firetoad

I tried to hook a GameCube up to my C-Max's A/V in with the composite video and RCA audio connectors today and it wouldn't display the video. The audio was working fine. Car was in park. When I would shift from reverse into park, the video shows up for a brief second before the following dialog pops up and kills the video: "For AV in to work properly, please disconnect all media devices from USB ports" I don't have any USB devices connected though, anybody know what's happening? Thanks

Update, the alarm guy came out last weekend and spent around 3 hours working on it. I was surprised to find that he didn't really have diagnotic equipment of any sort, he just started rewiring it hoping that it would work better, starting by tapping into a 'different power wire'. The first few attempts failed, eventually he was on the phone with HQ while he rewired the whole alarm from their instructions. It was dusk when he finished. Though I'm concerned about the apparently botched first wiring job, and the haphazard approach to fixing it, it does seem to have worked. Although, we didn't yet verify that the alarm DOES go off when needed! No more dead batteries or false alarms, so we're happy for now. Would you believe it though? It rained the other day and we found out that the wiper arm to the rear window wiper is missing! What in the world happened? That's not even a dealer add on I think. That should have come off the assembly line, right? Sigh. On a positive note, my wife loves driving the car and we both are still geeked about the handless hatchback latch and parallel parking. And I ordered a Sandisk Fit 32GB usb drive to try out the mp3 player next week. :-) The flash drive is absolutely tiny and shouldn't obstruct or snag anything in the console compartment. Looking forward to try out more toys on the C-Max.

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, it was not a great first day. On the bright side, a service guy did drive out to meet my wife at work and look at the problem. He jumped the battery and disabled the car alarm (stock perimeter alarm, I suppose?) so that it wouldn't go off. The erratic alarm was not due to a door or other hatch being not closed all the way, unless a sensor is faulty. We scheduled an appointment for repair which, delightfully, is in our own driveway this Monday, a holiday (so we're both home from work anyway). Their theory is that the alarm and dead battery were connected. So, there's some hope that we'll be able to put the initial troubles behind us. Fingers crossed.

I'm also, of course, new the forum and I look forward to having a place to talk about my experiences with people who might be in the same boat. Is there a way to fix the title of my original post? I feel like a moron having left in "2013 C-Max 2013". I always seem to find things like that after sending an email or making a post, never before, as much as I try. Edit: You can change the title of a topic using the "Edit" button at the bottom of your posts, but you have to then click on the Green "Use Full Editor" button to change the topic instead of an individual post. Thanks!

Well, after months of waiting, my wife and I finally picked up our brand new 2013 C-Max... It's the hybrid model, with push button start and a remote starter fob. We enjoyed the car for the first 10 minute drive home before starting to have issues. The alarm goes off for seemingly no reason when we shut off the car, lock it and walk away. It can even happen 10-20 minutes after parking the car and going to bed at night. We felt like new parents who couldn't get a baby to sleep through the night, and no way to find out what was the matter. It was extremely aggravating. Further, at this moment, my wife is stranded at work because the battery died. I feel very embarrassed for my wife who volunteered to take her coworkers out to lunch in her shiny brand new car today, only to find the battery dead only a couple hours after parking it at work. We've had the car for about 24-hours and seen more problems then I've ever seen with my 3 year old Fusion Hybrid. One thing I've always hated about my Fusion though was how a couple minutes after I walk away from the car, the car alarm will freak out if there was an interior light left on. Instead of just turning it off, it waits until I'm just about out of earshot to make a scene. I wonder how many times it's done that AFTER I was completely out of earshot. Now we have a much newer C-Max, and it looks like Ford has taken the irritating feature to new heights as the delay is a random amount of time up to 15 minutes, and the cause is a complete mystery still. Is there any way to find out why the car alarm is going off??? If not, what's the point? I'm sure we have some things to learn about keeping the alarm from going off. One superstition we already developed is to never lock the car using the fob, because that seems to anger the cmax alarm gods. The only acceptable thing is to use the thumb sensor on the handle exclusively. I can't believe that locking and unlocking the car has a learning curve. We don't yet know why the battery died. The ford roadside assistance is going to meet my wife at her workplace today to look into that problem. I'm a loyal Ford buyer and several members of my family worked for Ford their whole careers. For the first time, I feel a little foolish for owning a Ford product. I do hope that we're able to work out these issues and we're not plagued by this garbage until we finally have to get rid of the thing.