salman

Please keep us posted on your experience with the buy back. I believe yours will be the 4th buy back reported here.

barrier 2 entry have you checked your local lemon law? in many states 4 failed repair attempts allows an owner to invoke the lemon law and demand a buy back. Ford appears to be pretty good about this, and in your case they seem to have admitted they do not yet have a fix for the problem. I like my c-max except for the battery problems. I've had 2 dead battery episodes and at least 3 service visits for the battery - I say at least 3 because I've spent a lot more time on this with Ford than just the service visits. If there is another dead battery and no clear fix I would need to start asking Ford for a buy back.

I don't have that info. FWIW, my car was built in October 2012. The most recent dead battery incident happened in the first half of May 2013. According to Ford the connectors have been improved to keep them water tight. But I do not know when they introduced the improved part. Separately, concerning the cell phone issues: I have never synced my cell phone to the CMax or used any blue tooth accessory.

mbedit the concerns about rain - more specifically water intrusion into electrical connectors - came to the forum from me. After I had the TS B software updates done in May I had another dead battery episode. Ford engineers told my service dept to check 5 connectors for water intrusion because, evidently, they had seen a problem there before. My car had been high pressure washed by the dealer after the TSB updates (very nice of them!). Turned out that a couple of my connectors had water in them and Ford had the dealer replace the whole wiring harness, a $900 part if memory serves. Since then I have posted several times advising people to have their service dept ask Ford about the connectors. Does not seem to explain many cases..... which means it is still a bit of a mystery. Pretty amazing that the engineers are still calling you. Clearly you established a good relationship with them. Thanks for posting this information.

By my memory, Advsysal is the 3rd buy back reported on this forum. It seems as if water intrusion into the electrical connectors (see thread by that name for details) is not proving to be a widespread cause of dead 12 volt problems, but I would still recommend that anyone suffering an unsolved 12 volt problem make sure their dealer has checked the connectors. And it seems the TSBs with software upgrades related to battery charging are not fixing the problem. All of which means the root cause still remains an unsolved mystery.

I had high hopes that water intrusion in the electrical connectors would prove to be the taproot of all the problems. Guess not. Sorry to hear your 12 volt problem remains an unsolved mystery, bymaine. It means we're all back to the drawing board, unless it can be proven that there have been multiple different causes of the battery problems.

According to the service manager I worked with (and he is good, honest, and reported lots of info to me), the harness has an updated design that should keep the connections dry. The test for water in the connectors is simply to unplug them and look for moisture or residue from moisture.

see the thread on dead battery & water intrusions for a list of the electrical connectors that Ford has identified as having problems have your service manager contact Ford engineers and ask them about the electrical connectors, and then insist that the service dept check the connectors on your car. my car had water in 3 of the electrical connectors, and like you my car had a dead battery after performing the most recent TSBs. The dealer ran my car through a high pressure wash after doing the TSBs. I think there is a good chance that water in the electrical connectors has been the root cause of many dead battery problems. Time will tell.

Caroline A dead Cmax can be towed by putting the car on a wheel lift (one pair of wheels gets hoisted and the other pair is jacked up by the wheel lift). Ford says do not tow with wheels on the road. More importantly, insist that your service dept contacts Ford's hotline. Tell them about this forum, about the TSBs, about the Ford hotline's list of electrical connectors to check for water intrusion, and then if they still won't contact the hotline, you should call Ford customer care and go to a different dealer for service. Your warranty is good at all dealerships, not just where you bought the car.

fotomoto you could take the car to the dealer and have them check the electrical connnectors for water intrusion. That should give you the answer you seek better than re-running the test by washing again.

K-Max That was inadequate service. Have them check the electrical connectors. Have them contact Ford engineers via their hotline. Tell them you've read of 50-60 cases of dead batteries on this forum and that this is what Ford engineers recommend. Call Ford Customer service to log your case. If the service dept resists doing the TSBs, contacting the engineers, etc, then either go to a different dealership for service or complain to the customer service hotline or both. Be prepared to cite all the TSBs and details of Ford engineers' advice on other cars.

Salsa Guy Except for the 12 volt problem i have been very happy with the CMax. It drives well. I get MPG in the 40s. It has good cargo space and is almost as high off the road as an SUV. I find it very comfortable. But the 12 volt problem is significant for those of us who have had it, and I would think it is a worry on the minds of owners who have not yet experienced it. It is impossible to say what the incidence rate is for 12 volt problems. My guess is that it is somewhere between 1% and 10% of the cars sold, probably between 1% and 5%. If you don't have to buy a car immediately, wait until the fall to see if the 12 volt battery is resolved. At that time you could also negotiate a better price on a 2013 or buy a 2014.

Please see the thread on Dead 12Volts & water intrusion in electrical connectors. When you have (or have had) dead 12 volt batteries, please try to note whether there was recently rain or snow or water on the roads or if you recently had a car wash, etc. The necessary proximity of a water event to a dead battery episode is unknown. On one hand, it probably takes a day or two or three to drain a 12 volt battery. On the other hand, we need to guess at how long water would stay in a connector before evaporating. It is possible that water, once it intrudes into a connector that is supposed to be sealed, would take days or longer to evaporate due to lack of air circulation inside the connector. My thoroughly unscientific hunch is that rain or a war wash, etc, within a week of a dead battery is a potential clue. Also, all dead battery cases should have electrical connectors checked for water intrusion. The dead battery & water intrusion thread has a list of 5 connectors that Ford engineers told my service mechanic to check. Ask your service manager to check them to contact Fprd engineers and ask the service manager to have the connectors checked. We won't know if this is the ultimate cause of most dead 12 volts until after a bunch of cases are tested for water intrusion and the repairs tested over time. But there are good reasons to think water intrusion is highly suspect as a cause of the the dead 12 volt batteries.

Plus3 Again, very helpful. It is great that you have the repair manual and are sharing information from it. The slots in the belly shield are likely for drainage as well as air. Water splashes up from the road, sprays through the grill, and can drip in from around the edge of hood and get past the drainage channels on the body under the hood edges. For this reason the connectors are supposed to be water tight In my most recent dead 12 volt episode, the dealer put my through a car wash. We had no rain before that for a couple of months. My first dead battery episode was in December and may have followed a rain storm. Going forward it would be good for people experiencing dead battery episodes to note whether it rained recently or if they recently washed their car, etc. Perhaps a new line the dead battery poll would be useful?

Flatbat Thanks for the info. the wiring harnesses are different. The audio harness shouldn't get wet. The harness replaced on my car was a major piece of wiring under the hood connecting to multiple systems and potentially exposed to water from rain and the road. FWIW, you might ask to have the connectors checked for water. I see your point about your dealer's response and why you wrote a letter invoking the lemon law. Have you considered bringing your car to a different dealer for warranty service? I did that. The dealer I brought it from had an unsatisafctory service department and so I switched to a different dealer for service (no need to do anything but bring the car to a different dealership). I think the service manager and mechanic are much better at the second shop.

Flatbat My car is the one for which Ford engineers specified several electrical connectors to check for water intrusion, referenced above by Plus 3 Golfer. Would you please remind us of the details about the wiring harness that was "fixed" on your car? Was it repaired or replaced? Do you have any identifying information about the harness on your service paperwork? A part number or description? Any mention of electrical connectors? This information will tell us all whether the harness worked on in your car was the same as the one worked on in mine. That would be very useful information for us to know and be able to give to service managers. If your service manager is promising you that this or that repair will permenantly fix the dead battery problem, then he is not very good at his job. The problem is that no one can know that we have a permanent fix until after the passage of a considerable amount of time. The reason for this is that our dead battery problem is a problem of durability - will the battery maintain charge over days, weeks, months? Some of our dead battery episodes happen in rapid succession, but quite a few are spread over months. Therefore we cannot know if the problem is truly fixed until after several months pass by without incident. Until we have a track record of many months with no more dead batteries, the best that any mechanic or engineer can do is to successively hunt down possible cause for the dead battery problem and eliminate those causes, and watch what happens after each potential cause is eliminated to see if there is a relapse. A good service manager would tell you that and show you that he or she and Ford are doing their best to get to the bottom of the problem. Meanwhile, we have to deal with this process until such time as there is a solution or such time that we can invoke state lemon laws. In between, a good dealership should do its best to ease the burden on us by offering a free rental or courtesy car. they are not required to do it, but by reports on this forum it seems that most dealerships will do this. Ford should do it because they are indeed racing the clock to preserve the reputation of their hybrid cars. I am not surprised that your dealer will not yet begin paperwork for a buy back. I wouldn't push the issue until you have reached the number of repair attempts (or other criteria) required by your State's law. But I would get all the paperwork ready on my own end and be read-up on the local law and processes so that you can make the best case possible when you approach Foord for a buy back. The reported cases of buy backs presented on this forum indicate that Ford has been pretty good about it so far.

Plus 3 That is very helpful research on the connectors. I tried to track and identify the connectors on Ford's online parts lists but could not get very far. My car is an SE with parking sensor. No fog lamps. Your reasoning about an always live wire being the necessary location for power drain that would deplete the battery when the car is off is sharp. Of the three connectors with water intrusion on my car, that points to C140 as the likely suspect for causing a power drain. I think there could be multiple explanations for why there seem to be more dead battery cases on SE models: 1) Perhaps there are more SE models on the road? There are dead battery cases reported on this board for SEL & Energi models, but all of this is self reporting rather than scientific sampling. Maybe total numbers of SE, SEL, and Energi models sold are available somewhere on the web, but even if we had them we would still be guesstimating with self reported cases on this forum. 2) There could be more than one cause. The electrical connectors might explain some cases, but not others. It is also possible that the electrical connectors may not be the cause of my case - time will tell. 3) As you speculate, the connectors might be located slightly differently on different models, or perhaps they are shielded by other equipment on some models. 4) The Ford engineers wrote to my service department that they were not sure whether the connectors were a bad design or were damaged during assembly. Perhaps there is some difference in assembly practices for the different models that makes the SE connectors more prone to damage? This is all guesswork to suss out the possible permutations. Logically, water in a connector with an always live wire could cause a battery to drain, so this problem seems a good suspect - it could well be the cause of the dead battery disorder. My fingers are crossed. I like the car apart from all the trouble with the battery, which is a pretty serious demerit.

Update: The part arrived earlier than expected (Friday) and the repair was finished this morning. Just got the car. Some new information: The repair receipt identifies 3 connectors that had water in them: C140, C144, and C165. The connectors on the new harness have been updated/upgraded since the build date of my car, so fingers are crossed that the changes will seal out water. The service techs installed the new harness per Ford's specs and they changed my 12 volt battery in case the last one was degraded by being fully discharged. Some advice, FWIW: If you have a dead battery episode, then I would recommend asking your service manager to ask Ford engineers about the electrical connectors listed in these posts. I would have them check the connections no matter whether the TSBs have already been performed. Only time will tell if this solves the dead 112 volt problem. I will post if I have another 12 volt failure.

kbf1 have you read the messages on these threads? Most of us have posted every detail after making numerous phone calls and trips to service departments, with follow up requests for more information. We have posted TSB numbers and details about the TSBs, and details about every repair experience we have had. A couple of posters have written about their experiences in getting a buy back, and others have posted information about the Lemon Laws in various States. All of this is voluntary and free. It is free of charge to you and none of us get paid. We do it to help each other because perhaps 50 or so of us suffer from a common problem with the 12 volt system. Where do you get the idea that someone here is witholding information about the cure, or witholding information about the one secret person at Ford who could help? Meanwhile, what have you contributed? Have you found the diagnosis or the cure or the helpful person at Ford? Have you even posted substantial details about your experiences with 12 volt failure and efforts to get the problem fixed?

see the responses on the dead battery thread dead 12 volts are not a safety issue, not appropriate for reporting to www.safercar.com (like going to the police for a fire and going to the fire department for a car theft - wrong agency)

www.safecar.gov is a Federal government website for car safety issues. I might be wrong, but I think safety issues would include things like brake failure, Toyotas that accelerate for no good reason, and Ford Pintos with exploding gas tanks from the 1970s. The CMAX 12 volt issues we are dealing with do not strike me as safety issues. A dead car in the drievway is a pain in the neck, but not a safety hazard. Yes, gettiing stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time could be bad, no doubt, but it is not a road safety issue. I do not think our problems fit the terms of www.safecar.gov If I'm wrong I'd be happy to send details to www.safecar.gov Meanwhile, although I have been frustrated by some of Ford's responses earlier this year, I do not think they are dragging their feet on the problem now. They just have not been able to diagnose and reliably solve it yet. If the problem is getting a car to start, then solutions to that sort of problem can be tested immediately: you try fixing things until the car starts. In our case, it is a durability and reliability issue. The results of any repair can be seen only over a long duration of time. That means as each potential cause of the problem is identified, Ford will try a fix, and then we have to waits days, weeks, months to see if there is another dead battery episode, and if there is another episode Ford goes back to the shop to try again. In my case, after a changed battery and a couple more trips to service for the TSBs, Ford is now replacing a wiring harness that sells for about $800, plus labor, plus car rental again. On top of the warranty service costs they are also fighting the clock on the CMax's reputation. I think they are trying to find a solution. Simultaneously, I am not happy about having to spend so much time at the shop with my new car and not happy about having several days of work and play messed up by the car's reliability issues. If this goes through another round I will consider asking Ford for a buy back when the case meets the criteria set out by State law.

The fixes so far are to change the battery, perform the TSBs related to the 4.2 inch view screen and the DC-DC converter that charges the battery, and also in at least one case there was a module in the instrument panel that needed to be changed and in my case (and other cases according to Ford engineers) there have been problems with water getting into electrical connectors. No one can say if these fixes work permanently or if they work at all because that can only be tested with time. The latest TSB came out the beginning of May. I only heard about the electrical connector problem last week. Dead 12 volt problems have hit people across a range of timing, from the day they picked up there car to weeks and months later. So if someone gets their car back from the service department after a repair, how long do they need to drive the car before they can say the fix worked? At least a few months if not a year, I'd think.

Temp61 My two dead 12 volt episodes were also discovered in the morning after not having driven since the previous day. I believe that is the general pattern of reported problems. i cannot think of one account of a mid-day dead battery or a dead battery that occurred within just a couple of hours of the last drive. Your deduction that this pattern suggests a power drain has a lot of logic to it, with the caveat that the battery is always being drained at tiny rate, so that a weakened battery or weakly charged battery could be more prone to being discharged. Still, I strongly suspect that the major problem is a power drain and that any charging issues are secondary. In that vein, I am struck by the fact that no one else on these threads has reported being told by Ford service managers or engineers that there have been problems with water intrusion into electrical connectors, which then cause shorts and power drains. My car had a dead battery last weekend, two days after I got it back from the dealer after the April and May TSBs were performed. The Ford engineers told the service manager to check 5 electrical connectors for water intrusion (details in the thread on Dead 12 volt: water in electrical connectors). Two connectors had water in them. Dealer is waiting to receive a new wiring harness ($800 part) and then will install (1-2 days labor) and then I will get my car back - maybe on May 20. The engineers say they do not know whether the connectors are defective in design or were damaged in assembly. Clearly the engineers have seen other cases of water in the connectors. That is a reminder that there are people who have been experiencing dead 12 volts who are not posting about here.

Ford engineers are also advising that battery draining short circuits are being caused by water intrusion into electrical connectors. See my posts on this under a separate thread with that info in the title. There was no reason to suspect water intrusion on my car. I live in Los Angeles and it has been a drought year with near record low rainfall. It is not like the car was in Hurricane Sandy. But my car had just gone through a car wash, courtesy of the dealership that had just completed the TSB updates for the display screen and DC converter. The engineers suggested checking the connectors because they have found the problem on other cars with dead 12 volt problems. My post on the other thread lists the connector numbers that the Engineers said should be checked.

More information: Upon hearing that my battery was dead after all the battery related TSBs were performed, Ford engineers told the mechanic working on my car to check the following electrical connectors for water intrusion: C134, C144, C140, C1812, and C1651. One of those is for fog lights. C1812 is for the coolant water pump. I am not sure yet what the others are for. These connectors are all on the main engine wiring harness. Water was found in connectors C144 and C1651. Ford does not have replacement connectors available, so the engineers are recommending replacement of the entire wiring harness. A week to get the part, 1 or 2 days to install. According to the engineers, they do not know whether the connectors have a design defect or were damaged during initial assembly. A key point to remember is that the engineers directed the mechanic to check these connectors because water has been found in them on other cars. The engineers said, "We have seen water intrusion at these connectors that can cause intermittent battery drain concerns." The TSBs about the display screen and DC converter (i.e, charger) clearly do not fully resolve the 12 volt battery problems.