marshtex2

This morning the ignition key was working just fine when I went to the Ford dealer with the story and complaint. They had not heard of this problem. The service guy contacted Ford tech on the subject. The shop guys checked it out and could find nothing wrong. I was told that the steering wheel lock does not involve the key insertion so moving the steering wheel couldn't influence getting the key in. The closure where the key goes in is simple mechanical and not a programmable thing. It is a matter of luck. Back home I got a little flat blade screwdriver and it easily slips into the slot and looks like it could be jiggled into it an get it to open if it jams again; a tool riding with me now.

Twice yesterday the ignition switch on my basic C-Max SE would not let the key be inserted. I tried moving the steering wheel every which way, then turning it strongly in one direction and then it let the key go in. It occurred a second time about an hour later and nothing I could do with the steering wheel helped. I opened the door, no help, Then, frustrated and wiggling the steering I thought an inconsequental bit the ingnition block relaxed and let the key in. Anyone have a solution to this? It gets desperate very quickly.

Where do I go to find out how to post .jpg photos in a message?

Has anybody with a Scanguage noticed what the water temp it shows when the overheat warning light has come on? I have never seen anyone report a Scanguage water temp that would seem to be getting into a danger zone.

I covered the middle and lower grill on my 2013 C-Max Hybrid last July in El Paso, TX, 70 to over 90 degrees F ambient, following discussions with Paul Jones. I found a cheap and quick way of doing this with a layer of thin film sold to cover and protect carpets in work areas and this very much sealed off the grill. Through Ford tech reps Jones found that the thermostat is fully open at 202 degrees, so normally the coolant should be approximately 202-212 degrees. He pointed out that the coolant reservoir cap has 21 psi stamped on the top and that a 50/50 mixture of water/coolant at 21 psi boils at approximately 285 degrees F. With my sealed off grill, engine operating temperature was not troubled, it got up to thermostat opening a little quicker, perhaps, but it stayed within acceptable operating range for the pressure tight system, most I ever saw was 215 deg. The air conditioner seemed to work OK, however, when I would switch it on to Max AC it would start blowing hard and cold but the chill went away in a very few minutes. Before I dare take the C-Max in with an AC complaint with the grill covered, I peeled the cover off. Then giving the Max AC a test, I found that it worked just fine; lots of cold air blew and blew. So my style of grill cover did interfere with the function of the AC system. I did not detect a noticeable difference in mpg in my mostly suburban area driving.

Thanks darrelld for that info that the Focus spare fits. Good luck with the 12 V impact wrench. Have you tried it? I have one of those from Harbor Freight and it does not have enough torque to break loose a very tight nut. Especially since the C-Max lug torque is spec'd at 100 ft. lbs. (pg 349) which is darned tight. It'l take something like a 3 ft cheater pipe on a 1/2 in. drive flex handle to break loose a well aged 100 ft, lbs. lug.

At Pep Boys I found a little back up alarm with simple hook up for 12$. A quick test, it gives a beep beep that is a little shriller than I would like so I'm going to put it in a plastic bag for water protection and mount it somewhere under the car. Then run a wire to a mini push button switch I'm going to mount near the 4-way flasher button and feed it from the fuses under the glove box. There is on 20 A unused one there that is quite accessible. Another project along with my LED DRL waiting for me to get to.

Check out Amazon, they have several, some pretty cheap. But you have to figure out where to get into the wiring for + 12 V.

One solution would be to trade your super upgrade version to the basic SE. My basic SE has a regular electronic key fob that will lock and unlock the doors and blow the horn and after the doors are locked, they can be tested the old fashioned way by pulling on the handles.

Thanks for the explanation and the picts which make it really clear what you did. Would never have figured that out. Will keep in touch.

Greetings mtb9153, Wanting to hook up LED DRLs, I have especially studied your original post of 10/15. While at my Ford dealer, I asked a service guy about opening that fuse box under the hood and he showed me, making it a reasonable simple thing to do. Now, please help, which fuse did you tap into? I'm thinking about running the wire inside and putting a switch in the line so the DRLs can be turned off if wanted. But it looks like picking up a spot on the fuse box inside, under the glove box, they all are hot all the time, not switched, and I don't want that.

Hey Paul, You show 13.77 gal to fill on that long tankful but 13.9 if measured by GPS. How do you get GPS to expand the tank?

Driving to maximize fuel economy means minimize throttle opening which minimizes air flow needs. High flow air filters will provide more air within a pressure drop range which will support higher throttle openings and more fuel flow which equals more power but less FE. At modest throttle openings for best FE, OEM air filters likely are just fine and they've been researched and flow capabilities documented by the OEM. Paying extra for a high flow air filter just to let air go through at rates needed for high FE? Make sense? Recalling my Mercedes Benz service manuals from the 1950's and '60's: Tap filter while blowing shop air through the filter in the reverse direction every 10,000 miles. Doing this it seemed a filter would serve well forever when we are not needing a lot of wide open throttle, max power output (low FE). Of course this works best with dry filters.

Although this thread started about a long trip it has gotten into a lot about looking at mpg so I'm posting the info below. Where is a better place? Now with 5,100 miles on my C-Max and the 10th fill-up I can report that the average of the hand calculated mpg for each fill (416 to 575 odometer miles each) is 42.7 mpg. For five of those fill-ups I hsd a corresponding C-Max rating for each tank full. For those five the hand calculated average was 42.8 mpg and the C-Max rated average was 45.0. The two most recent fills got 43.6 and 43.7 mpg by hand calculation with C-Max showing 46.5 and 45.8, respectively. On one of those fill-ups I had odometer miles and gps miles (a little higher) and got 41.2 mpg using odometer miles and 41.8 mpg using gps miles and C-Max showed 42.3. Included is a 1,400 mile trip (through Phoenix & Vegas) and overall only a very little hypermile effort. So there. C-Max has always showed higher mpg than actual. Still a great little car.

Hey mtb9153, on page 2 you mentioned being at Disneyland in LA and it got “bitterly cold”. I started life in California and I’m back again but in between I was several years in Indiana and 30 years in upstate NY. Man, most Californians don’t know what bitterly cold is, that word just doesn’t fit. I’ll bet some others would agree.

wab, that 8% was taken from the starting entry of this thread by Jus-A-CMax on page one. Sort of a roundup of his best numbers. Optimistically high perhaps but if it is halved to 4% that would double the miles required for the payout.

In a nutshell, running the numbers with the wonders of an Excel spreadsheet: With gas between $3.50 and $4.00 per gallon, a device (Gas Pod) that costs $50 that gets an 8% improvement in mpg and a car that gets from 40 to 60 mpg without the device, it will take from 7,000 to 11,000 miles for savings through fuel economy to pay off the device. Worth it? As miles get bigger a maintenance consideration for the device would add to the effective cost of it. With the Pods maybe they would need to be re-stuck or could lose one. The car that gets lower mpg will have to go a shorter distance to pay off the device.

I spent 30 years in fuel research at big ol' Texaco, Product Research, and we looked long and hard into everything about the various grades of fuel. The higher grades of gaso had more aromatics than Regular making them more dense, more mass per unit volume. The carburetor cars showed better mpg with the higher grades because the carburetor system sucked the gaso over a hump to get it into the metering port. About the same mass of the more dense fuel was sucked over and that meant less volume. Hence fewer gallons to go the mile, throttle position staying constant. That led to all kinds of myths about better mpg with Premium gaso and was great as a selling point for the more profitable product to buyers who didn't need the increased octane rating. Back with leaded gaso, the lead increased the fuel density, and more lead was in the premium gaso to get the higher octane rating, hence contributing to the better mpg impression. The volatility of the fuel influenced startablilty and drivability at lower temperatures. The more volatile components are less dense and would tend to take away from an mpg rating. With the expanded use of fuel injection, which meters the fuel by volume in a sealed system, fuel volatility was less to no influence and the direct effect on mpg went away. However, the same volume of the more dense fuel means more mass of fuel into each combustion event, hence more power. A driver looking for fuel economy and pussy footing the throttle pedal can get the desired performance/power with slightly less throttle thereby bringing a little better mpg. A second however is that most drivers' rampage on the throttle overrides these effects and any improved mpg won't be seen. It takes very carefully controlled conditions to document these differences. This consideration carries on to ethanol or any oxygenate. They are less dense than the gasoline hydrocarbon and additionally bring in less energy for their combustion event. Thus they are detrimental to fuel economy on a per gallon basis at equivalent power settings. Marshall

Very interesting and all that work. How about folding or removing those outside mirrors? Obvious lumps in the wind. The VW DID guys try something on them.

My long-time habit is to keep hand written records in the car, in an otherwise unused check book register. Then each fill info goes into an Excel workbook where I do all kinds of work-ups and graphs.

JAZ, thank you for the referrence, page 349 in the manual. I thought it should be there but couldn't locate it. More another time on the cleanliness/lube issues with torqueing.

A tire shop did a screw hole repair (wouldn't plug it) and slammed the lug nuts home with an air wrench. I complained to the mgr about not using a torque wrench by hand. So I want to do that but can't find lug nut torque specs in the manual. Anyone seen a spec. on that? I suspect around 70 to 80 ft lbs.

fbov, thanks for all the C/D data, hadn't seen it before. It didn't feel like anything cut out and I don't think the slope was so steep that rolling alone could get up to that speed. From the 4500 ft. summit the road is a straight line, over 10 miles, down to the 1500 ft. valley elevation then stays straight a few miles up the west side before the switchbacks. Seeing 130 mph come up I quit pushing it as above 110 or so ground/wind suction effects can start lifting the rear and I didn't want to explore that. I was too focused on driving to get distracted into looking what the Scangauge said for mpg or engine rpm at the top speed. My C-Max had gotten the fix so that EV stays engaged beyond 65 mph and I've seen it on EV up over 75 - 80 but don't know how far up EV will go.

My long trip was a little over 1,300 miles (odometer 1315, Garmin GPS 1327 miles) but it was a hard driving test, not striving for the utmost in mpg and over some rugged mountains. From El Paso to I-40 near Kingman, AZ via Globe and Phoenix was mostly on cruise control at 60 mph and got 41.2 mpg measured the old fashioned way. The C-Max 'puter said 42.3. Note that the odometer said 564 miles, the Garmin GPS said 575 miles which calculates to 42.0 mpg. About 35 miles out on a slightly uphill run the C-Max told me there was 20 miles to empty then several miles on up the road, level to slightly downhill, it told me 37 miles to go. So I figured it was a good shot to go on to the Petro truck stop. That is about 570 miles on one tank and it took 13.7 gallons to fill with a second top-up click off, glad I didn't try to go much farther. Then I ducked around Las Vegas to Parumph, NV, into Death Valley and up into the high Sierras at Lone Pine, CA. That went from 2700 ft. at Parumph, over the pass and down to -231 ft. in Death Valley, back to 4500 ft. at the Panamint pass down to 1500 ft. in the next valley, easily hit 131 mph, GPS, going down through there and didn't even max out, then up steep switchbacks to 3700 ft. at Lone Pine. Going up US-395 gets to nearly 7000 ft., down to 6400 ft. at Bridgeport then to 9624 ft. over Sonora pass. That leg of the trip included a full throttle acceleration to 90 mph, and down to 10 to 20 mph going over Sonora pass, 10 to 20% grades, and returned 37.8 odometer mpg with the C-Max saying 39.9. Then an easy drive on to near San Francisco. The C-Max ICE really does the job well and the car, suspension, etc., felt fine at those high speeds. Incidentally, 51 psi (tire label max) air in the tires. Note that the odometer gives about 1.5 % less miles than the GPS and the speedometer about 4% high; 60 mph on the speedometer gets 57.5 to 58 mph on the GPS.

The scariest happening was when I stopped for a gas fill up. When finished and returned to get in, the door was locked and I had left the key inside, in the ignition switch, off. How was I to get in? Fortunately I had the second key in a different pocket and it worked to unlock the door. As you see, I have the basic C-Max with a regular key. On a few other occasions I come back to find the doors had locked (key removed) when I wasn't aware I had locked them. Anyone else notice such things? That second key never leaves my pocket now. A one-time event was when I came out first thing in the morning to go and found the 12V battery dead, 0 volts. I had a little battery charger that brought the battery back to life quite quickly. Perhaps I had left something on but don't think so. Anyone else come upon a dead battery without a reason for it?