chrisl

I installed one (same model as rek) this afternoon when I was finishing up the roof rack install (details on that to be posted later-- It's a yakima with control towers and landing pad 7). I just went out to check out the rear dome light in the dark, and it's quite a dramatic improvement.

I've never seen that rack before, but it kind of scares me... I've seen suction cups be temperature sensitive and release when it gets hot-- I'd trust magnets a lot more. I'm going to end up just doing the landing pads, but I'm being extra careful about locating the holes and haven't had the half-day or so that I'd like available to do the work. I'll post pics and measurements when I get to it.

I'm a little late to the party, too, but I'll put in my $0.02 for any future readers asking the same question. a) Yes, I would get the CMax again, and probably the same SE with the 202A (the power liftgate just seems like one more thing to break since I'll probably keep the car til it dies of old age. I also didn't particularly want the winter package, but now that I see that the heated seats will warm you up nicely without firing the ICE, I like it. I also like the puddle lamps a lot. As for comparison to the other cars: Subaru Forester-- A better match for the Cmax is the Impreza Sport. Nearly the same cargo volume (Cmax slightly better), but with AWD, and you can get a pretty comparably outfitted one for about the same price. Gas mileage on the Impreza is much worse, and in most conditions the AWD is a FWD anyway. The Impreza was my other car I was looking at. A friend has a Forester and it's quite a lot larger, but I think the 2014 gets similar mileage to the Impreza, making it appealing. The only thing the Subarus have that I really wish was at least an option on the Cmax is rack rails. Thule makes a fit-kit, but I have a ton of mounts for Yakima round bars so I'm going to end up with landing pads on the roof. IIRC, the Cmax has better Power/weight than both of the Subarus. RAV4- didn't drive one so I can't really comment. Have been in one and for the size I'd expect it to feel bigger inside. CRV - again, wasn't on my list, so no comment Prius - I test drove a Prius V. It seemed *way* underpowered for the cargo capacity, even just getting over a little hill by the beach, and I live at the top of an ~800' climb. I had a rental regular prius for a week for work and the things that I disliked were: the gas pedal felt laggy, which isn't good for fast heavy traffic in LA, and the sight lines out weren't good. The pillars seem overly large and badly placed, so they're always obscuring your view of what you need to not run into. The 0-60 time on the V is also terrible-- I'd be afraid to try to get it onto the 110 from one of the short ramps (essentially zero length) in any kind of traffic. I need to haul bicycles around regularly, and it seemed underpowered for that.

My biggest tech wish is to be able to have two phones actively connected by bluetooth at the same time (like the Jabra Freeway). I have separate work and cell phones, and would like to be able to have both active on SYNC so that either one can receive a call that goes to SYNC. If it's a hardware issue it's probably too late for the Cmax, but if it's just software, then it would be a nice thing to see in a future update.

If they can put it on the fusion, they can put it on the Cmax... the electronics are essentially the same, and it's some adjustment of the physical envelope. I'm expecting my next car to have significant self-driving ability.

You can get the seat heaters in the cloth seats with the Winter Package. I'd have offered to trade mine a few weeks ago, but I've started to like the heaters. And there's no electric actuators for moving them around.

Thanks! - I had seen the post from bkawaii about using the Q-towers but was a little squeamish about using Q-clips that weren't necessarily correct for the vehicle. The shape of the frame above the doors seems to make it easy for clips to slip. I hadn't seen the recall notice though! Given the recall on the 128 clips, I'm glad I didn't go that way. Thule racks had a similar problem on the Saturn SW series-- the thule system clamped to the outside of the plastic moldings above the doors, which wasn't very secure, and I read of some flying off. The yakima install for the saturn had you remove the molding and clamp directly to the metal lip, then put the molding back on. It's been rock solid for me for ~13 years. Your headliner pic is useful. I was reluctant to pull too hard to look inside, and it's hard to feed the scope in from the back, but it looks like you just pried it down and propped it open with a box. That would give me clear access to see if I'm going to hit anything for the rear mounts, and I think I can get a clear view with the scope for the front mounts if I move them forward. Between work and holiday commitments I haven't had time to go ahead with the mount, but I the delay seems to be helping me out.

You can maybe help anyway-- I'm looking to drill about 1.5" inboard of the inside edge of the rain gutters. The forward set of holes will be about 15"-17" back from the edge of the windshield, and the aft set of holes will be 33"-36" back of that. Do you recall it being pretty clear in those areas? If not, I might go ahead and pull it myself, but I'm trying to avoid it. I can get the scope into the forward area pretty easily, but the back area is hard to reach conclusively. Unfortunately the scope can't save pictures, or I'd post those. Also, how tricky was it to pull, and is it hard to avoid breaking clips? I looked at some notes on pulling the headliner in a Focus and it sounded like it's easy to break clips.

I'm about to drill holes in the roof of my SE to mount some permanent Yakima towers (landing pad 7 plus control towers). I've been poking around inside the headliner with a boroscope, and while it's pretty busy in there, it looks like there's quite a bit of clearance before I run into anything. I've got everything all measured up for where I think I want to mount things, but I figured I'd check in here first to see if someone had dropped their headliner and taken pictures, or has a repair manual or anything with some details between the liner and the roof. What I've seen so far looks like all the airbags are outside the gutters, but there are some electroncis boxes (the airbag controllers?) mounted to the headliner just inside the gutters and above, or maybe just forward of, the B pillars. It's a little tricky looking around because there's an egg-crate-ish plastic liner between the headliner and the roof above the driver and passenger seats (is this what they were installing in the recall?). I've been running the scope through the hole for the overhead console-- it pops in and out easily and has a lot of room to work with. I also ran it a little under the rear corners with the hatch up, but it's a tight fit and hard to feed and maneuver through there. As far as where the mounts are going to go-- right now it looks like the best spot is 20" back of the edge of the windshield glass for the center of the forward mounts, with the centers of the feet 1.5" inboard of the inner edge of the gutter. This ends up being just forward of the B pillar. The center of the rear mount will be 33" back of that, and 1.25" inboard of the edge of the gutter (the roof seems less stiff at 1.5" in for the rear mount). This ends up just aft of the back of the 2nd row doors. I could move the whole thing forward somewhat to keep clear of the boxes over the B pillars, but that will start to get onto the down slope of the roof, though it might also make it so I can mount the cargo box on top and still open the hatch all the way.

Because you want to carry 4 bicycles at a time and the riders to go with them and need to fork mount them. Or a cargo box. I got the Cmax because it's a small wagon with good performance and made in the US-- the other car I was looking at was the Subaru Impreza Sport. The Cmax is a little bigger, and at least assembled in the US, and costs about the same for a similarly equipped car. The hybrid gas mileage is just a nice bonus feature for me (the AWD Impreza is a FWD for most driving anyway) So yes, I'd like roof rails, too (real ones, not decorations), or at least fixed points for towers underneath the gutter covers (the euro version has them). I have a ton of yakima mounts that only work on round bars, and they'd be expensive to replace with mounts for square or aero bars (Thule makes a fit kit for the Cmax, Yakima doesn't yet). I'd also like a removable aux battery with the capacity of the Energi battery. For the commute that I'm doing for a while, I'd like to have more electric time, but for my normal use case (the commute should go away in 6 months or so) I want the cargo volume of the hybrid.

My old car (a 1998 saturn SW2) is pretty much used up, so there was no trade involved for me. If I can get it to pass smog in January (it's possible-- it squeaked by in July, probably needs a new cat) I'll sell it privately. Parts for it are cheap if you have time to do your own work on it, and with a little work it's a decent beater. But if there's a trade, you'll never get close in trade what you can get in the private market-- a lot of dealers make all their money on used cars.

I was just shopping for Cmax's (got a silver SE about 2 weeks ago) and had an xplan pin from a friend. I had also already started with consumer reports/truecar when I got the pin. I told some dealers about the pin, and others not. Some of the truecar prices were around xplan, and I think a few were lower, but had more options than I wanted and would have ultimately cost me more. One dealer said he was giving me xplan pricing by email, but it didn't add up-- the others all came in at (invoice*0.996)+$275 (and which I verified on the one I bought). He came in much higher for xplan, but had a "truecar" price that was close to what xplan should have been. You can certainly do better than xplan, but not likely a lot better-- I think the D plan shown on the invoice was about $500 better than xplan, and A/Z was about $1000 better. When the dealer I bought from wrote up the deal, he gave me the xplan price but didn't want to do the paperwork (I suspect he keeps the $275 program fee that way), so I'd guess that about $300 better than xplan isn't too hard to get. The rebates are then all on top of that. I got $2500 in rebates. I had to finance with Ford to get that, but there's no origination fee, and no early payoff, so I'll refi with my credit union at a much lower rate (already approved) as soon as the paperwork comes in. It looks like you can get $3K in rebates now if you finance with them, which can get you a pretty nice price, or $1500+0% for 60 months. Even if you were going to pay cash, you can finance with them and pay it off with the first or second payment to get the extra rebate.

I started to poke at removing one of the moldings last night, but it was dark and I didn't have a lot of time. It appears to be glued down-- it's not clear if there are also bolt holes and clips as there are on the flex. Once I got to feeling sticky goo under the molding I decided to wait til I would have time and better light. I've also been poking around to find any pictures or drawings of the roof to see if rack tracks could be installed (presumably inboard of the gutters due to avoid the air bags). I might call around to some installers and ask about that. They might have to drop the head liner to figure it out, though edit: I took a look at the Ford parts site and it looks like the molding is probably just glued into place. If you look up the roof parts there aren't any clips that the molding snaps onto like on the flex. The molding is here: ford parts and you can click on the picture to get a slightly bigger version. I'll probably still pry up the molding and check, but it doesn't look promising. another edit: I took a look around inside between the headliner and the roof with a boroscope, and while it's pretty busy in there, it looks like inboard of the gutters is pretty clear for drilling for mounts, as long as you use a drill stop set pretty shallow (~1/4"). I have to decide where I want to put the crossbars, but I'll probably do yakima landing pad 7 plus control towers this weekend. My initial plan was to put the fore towers 20" back from the edge of the windshield, but it looks like the thule rack mounts forward of that, and that would also keep me clear of some electronics (air bag controllers?) that are near the B pillar.

It looked this morning like they still have the Cmax up on the lightup sign over the 405 at Southbay Ford in LA. It's in a very high visibility spot above the freeway.

It's even less of a concern than I expected-- it already came over the grapevine from Bakersfield as a dealer trade, and got to me with about 400 miles on it. Drove it around a little last night and it's quite an improvement. I don't have to wait for the slam after I put it in reverse... I should have told the dealer I was headed up to the Bay Area and picked it up on the way. thanks, all.

It's also a lot nicer car than my old (1998) saturn wagon.