boilermax

Got my letter last week. It just so happens that Max experienced his first dead battery last month when my son borrowed him for a few days. :sad: So this is timely. Max is a 2013 SE with 14,500 miles on the clock. We use Bluetooth for the cell phone whenever we're in the car. The only thing we plug into the USB port is a flash drive with music files.

Thanks jeff_h. If that's the same reason for the C-Max then I won't worry too much. I was concerned that a power train reprogramming may impact mileage - perhaps negatively. Right now I'm very happy with my mileage. I just got back from a trip from Raleigh to DC and back where I averaged 45 mpg on I-85 and I-95.

My wife took Max to the dealer when the airbag light came on. They're replacing the airbag control module. While there, the advisor told her that a power train recall would be done, too. I looked on the ETIS site and found this: 14E02 - POWERTRAIN CONTROL MODULE REPROGRAMMING Does anyone know anything about this recall?

I recently took Max to his first automated car wash. I saw a stream of the high pressure water coming in around the lift gate. So when I took Max in for his 14S04 recall, I had the dealer check it out. They found that the seal around the lift gate glass was leaking. They removed the glass and re-sealed it. All under warranty. The service advisor said that this was the first time he had seen this problem on a C-Max. He went on to say that he rarely sees a C-Max for anything other than a recall or normal maintenance - they have very few problems. That seems to contradict the published quality reports.

I received my check on Friday - $475. I can't complain, first $550 and now $475. I just passed 10,000 miles and my lifetime average is 43.9 mpg. My summer mileage runs about 49 mpg around town and I don't make any special effort at hypermiling.

This is the same behavior I have seen. As noted by others, if the temperature is set to "Lo" the AC always comes on and the fan is highest speed. The AC part of this is documented in the Owner's Manual . . . "In position LO, 59°F (15°C), the system switches to permanent cooling." I keep my temperature set in the mid-60s to prevent this "permanent cooling" operation. So when I turn on the climate control using the fan switch, the power switch, any vent direction arrow or the temperature setting knob, the AC comes on and the fan goes to halfway between low and high. Around town I rarely use the AC, relying instead on the vents and windows. All I want to do is have the system turn back on with the settings I had selected before I turned the climate control off. Is that too much to ask?

When we bought our C-Max in November of 2012 I didn't believe the 47/47/47 claims. Comparing C-Max to Prius V at the time, the Ford has more gas horsepower, more electric horsepower and more weight than the Prius, yet was rated higher mpg. The laws of physics don't allow that. I decided that if I could average 40 mpg or better I would be happy. So far, after 9600 miles, my lifetime average is 44.5 mpg. That includes several long road trips where I averaged about 42 mpg for the trip. My current tankful is averaging 50.5 mpg. I don't make any special effort to hyper-mile or such like. As many others have reported, cold weather has a major impact on mpg. My overall average drops in winter and climbs in summer. I wouldn't be suprised to see my lifetime average at 45 mpg (or even higher) by the end of this summer. So far we've been lucky and not experienced the quality issues others have had. We received the $550 payment and if we get this next payment, too, it will only add to our satisfaction. All-in-all we've been very pleased with our decision to buy the C-Max.

Ashley - I also reviewed the pages you cited. I agree with DaveofDurham that they don't answer the question. Nowhere do they talk about how to prevent the AC from coming on or how to prevent the fan from cranking up to high speed. Nor do they mention the fact that the AC comes on whether you want it or not. I find it odd that on a vehicle intended to maximize gas mileage the default mode of operation seems to be to have the AC on.

I've had similar frustrations. I rarely use the "auto" setting. I've tried using the on/off button, the fan button, the vent option button, etc. to turn on the climate controls. The AC always comes on and the fan runs at a much higher speed than I want. Then I have to turn off the AC and push the fan speed down button multiple times until I get the speed I want. All of this is a distraction from what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing - driving! i learned that if you set the temperature control to "Lo" then the AC is intended to come on. I tried playing with the difference between set temperature and outside temperature to see what effect that may have. So far no good results. I did learn that if I change the temperature setting while the climate control is off, the AC comes on and the fan speeds up again. (Where have I heard that before?) I tried bringing this topic up last year in this forum. I was told that i was being "picky". I'm sorry - I don't think trying to avoid unnecessary distractions while driving is being picky. I think it's being a good driver.

I just returned from a weekend trip to New York City. I saw a silver C-Max parked on a street on the upper east side and a yellow C-Max taxi driving down an avenue. As an aside, a number of the cabs I saw were hybrids - Prius, C-Max, Escape, etc.

Some 30 years ago i worked for a company that made gas pumps. One of the major national petroleum companies complained that our pumps would not hold calibration well enough to pass weights and measures checks. All of our tests showed excellent calibration, right in the middle of the +/- allowable range. Eventually we learned that it was their company's policy to set pump calibration right at the low calibration limit. Then, if the calibration drifted just slightly lower, they would fail inspection. By setting calibration low they saved a fraction of a percent on every sale. It's very little on a per-sale basis, but when you sell millions of gallons it adds up to a large amount of money. That's long-winded way of saying that gas station operators have a built-in mechanism by which they can deliver less gas than they report and charge you for.

I've read the thread on tire pressure, including the suggestion to exceed the max pressure rating. I choose to not grossly over-inflate my tires in an attempt to chase higher FE. I feel that I get the best tread wear at or slightly above the recommended pressure. High pressure can cause the tires to wear prematurely in the center of the tread. At about $200 per tire, it would take quite a fuel savings to pay for early tire replacement. I see by your fuelly rating your current average FE is 45.0. Right before our trip that was exactly what ours was - 45.0. The last tankful before leaving on the trip was an indicated 47.9 mpg for about 400 miles of local driving.

Max has about 6600 miles total at this point. I keep the tires at 40 psi. I didn't keep track of the driving time, so I can't compute the average mph. When the speed limit was 65 or 70 (which it was for almost all of the time), I set the cruise control to about 68 in hopes of hitting the sweet spot. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't.

Drove Max from Raleigh, NC to Rochester, NY and back for a total of 1625 miles. Overall FE was almost exactly 42 mpg (from actual gas usage, not indicated mpg). Most speed limits were 65 or 70 mph. Going north we drove through VA and WVa (all mountain highways) to Pittsburgh, PA. Drove around Pittsburgh then up to Erie, Buffalo and on to Rochester. Drove around Rochester for 4 days. Going south we drove through NY & central PA (more mountain highways) to Harrisburg then on to VA and home to Raleigh. I had a hard time keeping Max in the sweet spot while on the highway. Maybe that was due to the lengthy sections of mountain driving. Anyway, I was still pleased with my overall average. It certainly beats the revised 40 mpg highway rating! Bob

Another story: One of the Ford dealers in my town was caught under-filling all oil changes by one quart. It's not much per change, but when you do thousands of oil changes a year it adds up to a nice piece of change! AND THAT'S WHY I DO ALL the maintenance on our cars!!!

I use the Accutire MS-4021B Standard Digital Tire Gauge. It was top-rated at my favorite review site, http://www.consumersearch.com.

I just did the first oil change and tire rotation on my wife's C-Max in preparation for a lengthy road trip. We've had the car since Nov. '12 and it has about 4800 miles on it. Since she'll put only 6k miles per year on the car, I plan on an annual oil change and tire rotation schedule. But I don't understand the need to rotate the tires. They rotate every time she drives the car! :secret:

That's the same reason I went for the 2012 Focus spare over the older Taurus spare - newer rubber. I picked up a HF jack yesterday. I didn't see any with bent screws, but the first one I looked at was missing the cranking handle. I plan to give the screw a good coating of lubricant before using it and to keep it well lubed in hopes of preventing screw thread damage. My wife is, as I type, making a spare tire cover. She is making it large enough to cover the full-size tire after we replace it with the spare. We hope to prevent, or at least minimize, the impact of a dirty, wet tire on the interior of the car. (Flats always seem to occur during inclement weather, don't they?) Bob

Today I bought a spare for a 2012 Focus from a local salvage yard. $50 + tax. The tire is T125/80R16, not the T135/70D16 used on Taurus, etc. It has the same 5 hole 108mm bolt pattern as the C-MAX. It fits nicely on the C-MAX with no interference issues. When I got home, I compared tire specifications: T135/70D16 T125/80R16 outer diameter 23.94" 24.33" rolling circumference 72.05" 73.50" width 5.75" 5.28" load capacity 1760 lbs 1606 lbs The Focus spare is ever so slightly larger around than the Taurus spare. That gives it a very slight advantage while driving with it in place, although both spares are smaller than the full-size tire. The 154 pound lower load capacity is minimal, IMHO. I estimate the load on a C-MAX rear tire to be less than 1000 pounds, so there is ample margin. Bob

Had the upgrade done on Monday. Saw 50+ mpg on several around-town trips. Today my wife drove it from Raleigh NC to Knoxville TN (over 300 miles, all highway, speed limits 65 to 70, plus climbing the mountains to 2000+ ft elevation). She averaged 44.0 mpg while using AC the whole way (temps were in the 90s.) I'm pleased.

Just had this update done to my wife's C-MAX today, as well as the headliner recall. We'll see how the mileage goes from here. Just for reference, the current tank has gone 379 miles at an indicated 47.7 mpg average, all suburban and rural driving, no highway. Her lifetime average mpg is 42.4. She'll be leaving Friday for a 350 mile highway trip through the NC mountains to Tennessee. It'll be interesting to see what mpg she gets on that.

I use the "sunglass holder" for my garage door opener. Easy to reach and it never gets lost. Found a new feature just today. (I've had my C-MAX since November.) It was raining so I had my wipers on intermittent. As I backed out of a parking space the REAR wiper operated in intermittent mode (and I hadn't turned the rear wiper on). It wiped occasionally until I shifted into drive. When I got home I tried it again to make sure it was't a fluke. It's real!

OK, here's what I've found out . . . As suggested by fotomoto, setting the temperature control up to 60 from LO keeps the AC from starting up when I turn the system on. That's progress. However, the fan still starts up faster - in this case half-blast (4 bars on the display) instead of full-blast (7 bars on the display). This occurs whether I push the ON button or one of the vent direction buttons. So I started experimenting. Max says the temperature in my garage was 70 this morning. When I set the temp control to 70 the system started up at 2 fan bars instead of 4. When I set the temp control to 65 the system started up at 3 fan bars instead of 4. I concluded that the fan startup speed is a function of the difference between the set temperature - 60 in this case - and the car's measured temperature. (Some programmer at Ford got cute and decided to put in an "intelligent" fan control instead of letting the driver decide what he/she wants. That way we have more distractions trying the set the climate control while driving.) I then discovered that if I push a fan speed button while the system is off, the fan starts up at one bar, the lowest setting. The AC remains off. That gives me the behavior I want. Of course, none of this is documented in the owner's manual. Bob

Thanks, I'll give that a try. Bob

I've had my C-Max SE since November. Now that the weather is warming up I'm seeing climate control behavior that seems odd to me. I don't need any heat, so I keep the temp set to minimum. If I just push the ON button for climate control (not in AUTO mode), the AC starts up, even if it hadn't been running previously. Then I have to tell it to turn off. The next time I turn the climate control on the same thing happens. Is there a way to prevent the AC from turning on until I tell it to? I've found that, when the climate control is off, I can push one of the vent control buttons to turn it on, again not in AUTO mode. The AC does not start when I do this. However, the fan comes on full blast and I have to repeatedly push the fan down button to slow it doen to a reasonable level. Is there any way to turn on the climate control and have it simply go back to the settings that it had been using before it was shut off? Thanks for any ideas. Bob