csavage7

This evening my wife drove to the daycare to pick up our kid. Everything was normal. When she came out from the daycare, she reports that the driver door was stuck and would not open. She was worried about breaking it but eventually wrenched it open. Then it was stuck open and didn't want to close. She eventually forced it closed and drove home. I was coming home when she pulled in. She climbed out of the passenger side door. The driver side door was indeed stuck and didn't want to open. All the other doors operated normally. It was dark but I looked at it a bit. It appears that the main latch is releasing and the top/top-side wants to swing out, but the lower half of the door doesn't want to move. I didn't see any thing stuck there and didn't want to force it open. Called Ford service department but they didn't have any appointments available until Monday morning. Has anyone else experienced something like this? Does anyone have any ideas? Seems crazy for a car with 250 miles on it.

Here you go.

Thanks CNCGeek, I hadn't seen that. I picked up the C-Max from the dealer yesterday. They had put more than 20 miles on it and were unable to reproduce the problem. They said there was nothing in the Ford technical alerts about such a problem having been reported/diagnosed. I had no problem driving it home, and my wife yesterday had no problems running a series of errands. But today she said it happened again backing out of the driveway and she emailed me a cell phone picture of the dash. It had what turned out to be the OBD (Onboard diagnostics) picture, which "indicators reveals a problem to the engine or to the gas emissions and required the car to be serviced." But she is not sure the green icon indicating the motor was on before she started backing out. So before taking it in again I am hoping we can learn and watch more. Is it possible she is not depressing the brake pedal hard enough when pushing the ignition button, so the computer is coming on and it allows her to shift into reverse and move backwards by gravity when she releases the brake and emergency brake, but the engine was never on? Would that trigger an OBD icon when she tried to accelerate backward though?

I don't think it could be as simple as that bc she reports that the cmax was moving in R briefly -- she had already backed out of the parking spot or driveway etc and the power steering and accelerator would go dead as she was starting to turn, still in reverse, to complete the maneuver. Dashboard remained lit up each time, but car had to be rebooted to resume movemet. Dealer today said was not immediately able to reproduce this event. I wrote to Ford separately, pointing them to this discussion thread, and asked whether they had any thoughts on this bc the individual dealerships are still inexperienced with cmaxes and their issues. Ford replied that I should take it in to the dealer.

So is there any definitive solution to this problem? We bought a '13 C-Max SEL last Friday and experienced this car-shuts-off-when-backing-up problem repeatedly through the weekend. I don't think it can be the normal functioning of the hill brake assist feature because it cuts off the power steering too, and you need to be able to turn the wheels when starting up on a hill. Also, while we do have a slanty driveway, it didn't happen right at the rest spot, but 10 or so feet away down at the bottom as we were turning the wheel, as well as in flat parking lots. I've taken the C-Max back to the dealer's service center and they gave me a rental, but if the cause/solution is known I'd like to pass it on to them because they seemed befuddled - not a car they have much experience with yet. Glad to find this thread though. My wife - who is doing most of the driving in this car, and to whom it was happening - worried until we found it that she was just doing something stupid, even though she never had that problem with our old car.