mtb9153

boy what a story and a mess for what you paid for your car. heck of a deal when you have to make do and improvise to make things work.

Ashley is that buzzing sound coming out from under my CMax normal when I first push the start button? Don't remember it when I first bought it in September of '12 ;)

Nah! snows not a problem in rainless Northern California, brother Jus might could benefit with this concept on his frequent trips to snow country at Mammoth Lakes. :)

Sure would be nice to get to the bottom of this, curiosity is killing me what you have there????

Looks like a factory install but why I just don't know since to my knowledge an "SL" model was not a regular production model. You might have a very rare pre-production model which usually is not sold to the public? I don't know I'm at a loss. I wonder if any of the Ford peeps who frequently visit the site could shed any light?

:lol2: DaveofDurham thanks for the laugh. Wouldn't need a snow plow in the bay area of Central California. Especially since there hasn't been any measurable amount of rain for the last two winters. But excellent thought, would certainly holdup to the test.

from my experiences on other vehicles with doing this, there is of course a problem with rubbing in situations as hprifleman points out. This why I make the air dam with a flexible material which is flexible enough to bend and move when going up and down these surfaces. After a while the extruded rubber gets scraped and edges rubbed off and is to be expected. But if the mounting surface for the rubber section is strong enough at the attachment point to the car and why I use the strong aluminum I use. I haven't had any issues. The L-shaped bracket is mounted to the black plastic filler panel behind the front fascia on our CMax. In my test video which I will be putting up on YouTube with a link on the forum. I noticed that at freeway speeds of 65mph the black plastic filler panel is buffeted up and down from loose fitment. This might be useful when going up and down uneven surfaces because it will allow movement of the air dam minimizing damage to the air dam on uneven surfaces. Last time I used this technique I mounted the rubber to bottom edge of a fiberglas air dam which was mounted to my car just under the front bumper. I did experience some fiberglas breakage from hit hitting curbs and parking stops. So I re-enforced the backside of my fiberglas air dam with more glas and resin. This created a stronger mounting surface and the problem never reoccurred. Hope this addresses any concerns with what Paul, myself and others are doing.

Makes me wonder what damage I could have done to my Maxus. On one occasion I literately drove into and over a concrete end cap of a center divider. Another time wasn't playing attention while petting my dog and Maxus wandered out of the lane I was in and ran into and up onto a curb and back down on the road. Lastly in a parking lot turned right into a row of parking spaces and mis-judged the curb and drove up on it and over with the right rear. Other than scraping the black plasti-coat paint off the wheel at the tire bead, everything seems fine. Alignment pulls a little to the right...Geez! I wonder why? I'm such a dork behind the wheel, somebody needs to take my smart key away.

Sounds very weird to me. Mine was built in September of 2012, but it clearly says SEL on the tailgate. This would be interesting research work

Sweeeet! I like it, just might have to do this when I get the new black rubber air dam installed. Unfortunately the clear one was too flimsy and at freeway speeds it folded back letting all the air go underneath the car as it would without the air dam. I shot video of the clear air dam at 65mph with my GoPro camera, it shows quite allot of wind force pushing against it. Giving me a pretty good idea of the amount of air flow underneath our cars at freeway speeds +.

Didn't work Paul, too flexible at freeway speeds. So I bought some stiffer 1/8" thick extruded rubber as my next design. But I did see some serious increase in my numbers in town today. Started out at 45.3 and got as high as 60.3 hope this only gets better as I dial it in.

Well the transparent vinyl clearly didn't work because at 65mph it is folded back from the air flow and basically lets all the air get under the car. So back to the drawing board. I bought some 1/8" extruded rubber like I used on another car back in the 1980's. This is much stiffer but still it folds under when going over speed bumps and curb stops. So I'll get it on there and see what happens. I will say so far it is clearly more effective in the 35-40mph range. My trip 2 readings were up in the 60's at one point today and I finished my commute with 50mpg. So looks promising for this air dam to be an effective tool for boosting my mileage.

These are the best pics I could take, if I got any farther away you can't see the air dam because it is transparent. I have my gopro camera hanging off the front bumper to see if it moves much at freeway speeds. Stay tuned

I'll take new pics but probably have to wait till daylight. It is much harder to see now because I switched to a clear vinyl material so it is one continuous piece approx. 5ft across the full width of Maxus. This material is thinner than the previous white rubber material, but much more durable but completely transparent which makes it sort stealthy. I brought both ends out all the way back to the black factory tire deflectors.

Well this is encouraging that maybe the air dam is helping in town from 35-40mph. Got up to 53.3 after starting the day at 43.4 :happy feet:

fotomoto actually I just bought some clear vinyl 1/8" thick which should work nicely at 5 inches wide leaves me with 2-3 inches of ground clearance. But it is pretty flexible so it shouldn't be problem with the killer speed bumps we have round here, or the curb stops when parking. The "L" shape extruded aluminum I used as my support bracket which mounts to the black plastic nose filler in front of the black fiber panel which swings down for access to the oil filter. Is pretty sturdy and should hold up under the worst circumstances, time will tell. First preliminary numbers on my first commute with this air dam showed very little affect at freeway speeds of 65 with cruise control. My trip2 reading stayed pretty much right at 44.5mpg. However at 35-40mph on surface streets it jumped as high as 46.3mpg on level roads. So we'll see what takes place in the weeks to come before making a final assessment of how effective the air dam is. Stay Tuned.

Attached are pics of the new air dam I fabricated to go underneath the front facia. I will be changing the white extruded rubber as soon as I can since the piece I had was not long enough to go across without splicing a piece on the drivers side. It will be interesting to see what if any affect this has on my mileage.

I'm going to let the dealer change this for me since it isn't much fun to get too. That's why I paid for two extended warranty's

Thanks Joe, I have done this for my iPhone5. I was not aware of this setting never pushed the "i" before

New for Maxus starting tomorrow after I buy the materials I will begin work on fabricating a flexible air dam underneath the front fascia which will mount using factory supplied Torx screws already in place on the undercarriage. I plan to have this air dam hang down at least as low as the poorly designed plastic factory tire deflectors with the ends curving around and exiting right into the factory tire deflectors on both sides. The air dam will be fashioned out of some 1/4" thick white extruded rubber-like material I found rolled up in my Dad's garage. It is left over from material he used to lay across his work bench as his work surface in his work shop. The leftover section is just about the right length to span the full width of the undercarriage. Since it too wide I will be trimming it in half so there will be plenty for another time and project. The rubber material will be secured along one side of the length with a section of extruded aluminum "L" bracket and hardware. The other side of the "L" will have drilled holes to align with the factory Torx screws. I did something very similar to this on my 1971 Datsun 240Z to extend the fiberglas airdam under the front bumper, but flexible to go up and down driveways. Worked pretty nice and reduces air flow under the car. My second project is too fabricate a rear spoiler/deflector across the full with of the tailgate. Mounting just under the rear glass and bent upward to move the air flow coming off the rear window and from around the rear sides of Maxus up and outward beyond the rear bumper. All while hopefully cleaning up the dirty air flow off the rear end. Lastly I have still in the design phase an idea for a rear air diffuser underneath the rear section of Maxus. This will allow air coming from underneath the body to be directed up and out off the rear bumper, while mixing further back behind Maxus with the air coming off the body and my GasPods and my rear spoiler. Hopefully all this will assist in further boosting my mileage numbers. If not it will be all for looks I've been missing the ground effects I was used to on my lowered Datsun 240z. I might even explore adding some of the flexible rubber to add to the length of black plastic side molding which runs across the rocker panel between the tires. This might assist in keeping the air channeled down the length of the undercarriage and out through the rear diffuser. Stay Tuned for updates on these projects.

Are there complete wiring schematics available online somewhere? I don't care to buy a shop manual since I find very little on this car I could even work on. Plus I have two extended warranty's back to back to cover most repairs for awhile.

Cold air is not on the west coast of central California, broke out the shorts today. We hit 70 degrees, blue skies. Sorry to rub your faces into our unseasonal dry winter weather but you asked for it with that comment. :thumbsup:

I'm not even sure where the spark plugs are on the ICE. Lately I've been getting as high as 60mpg in town doing 35-40mph average. Got on the freeway and it dropped to 49.5 after pushing the throttle past 2000rpm to get me up to 65mph faster. I'll take that any day since I was only getting high 30's and low 40's about a year ago.

Here's another nice palm size camcorder with great specs and it comes with a neat clear acrylic housing for waterproof shots up to 16ft.. B&H priced at $398 and available on pre-order since it is new and wasn't available when I got my hdr-cx210 Sony HDR-AS100VR POV Action Cam + Live-View Remote Bundle