chrisl

Is it through the radio? Do you have an old-ish cell phone? It happens to me with polycom tabletop teleconferencing units - if there are cellphones nearby, when they do their handshake with the tower (and maybe when they're getting data) they can cause interference with the telecon unit and it sounds like morse code. I checked out this thread to check on jump devices and whether the ones that plug into the lighter socket would work. My 12V was dead this morning, I think due to either a software glitch or switch being flaky because I think the radio didn't turn off automatically after I shut the car down and opened the door yesterday. The car is also a 2013 with the original 12 V, so it could be time for a new one. I started it today with a cheap 12V 2A/6A charger that I got years ago from Harbor Freight. I used the posts in front and only waited about 30 s after hooking it up to turn on the electronics. They don't draw that much current and I already knew the HV is used to start the engine, and the 12V is really just to boot things up. Time to head off and get a jumper pack and then get the 12V replaced when I get around to getting the door latch recall done. btw - I routinely leave my car for weeks without starting it and have had the battery go dead twice. Once when I left the headlights on at work, and this time when I think the radio didn't turn off.

Ended up being mostly raw except end of the day, at least for my rider. Turns out bananas are even more perfect than we knew. We got them a little too early, so some were getting overripe. After the first day we stuck them in the cooler, but when they get really ripe (as in barely hold their shape with the peel off, and leave sticky goo all over your hands) they're almost all easily digested sugar and better than energy gels for uptake speed. When they're in "grocery store yellow" state they're about half complex carb, and are good for early in the day refueling to store up glycogen for later. I ended up supplying "tuned" bananas depending on how hard the ride was and how recently there'd been a break for solid food.

The leapfrog support makes using a stove inconvenient-- typical support is letting the rider get about 5-10 minutes up, driving up a little past them, and then waiting with a bottle or food handup or whatever. We had one both times for the Furnace Creek 508 and it sometimes left the rider without support for longer than I'd like. For people riding hard in the desert you want to get them a fresh bottle every 6 miles or so. A jetboil to just heat water is probably the best option - it doesn't really take time to set up and heats water quickly. There were more little stores in middle-of-nowhere Utah that had acceptable hot coffee than I expected, so it worked out ok.

The Cmax engine is definitely not a good choice for cooking on. I didn't get around to doing prep to do it, and it's good that I didn't. I was generally too busy doing rider support to spend much time thinking about cooking, but on the way up one of the climbs (where the ICE would be doing a lot of work) I popped the hood an hour or so up the climb and felt around, and it was barely warm to touch. That's after hauling the car up about 4000 ft of elevation gain, and the ICE was often doing a lot less work than that. On the second two days there was enough descending that I was getting about 50% EV/charging miles.

It will be webcast here: http://hoodoo500.com/webast-2016/ And they're apparently issuing the riders satellite trackers so you can follow them live here: http://hoodoo500.com/live-tracking/ I'm driving support in the 500 mile "stage race" so we start friday morning. We have a friend who's doing the 500 mile straight-through as part of a 4-man clydesdale team (they're self-supporting-- they'll take turns riding and doing support) and I know one guy who's doing the 300 mile solo-self supported race, which is kind of crazy-- basically you carry everything you need or get it in stores/gas stations along the way. The stage-race version is the most civilized version with a reasonable driving/riding ratio- the first day is a little over 200 miles, and the next two are ~150-ish, and you get to sleep at night. Four person teams you spend a lot of time in the car for not a lot of riding. I've also both ridden (as part of a team) and done support for the Furnace Creek 508 on the old SoCal course that goes through death valley, not the new Nevada course.

I'll be driving ~200 miles/day over the course of 9-10 hours, it's possible the engine will never get that warm. It will be leapfrog support, where I'll hand up water bottles and occasionally food, drive 6 to 10 miles, then do it again. On the uphills the engine might run enough to warm something up, but there will be some long downhills (30+ miles) where it won't. I was looking at water heaters to make coffee and most of them look a little sketchy like they're going to blow a fuse on me in the middle of nowhere Utah. I have to have a functioning lighter socket for amber flashers in case the rider doesn't finish before dark and I have to follow. The other alternative since I'll be stopping a lot is to just bring a camp stove.

I have an oven thermometer that has a temp probe on a cable-- I brought it along on another similar trip with a rental van where I was riding and others were doing support, but nobody tried using it. You should just be able to put a foil wrapped burrito somewhere secure with the temp probe inside and stick the readout on the dash... Depending on how cold it gets at elevation and how bored I get, I may try it.

Anybody try cooking on their Cmax engine yet? I'm going to be doing support for a long bike ride (3 days of 160-200 miles) where I'll be in the middle of nowhere for 10+ hours/day and was thinking about heating up food on the engine. Has anybody tried that on their Cmax and are there preferred locations for putting things? I'm regretting now not hacking into the cooling system to put in a heat exchanger to make espresso...

I have a 2013 SE with MFT/Touchscreen and have had no 12 V battery problems. I like the touchscreen, and actually wanted it as an option, even though I didn't get nav. I've used Sync with and without touchscreens in rental cars, and it's been a pain and flaky without, and always simple with. I didn't want nav because it's expensive and will never keep up with what you can get on a mobile device for less. The only advantage it has is if you're way out of cell coverage, but there are inexpensive nav devices that can deal with that if you need it.

I live on that hill. I have to drive up to the top of a long grade and then have a shorter steep descent to get home. Before EV+ recognized my home, the battery would be maxed out before I even hit my street, so I wasn't getting back a bunch of the energy from climbing to the peak.. Now that it knows where I live, I can run the battery down getting to the top of the hill (if I'm careful I can avoid the ICE kicking in on the steep part at the crest) and then roll into the driveway with the SOC at about 50% or a little more.

Depends on the age of the vehicle-- I had a 98 Saturn and they always did a tailpipe test (up to last year), but it looks like if your car is 2000 or newer, they hook up to the OBD-II only and use engine diagnostics.

I test drove a Prius V when I was shopping. I liked the cargo space, since I tend to haul around a lot of bikes (inside and out) and haul large stuff for working on the house. I couldn't get out of it fast enough. The space was nice, but it was so sluggish when it was empty near the beach that I couldn't imagine driving it loaded up the hill to my house. Or getting onto the 110 from one of super short on ramps with a stop at the bottom. It rapidly narrowed me down to Cmax vs Impreza Sport.

Got my check a few days ago. It seems a little silly-- I'm getting ~39.2 mpg, but I have a full time roof rack (round bars) that often has a couple of bicycles on top, including on some long road trips, and I don't exactly drive slow.

That's interesting-- I don't have quite the downhill that C-max Run does, but it's not all that different, either. I live at 1500 ft and work at sea level. To leave my house to go almost anywhere starts with a 4-5 mile downhill that doesn't require ICE (and leaves the batter maxed well before the bottom). I can make it to downtown LA (about 15 miles) almost without the ICE coming on, depending on whether I make the few lights in the flat sections and how fast I go down the 110. I'm at about 11K miles and haven't noticed any issues so far.

I usually see a couple a day (and not the same ones!) around LA.

You also have to keep an eye on where the temp setting is relative to the outside temp. It will heat the air to bring the temp up, which is what annoys me. I want it to ignore the temp setting (so I don't have to dial it back and forth) and just vent... Maybe the whole setup for vent should just be a single voice command.

Because different people use cars for different things. I use mine for moving stuff around, where "stuff" generally includes bikes, and quite frequently. "Trunk" racks are right out due to geometry of some of the bikes, and carbon top tubes of others. Hitch racks usually get in the way of the hatch (though some do swing away), expose your bikes to getting bashed from behind or backed into something, and accumulate a *lot* more dirt on the bikes, to the extent that it can foul chains pretty badly. There also aren't many hitch racks that don't want to grab onto a tube, which is a no-no for some of the bikes. I have to admit that I'm occasionally tempted to install a hitch and get a hitch rack for those days when 5 bike capacity just isn't enough... Using the car to commute is for me a temporary thing-- my normal commute is by bicycle, and the car gets used when I want to start a ride more than ~20 miles from my door, haul groceries, or go on a road trip (usually with bikes, sometimes more than one per person). I haven't done it yet with the CMax, but there have been times when I've driven around with much more than the new price of the car on the rack.

I suspect it's only on Euro models. I don't have them on my 2013 Hybrid, and when I was looking into rack installation found a drawing of the strip installation that doesn't show any mount points underneath. There's a web page out there that shows someone pulling gutter liners off a Ford Flex and using the threaded holes that are used to hold the internal gutter liner clips down. The inserts/liners on the flex press down over clips. As far as I can tell on the CMax, they're glued in. There are certainly no threaded holes from the gutters down into the ceiling space (I've had the headliner down).

Like: smallish car with lots of room and decent power for hauling stuff around (I snuck a bunch of likes in there) Dislike: no plain old "vent" mode in the climate control

I have no trouble laying two bikes down inside the Cmax with the front wheels off. I ride a 56 cm bike, and there's plenty of room between the back of the front seats and the lift gate if I put the rear seats down. I haven't tried yet, but I suspect it would be no problem to put the bike in the cargo area with the seats up if I did both wheels. A smaller bike should even fit in upright if you don't mind pulling the seatpost. Some friends of mine have the old Escape hybrid, and one rides a 56 but has a lower saddle than me-- he can fit his in that upright, but I have to drop the seatpost in the Escape. As far as long commutes: I switched from a Saturn SW2 that was getting 28-30 mpg mixed to the Cmax and I have to put in gas a lot less-- sometimes I forget and it gets pretty low. My commute is 35 miles, but it's in LA from the edge of the mountains above Pasadena through downtown and to the beach, so it's anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. At one hour it's mostly pretty fast, at two hours it's a lot of stop and go. The Cmax is pretty comfortable and as long as I don't get leadfoot, I can get pretty good mileage.

And they might even call it an Escape Hybrid... I got my Cmax in part because a friend bought a used Escape Hybrid after her car was rear ended and totalled, and she was happy with it. Better for hauling bikes around than her old Malibu, and better gas mileage.

I agree. That's what I'm getting with a permanently installed roof rack with three bike mounts (plus quite a bit of highway time with the bikes). And I don't really keep it under 70-75 on the highway unless it's stop and go.

With yakima round bars, 3 bike mounts (relatively low profile trays with fork mounts) and wheel forks I took about a 1.2 mpg average hit (which includes some times when those mounts are loaded up with very non-aero bikes). I haven't done any detailed comparisons. You should do much better with the Thule aeroblades, especially if they don't have equipment mounts attached.

The standard dealer supplied rack for the Cmax is the Thule (they don't mark it up, but you can probably get it cheaper from REI, especially with various deals like the 20% off coupon that comes with your dividend). I'm not entirely sure why they say not to install it on the pano roof-- the feet for the towers press on the box sections outboard of the rain gutters. I can't imagine the put enough compressive load across the roof to affect the pano. It could be that they don't want to deal with "I was putting the bike on the roof and dropped the fork through the pano, why did you give me a rack that would let me do that" complaints. I think some members here have put the Thule on with the pano roof - it would work with that basket, but as already mentioned it will kill your gas mileage.

At some point in my rack adventure I found a manual page that showed the gutters and gutter inserts, and as far as I can tell the inserts are glued in and the gutters don't have anything inside that you can bolt the rack to. When I had the headliner down there wasn't any indication of anything that would let you bolt them in, either. I'd think Yakima would list a control tower setup on their site, too, if there were attach points. You could try pulling one of the inserts out of the gutter-- if you do, post pics. You'll probably need some fastak to glue it back in.