SPL Tech

Good deal and CARMAX should never be used in the same sentence. I very strongly doubt you are finding good deals on any car on CARMAX. When I bought my SEL I found a nearly identical SEL in CARMAX for $8000 over what I paid for mine, excluding their BS shipping charges. Look up True Car. That's the site I found my SEL on.

How does going from 5W to 0W change the oil life? It doesent matter what the weight of the oil is, oil life is dependent upon engine use and oil type (e.g. synthetic or conventional).

What are the disadvantages to using 0W-20 over 5W-20? I assume it does not offer as much engine protection. Otherwise, why would any manufacturer recommend 5W-20 over 0W-20? If 0W-20 provides more MPGs with no tradeoffs, why recommend 5W-20 instead?

I wouldent take what you read from one source as fact. I have heard so many "facts" about how you should store lithium ion batteries that I dont think anyone actually knows. I have heard reputable sources, including battery manufacturers, say to store them at 90% charged, others say 50%, and everything in in between. The only common ground I have found is no one recommends completely discharging them.

Except that synthetic lasts MUCH longer, so it's only hurting your wallet if you're changing it too soon. Normal oil should be changed at 5k miles, synthetic blend at 7.5k and full synthetic at 10-12k in normal cars. Some full synthetic is actually rated by the oil manufacturer for 30k in a normal car. An example would be the Castrol SLX LongLife II. So in our car, synthetic blend is probably good for around 10k and full synthetic would likely be good for at least 15k unless you drive on the highway all the time. Either way, full synthetic will last longer. If you went with the Castrol SLX LongLife II in our car, I bet you could get 50k of city driving with filter changes every 15k. Synthetic blend is a misleading title. Conventional blend is a better title as synthetic blend is actually only 30% synthetic.

Doesent 0W20 provide reduced protection in the heat compared to 5W20? My understanding has always been that the lower-weight oils are thinner because oil tends to thicken up when cold, so you have to compensate by using thinner oils in the cold. However, in the heat the oil thins out so thinner oil provides less protection. I know my Jeep recommended 5W30 for cold temps and 10W30 for warm temps.

I used to have it on and I turned it off a few weeks ago. I dident notice any change in MPG just as I expected. The only thing I noticed is every time I had it on and I parked my car, the HV was nearly empty. My concern is how extending the discharge cycle would affect batt life. It dident make sense to me to possibly decrease the life of the HV for no worthwhile gain. What I think would be a MUCH better option would be EV+ on demand. That is, I choose when it goes into EV+ mode. Frequently I drive over a rather large hill on the highway. On the way down I completely fill the HV not even half way into the decent. The problem is that I am driving too fast to discharge the HV below the half-way point on the indicator, so I end up going into the decent with an already mostly-charged HV. If I could activate EV+ and use the full torque of MG2 to maintain speed, I could further discharge the HV to allow for more regen on the way down. That would actually save fuel and that would be a much more useful feature. On the other hand, I could see how Ford wouldent want that. Excessave use of EV+ probably results in decrease HV life, and they dont want to deal with early batt replacements.

That is technically illegal in many states. Parking lights are exactly that, for parking. In many state's you cannot legally drive with your parking lights only on. Either full on or full off. That said, I have never seen anyone get pulled over for it. Parking lights are quite possibly the single most useless feature installed in every vehicle. In 15 years of driving I have never once found a real need for them. Parking lights used to start out as a separate circuit with an independent battery, in which you would activate them when the car was parked out in the dark. But now they are tied in with the rest of the electrical system and no one uses them, dark or not, they just park their car and leave it. Thus the parking light system has become a bit of a vestigiality organ where every car has it, but no one actually uses or needs it.

They can only void the part of the warranty affected. For example, they cant void the warrenty on the tranny becaue of LED lights installed—they have nothing to do with each other. Anyway, I am not sure how installing aux lights would damage anything, they are just low-power LED lights, nothing special.

It is if everything is failing, and he is having a lot more problems than 99% of us. Most of us have not had a single problem aside from maybe a 12v issue or MFT issue.

You're the first person to report all these problems, so I think the failures are rather uncommon, maybe you just got a lemon. Did the dealer replace your first injector under powertrain warranty?

Because it says it on the dash, just like every CMAX.

That is what I would like to do, but multiple people in here so far recommended against it. I dont want to deal with solar if I can just charge the battery with the car. My idea so far has been to just wire the second battery in parallel with the first using a 50A relay in between, triggered to turn on when the car is in the ready mode. Also, running a LPG freezer in an enclosed, unattended car is beyond a bad idea. It’s probably even illegal. Those freezers must be used in a vented area and they must be attended to 24/7, same as a LPG stove. Also, the freezer draws 3A, and it only has a duty cycle of 50% at most, so you are looking at maybe 20w/hr on a really hot day. I dont need anything as large as the Trojan T105. A simple 40Ah 12v battery is sufficient as I am not going to go longer than 12 hours without driving the car.

Seems strange. Even large diesel trucks with massive cooling systems, no grill shutters and a diesel system that is much more efficient than any gas engine will reach full operating temp on the coldest of days in 5 - 10 miles on the highway. I dont think I have ever driven a gasoline vehicle that dident reach full operating temp within a few miles on the highway, even if it was -40F out, and none of those vehicles have grill shutters like the cmax does. Last I drove my Cmax it was 35 out and I got to 180F in only a couple miles on the highway.

I am not using an electric cooler, I am using a legit, $800 12V freezer. It doesn’t get any more electrically efficient than that. Coolers dont work. It gets over 140F in a car in the summer, even with the windows cracked. Ice will evaporate in 48 hours in a Yeti in that temp. Colemans wont even last a day at that temp. Plugging the freezer into a house is impossible--car power only. Everything must come from the car, no external sources. I live in the car. It’s my mobil house. I am sure this has been done before, it's just figuring it out. I wonder if I could use a direct connect and wire a 100W lightbulb in series with the two batteries. The lightbulb would act as a variable resistor and limit current to the second battery without limiting the voltage. Another option might be to use a 40A battery charger. I have a 400W power inverter, so I can use that with a battery charger if needed. Battery chargers are cheap on eBay. I have considered solar as well. However, 100W solar panels are massive and it would be hard to mount something like that on the roof. I considered getting a 50W panel and mounting it in the sunroof, but it seems the glass is tinted from the factory so I suspect it wouldent work well.

Aerodynamic drag increases as the square of velocity, and the fuel consumption increases exponentially in a trackable fashion. There is no "sweet spot." Your MPGs will decrease in an exponential manner as the speed increases, and you can track this over a chart quite easily. There is no special key you're missing here, you just need to trade MPG for time to the extent you feel appropriate. As the speed increases, the MPG will decrease in a very predictable and calculable manner. And no the vehicle does not shine at 55 MPH. The most fuel-efficient speed of any vehicle is probably around 15-25 MPH. You could probably get over 65 MPG at that speed. From there, as the speed increases the drag increases as the square of the speed increase, just like I said in the first sentence.

Yea, the cooler wont work for me. I spend 9+ months on the road, I dont want to get ice every two days for that long. The dual 12v battery system seems to be the only way to go.

Well good for you, but like I said I have seen it happen multiple times. Those photos are an exact replica of what I have seen in the field on multiple cars. I used to have a Geo Metro and I ran the car at the max pressure listed on the sidewall since I bought the tires brand new. Once the tires were ready for replacement, they looked exactly like the photo above. The manufactures dont just make up the number they post on the door. They know what they are doing. That number takes into account multiple factors including traction, stability, rolling resistance, wear and heat dissipation. You can max out the pressure in your tires but it WILL reduce traction. You are reducing the footprint on the ground, it's not hard to see how that reduces traction. The number posted on the tire is the maximum pressure the tire manufacturer says the tire can withstand, it is NOT the pressure you should necessarily run the tire at. That pressure assumes the tire is loaded to the maximum safe load as printed on the sidewall of the tire. Unless you are running that load, the tire manufacturer will tell you to follow your car manufacturer’s printed recommendation. Mythbusters has tested whether it is a good idea to overinflate the tire. They found it was not. They found the fuel savings was negated by increased tire wear, and it reduced the traction of the vehicle, just like I said. Run the tire at 5 PSI over door stamp and call it done. Going higher than that will just reduce traction. If you get into a crash, your fuel savings are out the door for life. 1,000,000 miles with overinflated tires will save you less money than you will spend repairing just one crash. Not exactly a good tradeoff.

I said defog, not defrost. And yes, AC helps a TON to defog windows. We are talking a 1000% decrease in the amount of time it takes to defog the windows easy. As far as defrost, yea, you dont need AC.

The AC compressor dehumidifies air (which is why office workers sometimes complain of dry lips, ect.), and that is why it comes on automatically. This is common with most vehicles. Leave it on, it will defog the window much better with it on.

It is true, I have had it happen on multiple vehicles. Excessive inflation causes the tire to inflate like a donught, which causes increased wear in the middle of the tire. I have seen it happen numerous times.

Trans heater? I was under the understanding that transmissions should always run as cool as possible and any heat is not beneficial to a transmission. There is no fuel burning in a transmission, so I dont see how heat would help. The hotter a transmission runs, the lower the lifespan.

I would not block the intake on the CMAX on the highway (or anytime for that matter) Your CMAX will reach operating temperature really quickly on the highway. Let's just say less than 1% of your driving on a full tank spent on the Interstate is at less than operating temp. You are risking engine damage to help control heat for only 1% of the drive--completely pointless IMO. Keep the tires inflated, but know if you exceed the recommended pressure too much it will cause premature tire wear and it reduces traction (especially in slippery conditions). The single best way to increase MPG is to drive slower. Horsepower required increases as the square of velocity, so increasing speed has an exponential decrease on MPGs. That's just how it goes and there is no tricks to get around it. If you want max MPG you need min speed. End of story. As far as weight goes, it doesent matter much on flat roads. One dude quoted 0.75 MPG for 200 lbs, but I think that is quite inaccurate. Mythbusters tested this awhile back. They added 800 lbs to car and found almost no measurable difference in fuel economy on a flat road. I have hauled 3000 lbs in the back of a truck before and found no major difference in MPGs on the highway too. I wouldent worry about weight that much on flat highways. Tire pressure and speed are the two main things.

You just missed out on the time to buy. Dead winter is the best time to buy because sales are slow. That's the worst time for sales. On the other hand, tax season is the worst time to buy because people have extra cash and they want a new car for the spring. That said, if you are willing to shop around for the best deal, wait until a great deal pops up, and you are willing to drive a ways to get the vehicle, there is no reason why you cant get one for $3k below KBB easy. I got a 2013 SEL with every option and only 27k miles for only $16k because I waited five months and then jumped on it the day I found the deal. I had to drive 1200 miles and fly 4500 miles to get it, but it was worth it as I saved $5k off KBB. I traded in my 5-year-old Jetta and ended up paying only $6500 out the door for it! $32k sticker price, less than 2 years old and only $6500 with my trade-in. You can do the same if you shop around hard and long. Anyway, use Autotrader and Car Gurus. I ended up finding my car on Car Gurus, and that's probably the best site out there to find a good deal. If you want the best deal possible you are going to have to give up color shopping and all that jazz and be willing to shop solely by best deal. I originally wanted an SE not an SEL, but it happened to be the SEL I found was such an amazing deal that it dident make sense to hold out for an SE since the SEL I was looking at it was even less than many SEs. Last, I recommend using the website to find deals everywhere in the USA, not just your local area. If you are willing to travel, you can save an insane load of cash. By buying locally you are probably going to end up paying about $4k or more than you have to compared to if you were willing to drive to other states.

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