stephengoldberger

OK Fine, they roll very easily. And dry road handling is good, even though they do start to squeal at moderate turning speeds. But it's not all good. On wet roads, they are scary. First wet corner I took in my new CMax and stability control was all there was to save my butt. I've experienced help from stability control only rarely, only in ice and snow, and in a manner I describe as the hand of God gently pressing on the rear of the car to keep it pointed. Well, in this case, it was God shoving hard with both hands to get the car around the corner. Since then I have tread oh so gently in the wet, and still from time to time I have felt a little slip. From about 6/32" of tread depth, or about half worn, they howl from 35 mph to around 50 mph. In other words, the most usual speed on city arteries. The smoother the road, the more annoying it is. That's why, when I had the opportunity to purchase Nokian Z-line tires at a very attractive price, I jumped at it. I bought 6, along with 2 extra wheels from a junkyard, $250 delivered. I am a snowbird, and now have one extra tire and wheel assembly at each location. Yes, the mileage has dropped some. It's worth the extra to be able to drive with confidence, and in silence.

My Michelin tires have become progressively noisier as they have worn (now down to between 6/32 and 7/32 on three of them, the fourth, unfortunately, is new). I think it is characteristic of the tire/chassis combination. Noise is worst in the 35-50 mph range, and pretty much is gone at high speeds. Tires are evenly worn and rotated as needed.

Unlike your "Spark" the CMax AC is driven by an electric motor, not by an engine driven belt. And with the big lithium battery running it, you can't even tell that the a/c is on by the way the car drives. Yes it sucks up some fuel, but less that a regular car. Because the a/c runs at full speed independent of the engine speed, the compressor can be much smaller. A regular car's compressor has to be big enough to cool the cabin while idling in a Miami traffic jam. Then when running at highway speed, the capacity is way more than you need, which presents an unnecessarily large load on the engine.

I have previously owned a Sears cargo carrier that is everything you don't want ;-), except it probably won't extend over the windshield. It doesn't clamp down onto the crossbars, but rather I strap it down. Because it has "feet" that I nestle between the crossbars, I needed to extend the space between the Thule bars by an inch or two. Were I to purchase a new one, it would probably be a Thule. They've gotten pretty expensive since I bought mine in the early 1990s ;-)

I found the CMax to be typical of the electric steering cars I've tried - similar to the Mazda CX-5. The Prius was horrible - no feel at all. What it seems to lack is "on center feel" - that is, the force needed to make small corrections is the same as the force for larger corrections. Once you get into a turn, it feels more settled. A friend of mine who has one said that increasing the "toe-in" helps it. Note that the warranty covers faulty wheel alignment for the first year (and wiper blades for the first six months). Sometimes tire stores offer free alignment checks - might be worth it to have the car checked.

A couple of times I've had a "failure to launch". Maybe a hesitant push of the start button, but a lot of stuff lights up on the dash but not the double green arrow "ready to go" signal. Some more pushing on the start/stop and it wakes up.

Got it. Thanks all. Need to find that screen. In my case, it was constant speed, level ground, showing a solid "40" for several hundred miles. Consumption rate wasn't about to change. My previous car (Saab) came from the factory with a 60 mile "cushion" on DTE. That was until the software was updated. After that the "cushion" was zero.

The real concern isn't how accurate the tank is, of course, it's how accurate the "distance to empty" is. I considered my 50 mile DTE to be well beyond my comfort level - about 30 miles beyond. Only the promise of a dime a gallon kept me going ;-).

Running close to empty to reach a prime "gasbuddy" site, it said I had 60 miles to go, averaging 40, when I got there. The gauge showed 1/8 tank, Car took 12.6 gallons. Either a) the capacity is more than 13.5, or 2) the station's pump was rigged to benefit the station owner. Comments?

Interesting that Ford President Alan Mullaly was pushed out of Boeing (at least in part) b/c he favored having the majority of development and manufacture of the Dreamliner being done in-house. The board and his successor were determined to "save money" by leaving the development to the subcontractors who would supply the finished subassemblies. Guess what: the Dreamliner is years behind schedule and billions over budget, and now facing a PR disaster as their battery subcontractor appears to have ... well, performed badly. Meanwhile Ford has brought their hybrid transmission manufacturing in-house, back from (presumably Toyota supplier Aisin) Japan, designed their own battery system, and seem to be having good financial performance after being the only major US manufacturer to avoid bankruptcy. My opinion: he is one of the few massively paid corporate leaders who is really worth his compensation. And I'm no more worried about my CMax battery than I am about the one in my cell phone, but I never charge the phone while it's resting on a combustible surface...

I'd be hoping for a battery small enough to share space with a spare tire ;-)

True coolant temperature is vital for diagnosing the health of the thermostat and cooling system. Most cars today, even with "temperature gauges" display false readings generated by the car computer - anything close to normal and the needle pegs itself in the middle. Is the thermostat not closing fully, causing a slower than normal warm up? That is the usual failure mode for the part. Can't wait for delivery so I can "try" this stuff.

Exactly. My experience with racks are either the kind that attach to rails that are permanently attached to the top of the car or racks that mount into fittings built into the door frame (Saab). I never dealt with the kind that sit on the roof and "grab" the doorframe. CNCGeek (above) attached pieces of film to his roof and showed the process on his blog. It looks to me like a good idea. At the worst, you can always remove the film.

So the only thing that is permanently attached to the car is the plastic film that protects the finish from the "feet"?

Re: drag from a car-top carrier: Based on the fuel consumption with my current car, Thule "square bar" racks with my vintage Sears carrier use about 0.7 gallons per 100 miles at an indicated 70 mph (true speed about 66 mph). That would drop mpgs from 40 to a little over 30 (3.2 gal/100 miles vs. 2.5 gal/100 miles). I usually drive about 2000 miles per year with the carrier attached, so that's an extra 14 gallons of gasoline per year. Compare to the extra gas used by a car that's 20 cubic feet bigger inside (so I wouldn't need the carrier) driving 15,000 miles per year.

My deposit was charged to my CC on January 21 - Saturday (March 2) I was called and told the car was at the dealership - 5 1/2 weeks. FWIW, the salesperson told me that the dealership adjusted the color and equipment of a "stock order" to meet my request, so the car itself may have been in the pipeline for a little while before it was "ordered."

Be careful in applying "correction factors". In other vehicles I have observed a consistent bias in the speedometer and odometer, but the trip computer's time-to-distance and distance-to-destination were spot on, using Google Maps to input the trip distance. No experience with my CMax yet, though (it's still raw materials trundling on the way to the Factory).

As we drift off topic towards maintenance: 1) The cam drive mechanism is a chain. Yeah, they call it a "belt" on the parts diagram, but the sprockets are clearly chain, the tensioner, the lack of idler pulleys, and the description of other parts as "chain guide" belie the description. I suspect it is a so called "silent chain," a design Ford has used in the past, rather than a "roller chain" (what you see on your bicycle). These chains are sometimes called "link belts." http://bikemanperformance.com/ski-doo-link-belt-silent-chains.html BTW, the cam drive would be much narrower - maybe 4 plates wide, not 13 as shown, - the chain shown in the link is the power drive train for a snowmobile, carrying much more load. 2) The owners manual calls for changing the transmission fluid at 100K. Unlike automatic transmissions, that have clutches, bands, and hydraulic control valves, there is nothing in the CMax transmissions except gears and bearings. It's more like a differential than a transmission, and in fact it operates just like a differential, but using epicyclic (sun, planet, and ring gears) rather than bevel (you're old 49 Ford differential) gears. The demand on the fluid is very low, compared to a conventional automatic transmission. I believe the front axle differential is inside the transmission case. 3) They aren't doing you a favor by burying the fuel filter inside the tank. It is a response to EPA evaporative emission regulations and is common for virtually all cars since the mid first decade of the century. If the filter gets clogged, you get to replace the fuel pump (at least), and in some models, the entire fuel tank.

Anyone have any advice? My dealer claims it is very difficult and outsources the installation at a cost of $220. I have looked at the installation pdf from Thule (the rack supplier) but it's a little vague. Do you need to drop the headliner to install anything? BTW, Ford, it's kind of a downer that the attachments aren't built in (at the cost of what, a few cents per vehicle?), but at least endorses the use, unlike the most popular hybrid supplier, who just says "no, don't do it."

Woah, I answered before following link, in which the part is specifically called a "timing chain." Clearly the above post is a simple typing error, you either meant "chain" or "not a timing belt", but simply mistyped. At lest it's nice to know I can still spot a chain drive when I see one ;-)

I believe it is actually a chain drive, assuming the drawing you attached is a CMax engine - which I believe it is because of the cam phaser built into 6C5225, the intake cam drive sprocket. Parts 6K297 and 6K255 are clearly guides, a characteristic of chain, not belt driven cams. There is a total absence of idler pulleys, which are characteristic of belt drive. Parts 6C251, 6C525, and 6306 are shown to be very narrow, characteristic of chains, not belts. The drawing showing the chain is very indistinct, which no doubt caused the confusion. It certainly doesn't look like what an artist would draw for a roller chain, but Ford has, in the past, used a "silent chain", which uses stamped metal links resembling little toothed racks that mesh with the sprocket. An artist might draw that as shown.

Most tire shops that offer nitrogen gas fill use a nitrogen separator based on filtration. Since oxygen is more permeable than nitrogen, it passes through the filter while the nitrogen is trapped. The same system takes out the water vapor - I don't recall if the water vapor is blocked by a primary filter of if it passes through with the oxygen. Benefits of nitrogen include the absence of moisture (as noted). It also reduces oxidation within the tire. That bulge you see in the side of a tire with a damaged liner (from hitting the curb, for example) is created by oxidation of the rubber to fabric bond as much as pure pressure leaking into the carcass. The combination of low moisture and low oxygen benefits the tire pressure monitors. The claimed benefit of "better fuel economy" is totally bogus unless you simply do not maintain the correct pressure. Nitrogen will seep out of the tire more slowly than oxygen, so over time the gas inside the tire will become increasingly more nitrogen and less oxygen, and thus eventually will hold pressure almost as well as a pure nitrogen fill. They also claim that the variation of pressure with temperature is less, a claim I also consider totally bogus - see "perfect gas law". A simple "deflation, reflation" does not result in a sufficiently low oxygen concentration to achieve the actual benefits - it takes two deflation-inflation cycles. Finally, the cost is something that may go down to zero "with a new tire purchase" as more tire vendors see nitrogen as a marketing tool. One of the nitrogen generator manufacturers underwrites a roadside assistance plan as an inducement for car owners, something which could offer a $40 value over the life of the tires. http://www.gogreenautoclub.com/

Note that Consumer Reports measures rolling resistance as part of its tire testing procedure, slotting each tire into one of 5 categories. The Michelin MXV4 is not only a highly rated tire in terms of performance, but also ranks well in longevity and rolling resistance (variables that are reported but don't factor into their ratings).

Thanks to all who replied. I guess the concern I have is that lithium batteries in small devices (like bluetooth earsets) seem to go flat over a month or two. Perhaps the ratio between capacity of the battery vs. the energy needed to restart the car is large enough that it can tolerate a substantial self discharge and still work fine.

Over the period of a month or two, what needs to be done to maintain the lithium battery? I gather that the vehicle has a conventional starter driven by the 12 volt battery, and I am familiar with the exercise of attaching a float charger to maintain that one. Does the lithium battery self discharge to a dangerously low level and, if so, how long would that take at typical summer time garage temperatures? Should one install exhaust fans to keep the garage temperatures down?