oldloboy

oldloboy again. Thank you for the measurement. My dipstick has exactly this same length. So, evidently Walmart did NOT put 4.5 quarts in even though they thought they had. I will verify the filter number too.

After 10 years of having my oil changed at my Dealership, I tried the local Walmart. One of the "technicians" requested a post-oil-change conference. They did put in 4.5 quarts. But, oil hardly registered on my dipstick. They then used the part no. on the stick, D454A, to look up the part. They said the dipstick was for a Ford Focus!! Since the Dealer was a half mile away, I drove over immediately and talked to the Service Manager. He verified that the oil level wasn't showing and then pulled the dipstick and we went to his parts guy. They found the the no., D454A , was an engineering no. ?? and further checking showed that the dipstick WAS for a 2013 CMax. And, they put in another quart of oil for free. What do you suppose is going on? My car has , maybe, 5.5 or 6 quarts of oil in it now, bringing the level up to "full" on my CMax or Focus dipstick!

My problem with my 2013 hybrid, 96k miles on it ,is that it proactively charges the HVB occasionally overnight while the ignition is off! This began occurring recently but often enough that I check and recheck that I have turned off the ignition when I exit the car. What do you think of this "automatic" charging procedure? No, I do not have the Energi and I find the battery will be completely topped off even though the AA icon reads 25% when I switch off. I suspect that the software is trying to extend the life of a rapidly aging HVG, but I'm only guessing.

It happened today. Wife left me off at the doctor's office, drove off and I kept the fob by mistake. She drove across town to shop, realized our predicament, and successfully drove back. She did not turn the engine off and stayed in the car, thank goodness. The distance was about five miles. I am wondering if the gps might track the distance from where the fob disappeared and then disable the car at some point. Does anyone know?

Sounds right to me. 68 KW would be some fine acceleration. Perhaps in a few years, when my C Max hybrid battery is near the end of its life, a replacement will be juicier. Not that I'm complaining though.

------- Yes, winter sucks. A really big thing is the tires. They roll well only when they get hot. I've found that any highway that is cold or wet takes high power levels even at moderate speeds, and the same roads take low power when the outside temp is 60 or 70 and the tires have warmed up. This happened even if I carefully adjust the tire pressure to hit 38 psi when it is below freezing. I would hate to own a C Max in Canada. 2 or 3 months of decent mileage and then the bottom drops out!

--------Do you ever drive the C Max in-town? I've found that a hybrid's mileage goes way up when I'm coasting from stoplight to stoplight or cruising around a mall, looking for a parking space. The deal is, a straight gas motor does miserably at low power. Any gas engine has to be strangled with its air/fuel mixture to put out only 10-20 horsepower. You get extremely low efficiency with gas at low power. This type of situation is when the EV mode saves the mileage. If you work the engine hard, accelerating and charging, and then back off to put it in the EV mode, your average mileage will be in the forties instead of the thirties.

Nope. I own a C Max Hybrid. It has a sizable gas engine with a small battery backup system. The battery capacity is 1.5 KWHour. But, lithium batteries don't like to be discharged less than 25% or charged more than 75% of capacity (in order to stretch their life). So, we are driving with a .75 KWH battery pack. That is 1 horsepower for an hour, or 40 horsepower for one and a half minutes. Yep, I'm driving a gas-powered car with battery back-up. I'm loving it too because I can get 50+ mpg on hwy trips that have a few hills and allow me to drive at 60 mph or less. As many testimonials on this site state, if you work the car so that the engine shuts off for, say, half a minute every few miles, you will see ~45 mpg. My hwy trick, in cruise-control mode, is to check the battery charge and if it is near the top, push the accelerator to speed up a couple of mph. Then I release the accelerator and the power level falls into the blue zone and the engine kicks off. Of course, I do this only if I'm not going up a hill. And, like many of you, I'm using the Empower display to see where the blue range is.

Amen. I had the same experience: 37 mph with the car (cmax hybrid) when I had less than one thousand miles on it. Then after watching U-Tube videos, and Spring arriving, around 46-48 mph. During summer fall, driving on hilly roads and not faster than 60 mph, I'm seeing 52 mpg. When I wish to concentrate on driving, I keep the motor off for a half minute or so every five miles or so on the highway. In town mileage has always been terrific.

MPG in a hybrid: miles the car is driven; this does include the EV miles of course, as all the display modes show. To paraphrase others' replies to Robert Burke, the gasoline is the only source of energy. So you (still) divide miles driven by gallons used to get MPG. I've had a nice run of MPG, hovering around 52.5 because I'm driving relatively slowly in a hilly (and warm) region. But, the outside temps. are dropping and this will ruin it all. Are you ready for winter? cold motors, more rolling friction, more air resistance, . . . maybe only 36 mph until Spring returns. Good luck, all.

My car is a 2013 C Max Hybrid. I own two magnetic stick-on block heaters that I used on older cars. I stuck them on the bottom of oil pans and pulled them off before I started the engines. Each heater is approximately 150 watts. So you suppose, for winter startups, they would be of any use for my C Max? Also, because there is a body pan underneath the car, would there be any location at all where the heat would reach the engine coolant or engine block?

A C Max reviewer mentioned that Ford "cuts into the lithium battery lifetime slightly" by draining away more of its charge, as one approaches a learned destination, than the software would allow during normal driving. That is, EV+ may be slightly unhealthy for the battery. After reading this, I set my EV+ feature to off. Lithium batteries must be treated well to survive thousands of discharge-charge cycles and so I run the gas engine for a bit when I'm about a half-mile from my home.

Oh, yes high speeds would take off some mph. That is a heck of a commute, over an hour each way.