mode makes for an incredibly efficient torque converter. The fact that under drive is more efficient than over drive explains Ford going to the 2.57 final drive ratio. But I still need to figure out the PSD gear ratios to make much use of that simple ratio number. I assume they mean if the ICE and MG1 are turning the same speed, such as the PSD al turning as a single unit, then the wheels are turning just ICE speed / 2.57 ??? or is this a max ratio, with any PSD induced overdrive added in ?? I have no idea at this point. Using the Toyota PSD diagram, you can see if the engine and MG are at the same speed, the final drive to the wheels (assuming the tires roll 6 foot per revolution) works out to about 4.0, the book says 3.7, so maybe the tires are a bit smaller on that model. Doing the math backwards, I get a tire roll out of 5.45 feet per revolution, that seems really small, a 185 60 14 is 6.4 feet per revolution. Maybe they do use some of the overdrvie in the PSD to get the final ratio, or this PSD simulator is based off of a different gearing in an older Prius?? Sorry for the ramble on, I really want to use my engineering thoughts to understand how the power is being used and if it can be improved on.

I am a science and mat person as well, but I think you are over simplifying this a bit. I have tried to picture the way the ratio splitting works, and it is a very clever balance between the mechanical ratios and the two MG units balancing out the torque produced by the engine and delivered to the wheels. The ratios in the Ford C-Max trans are very different from the Prius. The so called final drive ration on the Prius is 3.70:1 and the C-Max is 2.57:1 so there is no chance they are using any of the old Prius programming. My "normal" comute from Santa Clarita to Burbank and back is far from straight and level. I drop about 600 feet going to work, and have to climb it back coming home. There is a bit that is close to level, and I watch the instant numbers, maybe a bit too much on my drive. I have now put over 7,000 miles on the car, all with the original programming. My 13B07 update is not going to happen until Oct 25. I average about 70 mph on the most level stretch. When the HV battery is close to full and I feather the accelerator, I can get it to where the battery is not charging or discharging, no chevrons. At that point, the instant MPG graph is floating above the 60 mpg mark on the down side and and just under the 60 mpg on the up side. This is with the window open at 70, so I think the car really does do a steady state near 60 mpg like it should from the math. I was not able to read the engine rpm at that moment. I ran the same stretch in cruise control so I could switch the display to the tach. It was fluctuating from discharge to charge. The rpm was hard to read, but was just under the 2000 mark, I would say maybe as low as 1800. On my way to work today, I am going in later so traffic will be light, I will try and get a more accurate read. Just changing the programming could move the rpm some, but I think the efficiency is more bound by the balance between the 2 MG units and that can only really be moved by either different ratios or windings in the motors. Permanent magnet rotor brushless motors do have a very wide operating range, but they do have a fixed relationship to the current in to torque out and the voltage in to rpm out, and of course, the opposite, torque in to current out and rpm in to voltage out when being used as an alternator. And yes, it does create AC that is converted back to DC in the control unit. The control unit does use high speed switching to be able to trade voltage for current but that process is not 100% efficient. forcing the MG1 to turn backwards to lower engine rpm is likely to start using more energy than the MG2 is generating. I am willing to bet, Ford has done a lot of testing to determine what balance between MG1 and MG2 consumes the least fuel at any given level road speed. Adding in the hills and acceleration/deceleration adds a ton more complexity and could take much more testing to get to the ideal points. To move the rpm points much will require changing mechanical gear ratios just like in a conventional transmission. This may nt be rocket science, but, it may actually be more difficult because newtons laws work perfectly in space, not so much on the I5 in traffic.

From what I have read on this forum and a few other places, I have to agree, your 13B07 mileage update did not take properly. Mine is now scheduled to be done Oct. 25 th and the first thing I am doing when I pick it up is putting it into EV at 70 mph on the 405, just a block away from Galpin Ford.

My check came yesterday while I was at work. I looked it over close, and there is nothing in the letter that states I give up any rights by cashing it. I will be depositing $550 on my way to work today.

I called Galpin Ford this morning and the earliest than can get me in is Oct. 25 good thing I can still play other sources or I would get sick of that CD in a month. I am an audio engineer here in So Cal. CD's are already a lower audio quality than I am used to. My day is filled with 24 bit 48 or 96 khz lossless digital audio. A CD is uncompressed, but starts at just 16 bit at 44.1 khz sampling, which is just enough. The data rate was chosen to be able to fit Beethoven's 5th on a single CD, it had to hold 74 minutes. MP3's at anything less than 256 kbps are downright annoying, 320 k is the only way to fly, and I still hear artifacts. I had an encoder by Xing that was excellent, but I think it was too good and the recording industry got it off the market, and I can't licence it on my new PC. I prefer AAC at 256 kbps, but not many devices support it. The iPod defaults to AAC at 128K. Last CD I ripped into iTunes, I was so upset when I heard the artifacts, it reverted back to the 128 kbps. At home I use FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) so I can fit more music on a flash drive at the identical bit for bit audio from the CD, but again, few devices support it. I have a couple SACD's, but I can only play them on one BluRay player, and there is no way to rip them. I did do an analog record at 24/48 and it did still sound way better than a CD, but it was a pain to do at real time. I also have a few DVD audio disks. Virtually the same audio quality as SACD, but in a more normal 24/48 or 24/96 PCM package like I am used to working with, but thanks to the encryption, again, it has to be ripped analog at real time to make it portable. In reality, most of the time, I do drive with my windows open, so CD quality and 256k and up MP3, WMA, AAC is okay for the car.

I am at 7500 miles on my C-Max Hybrid. It has not been to the dealer since I picked it up, but I now have the recall items and the Sync update, and now my CD won't eject, so I figured it was time to get it in. 7,500 miles on the factory oil fill also seems high to me, so I will probably have them just go ahead and do the normal service while it is in. Here is the problem, WOW, next appointment for the 13B07 recall, Oct. 25. Nearly a full month away. Seems Galpin only has a few certified hybrid techs on staff to do this. They will call me if an opening comes up, but I will not be holding my breath. I bought from Galpin as one of the largest Ford dealers, but along with that comes the fact they also have to service a ton more cars than most dealers around. So no F.E. update for me for another month.

Last week, I put a CD in my C-Max SE, it plays fine, and I enjoyed it for a while, but when I tried to eject it, no go. It makes a bunch of quiet sounds of motors etc., but then it just changes to radio mode and the disk is still in. It does still play it I change back to CD mode, so it has not trashed the disk yet. Guess I am in for a new CD player as well. The car has still not been back to the dealer. I have a few things that need to be done, I am making a list.

I finally have time to post my 600 mile tank pic. I was so tempted to do a 500 mile entry when my MPG was over 50, but I really wanted a 600 miler. 12.27 gallons used, 48.9 mpg 600.9 gallons drove about 4 miles past 0 miles to E

I just hit my first 600 mile tank yesterday. I was in traffic all week so I was hitting 60 MPG on the way down and still keeping over 45 MPG on the way back home. I put up the altitude display on my GPS and confirmed, it is about 700 foot of elevation difference from my home to where I have been working, and that much slope in 31 miles sure does show up in the mileage. I was well above the 600 mile target this whole tank, with the miles to E added to the trip Odo coming in around 650 miles any time I checked it. Too bad I got sent up here to San Fran yesterday. The drive over the Gorman Pass totally killed it. The traffic was light. Going up the hill, I was in the odd range where it is chargin, so I got to the top with a near full battery. What a waste. As I started down the other side, it did something I have never had happen before. I got over with the trucks, and slowed to just 61 mph, but it kept spinning the engine, no matter what I did. I even tried putting the shifter in Neutral, and the engine would not stop spinning. The battery gauge was solid topped out for a mile plus of down hill running, so I am sure there was no more regen available, but I did not expect this. I watched my miles to empty start to plummet and once I was back into High ICE it looked like I was going to still have 20 miles to spare. So I typed in my GPS looking for a gas station on my route between my 600 miles point and 620 miles when the gauge should hit 0 miles to E and there was a problem. There was gas in 50 miles, or 85 miles, nothing between. I thought about braving it to 85 miles, putting me 12 past E, but as we were cruising at 75 mph, my miles to E were still dropping faster than I was going, so I figured I would stop in 50 miles. Sure enough, 2 miles to the ramp and it went 0 miles to E. I went up the ramp and at the top, I was at 596.6 miles. So I drove past the gas station for an extra 1.5 miles, and then turned back and pulled to the pump with 600.9 miles, 48.9 MPG (it was over 51 for much of this tank) and only showed 12.27 gallons burned. Assuming I could burn to 13 gallons, at 48 MPG, that would have been 624, not enough to have gotten me to the next fuel in the I5 north of Bakersfield. I will post the Trip 1 screen pic tomorrow when I get back to Los Angeles. The real bad part.... After I got gas and got back on the road, I just drove with the traffic the rest of the way up here, OUCH!!! 33 MPG going 70 - 75 mph, not updated to 13 B 07 yet, and a 400 foot elevation climb in 120 miles, and it only did as well as my 2004 Camry SE did, and I think I drove that harder on the hills. I sure wish there was a simple way to make it use more battery to help climb hills when you know you will have the decent coming soon. If I do not have the traffic around me, I found I can push it to 2.5 bar burn and use battery, then when I hit 5 mph over the limit, ease off and even let it go into EV mode to use up more battery, but it does slow quite a bit on the hills this way, so you need to keep switching between 2.5 bar accel and slowing while in EV. Anyone near you will be MAD if you try this in traffic. Staying with traffic, the hill climbs coning up here all resulted in 2 bar burn and charging the battery on the way up.

The drive to Acton is a killer. At the 300 miles mark on this tank, I was averaging nearly 48 mpg. The trip miles plus the miles to empty were up around 620. Then I drove out to Acton. No traffic, 70+ mph all the way out, uphill climb of 200+ feet. OUCH, only averaged 30 mpg getting there. Well, at least coming back is down the hill, right? Again, light traffic, the few cars were all coasting well over 75. I still do not have the update, so my engine had to stay running. The battery was topped out within the first mile. I was tempted to turn off the key and coast, but chickened out. It only managed to average 66 MPG on the way down. That made the round trip average a horrible 41.25 mpg, trashing any chance of a 600 mile tank. I still hit 556.2 miles with a tank average hitting 45.2 mpg using 12.28 gallons. The miles to empty showed 2 How far are people willing to run past 0 miles to empty?

I hope they find the problem quickly and get your C-Max back to you running correctly very soon. And that they learn what went wrong and let all the service people know what to look for. I have worked on 3 phase variabl frequency motor drives a few times and when I have an issue with no torque, bad starting, things like that, it has ended up being a dead phase. One bad leg from the MG1 inverter to the motor would totally kill it's ability to hold back torque, which is what keep the engine RPM down and generates the electricity. This would make a racing engine and little charging power. Bu tI would certainly hope something like that would set some error codes for the Ford engineers to trace down.