hybridbear

I agree! The FFH doesn't have a warning either! Neither does our Prius. The Camry Hybrid does warn you. Our old Honda Accord Hybrid didn't. Our previous Saabs and my 2000 Chrysler did. Chryslers used to have a low windshield washer fluid light on the dash as a standard feature even on their cheapest cars. We keep an unopened (unbroken seal) bottle of windshield washer fluid in each car now so that if you ever run out while driving you just have to stop and refill. I had to stop once and do this while driving. Generally I try to check and top off the fluid every few weeks in each car to prevent us from running out ever.

Thanks. I compared the VIN from fotomoto with a VIN of a 2013 on a local dealer lot. I pulled up and printed out the detailed feature list in ETIS and went through it line by line. Ford stated that they were changing the axle ratio to improve FE, but ETIS doesn't reflect this. Both vehicles show 2.57 as the axle ratio. It's interesting that the 2014 C-Max Hybrid has quite a few extra "minor features" that are not listed for the 2013. Some of them are on the 2013 hybrids, like "With Illuminated Sunvisor - Drivers", "With Illuminated Sunvisor - Passenger", "With Electric Power Steering" and "Mechanical Hand Operated Park Brake". Others might be new features on the 2014 like "Tyre Inflation Monitor". Do the 2014s show the actual # PSI in each tire rather than just an idiot lamp when one or more is low? The 2014 also says "Less Air Conditioning", which I highly doubt is true... The window stickers list mostly the same standard features but they are moved around a little bit. One curious thing is that the window sticker fuel costs and savings are not the same even though the EPA MPG figures are the same. The 2014 shows a lower annual fuel cost and a higher 5 year fuel cost savings over the average vehicle.

Do you mind sharing your VIN? I'm really curious to see the differences in ETIS versus a 2013 C-Max to see the 2014 changes.

Have you thought about trying 0W-20? Would that be better with a new engine that's still breaking in? Or worse? Thanks for the great analysis! We also expect to keep our car a long time and want the ICE to last and to never burn oil. My 1998 Chevy Lumina (my first car) had 180,000+ miles on it and it didn't burn a drop of oil between oil changes.

The 2nd printing of the 2014 FFH OM calls for 0W-20 oil. 1st printing 2014 FFH OM and all 5 revisions of the 2013 FFH OM have called for 5W-20 oil. The document found here calls for 0W-20 in all 2.0L Atkinson cycle Ford engines, 2013 and 2014, hybrid and Energi. There has been a lot of discussion the past few days about this on the FFH Forum and we're waiting for Ashley to get us an official answer about if the chart linked above supersedes what the OM says. All 2014 FFHs have come with an oil filler cap under the hood which says 5W-20 oil, even the ones that came from the factory with an OM stating 0W-20 say 5W-20 on the oil cap under the hood.

Are you planning to do any tuft testing or some other measure of how this spoiler affects the airflow?

Since we got rid of our early build FFH because of the issues it had and now it's on a dealer lot as a used car, I would stay away from the used C-Max. What does the dealer say when you ask about the history of it?

Interesting! I'd think that the amount of metal in the oil would be a good indicator of doing shorter oil change intervals early on in engine life.

What does your window sticker say? What does Etis show? If you are comfortable sharing your VIN, then we could look up your window sticker and see your car in Etis. Those two sources should help shed light on this.

How's the C-Max taxi fleet going? Any more issues like the one with a failed tranny at 52k miles?

I have observed this too. For us it seems to be when under 10F that the ICE starts immediately, but it isn't consistent. The black FFH started the ICE immediately far less often than I've found the white one will.

Has this TSB been posted anywhere? I don't recall seeing it.

Glad you're ok! Looking forward to seeing what you can do to aero mod the old front fascia.

Frank - very interesting. Thanks! I imagine that the grille blocking pushes more air over the top of the car, thus resulting in less downforce. There would also be some additional air pushed underneath the car, but I agree that the majority would go up and over. I wish I had access to a wind tunnel to see the changes.

Frank - this makes sense. This explains why the Prius (a car designed to be very aerodynamic) is even worse than our FFH at having dirt adhere to the tail of the car. So basically, the FFH owner who added mudflaps changed the way the air flows around the wheels and the tail of the car and thus created more turbulence/drag?

What causes the dust/snow/etc to all stick to the back of the car? The C-Max back hatch gets extremely dirty, so does the back hatch of my wife's Prius. The FFH isn't as bad, but the trunk area also gets extremely dirty. What part of the aerodynamics causes this? Is it the turbulence at the back? Another FFH owner recently noticed this: How would the mudflaps be changing the air flow to result in less dirt adhering itself to the trunk lid? I might look at getting some if they'll help keep the trunk cleaner. Perhaps they'd also have that impact on the C-Max. I wish I had a better understanding of aerodynamics to know, but I'm glad that there are C-Max owners who do since I don't. Thanks!!

I think this is an excellent write up. I feel the same way. In every previous car I easily beat the EPA estimates in the summer and usually got right around the EPA estimates in the winter. One year of driving the black FFH put us at 45.2 MPG including 9000 miles of road trips at freeway speeds. If I exclude the road trips and only look at our normal driving then we got 46.6 MPG in one year of mostly (~80%) city driving. The 9000 miles of road trips were 43.9 MPG. I am a bit disappointed by the road trip MPG because I would have liked to have seen 45+ MPG on road trips. Our 2006 Honda Accord Hybrid (which was replaced by the FFH) would get 40 MPG on road trips. I am also a little disappointed because I had hoped to average more than 47 MPG year-round, but that's still amazing for a mid-size sedan with more power than most 4-cyl mid-size sedans on the market.

A number of Fusion Hybrid owners (including myself) have found that in the cold weather the dash is less accurate compared to the pump gallons than in the summer. My parents' C-Max Energi is the same way. So is my wife's Prius. Our previous Honda Accord & Saab 9-5 & Saab 9-3 were all that way. It seems to be a pattern.

Congrats SDM!! That's amazing!!!!

I think you could get by with 2 cameras. One showing the dash with the speedometer & left screen visible, and the second camera to show the shutters. I would suggest using the temp from Engineering Test Mode as it's much more accurate than the temp gauge in MyView.

Pre 13B07, the shutters would open each time you stopped (I.e. At a red light) even when the coolant was closed. Mike - did you see this in your video? Are you able to show your video of shutter operation in conjunction with coolant temps?

How does grille blocking make the car unstable at speed? I didn't quite follow that portion of your post. Thanks!

When the HVB is extremely cold your EV power is limited. While the dealer fixed the trunk on our new white FFH Friday, they gave me our old black FFH to drive. The HVB temp when I left the dealer was 4.5 F according to the ScanGauge. The HVB would not run the car in EV mode at all. Any touch of the gas pedal would make the ICE come on. I didn't think to get a pic showing the low threshold. Once the HVB warmed up above 15F I was able to get 1/2 bar of EV as shown in the pic below. Once the HVB hit 20F I was able to get 1 bar of EV. I did not get normal EV operation back until the HVB was warmer than 32F. The HVB fans came on right away and ran non-stop to funnel heated cabin air across the HVB.

Strange. Did the letter have a VIN on it that you can check to try to track down the car in question?

After starting out driving in just EV, I will often shift to L while stopped when I know that upon acceleration I'll make the ICE start for the first time. You'll clearly hear the difference as in L the ICE will rev to 3000+ RPM whereas you'd be around 2000 RPM in D. Once the revs increase you can shift back to D. With time you'll be able to pick up on when the computer changes patterns and starts to increase the RPM before the RPM actually goes up so then it's much more smooth. Perhaps the heater setting was causing it. How warm was the coolant when this happened? When the coolant temp is dropping where it's really close to the threshold for making the ICE run for heat I've seen the EV threshold drop very low to get the ICE on for heat, even when the SOC is high. Turning off the heat for a few minutes will usually get the EV threshold back to normal.