jmckinley

"Why don't you hit the power button again to turn off accessory mode? The transmission should remain in neutral, no?" That's what I said. The car stays in neutral, the instrument panel goes dark except for a message that says "Put it in Park". After a while, the message turns off. After 1-3 hours, the battery is dead. If you were dumb enough to lock the doors, you can't open them until you remember the secret metal key that lives in the key fob. By the way, not everyone gets the secret key, some people have reported no metal key in there.

l We're talking about towing a C Max behind a motor home. If you have an SEL, you put it in neutral and hit the Start/Stop button. It goes into a sort of Accessory state with the engine off. Some stuff in there is still running, however, and after 1-3 hours of towing the battery dies. This happens repeatedly until the battery is trashed. We're talking about a way to get the car in neutral without touching the Start/Stop button.

I like the idea and considered it myself. Finally decided to just go with the manual approach. I will eventually install an inconspicous pull string.

Re the cooler climate remark This winter in Ohio I got 35 mpg. Spent Feb and March in south Texas, 35 mpg. Late Spring in Ohio, 35 mpg. Summer in Ohio, 35 mpg. And it's not my driving. I'm babying this POS so much my wife is complaining that it takes forever to get anywhere.

I'm unhappy with my purchase but I doubt it would be worth it to sell and take the big hit. Would take 200 years to recoup my loss with a higher mpg car. Newer cars are clearly getting significantly better mileage, but Ford is not admitting any changes, nor offering to help us early adopters with upgraded software or whatever is different with the later build dates. Happy to sell mine to anyone who might be interested. White SEL, 8,000 miles, no sunroof, Nav system, premium radio. Set up for towing with Roadmaster baseplate. Price negotiable but I won't give it away.

By the way, I forgot this little tidbit. My rental car in Maui is a previous generation Focus with 38,000 miles on it. Smells like a locker room and, unlike my C Max, it is averaging over 40 mpg in mostly city driving with the AC on full blast. I'm so happy I paid almost $30K for a 4,000 pound car that gets 35 mpg and has a teeny, tiny, itty bitty 12 V battery that dies if you leave the radio on more than 15 minutes.

I've been in Honolulu and then Maui the past week and I notice rental C Max's are all over both places. That's kind of interesting since I can't imagine why the big rental guys would want a complicated, over priced car which takes a little education just for Joe Undershirt to get it started. Certainly they are not worried about fuel economy since the customer buys the fuel. My guess is that Ford is giving Hertz, etc really good deals on C Max just to pump up the sales figures. That is a common sales gimmick that has been used for decades when the need arises to improve sales figures on a given model.

Just because the 3.5.1 isn't a drivetrain thing, it doesn't mean they won't tweak the drivetrain software at the same time. They just may not remember to tell the owners. My humble opinion is that there is no doubt later cars are doing better and it's not just the weather.

The tight rack and pinion sounds logical to me. I've always thought the problem felt like too much friction in the system somewhere. You apply a little pressure, nothing happens, a little more still nothing then with a little more pressure it breaks loose and turns too much. That would be consistent with high friction in the shaft bearings or the gear itself. I may just be getting used to the car, but it seems to me that the problem is less noticeable with more miles on the car. This too is consistent with a friction problem.

Amen on white being easier to keep looking good. Has to be really dirty before it looks dirty. Waxing is a breeze since you don't have to worry about streaks and spider webs. Also amen on staying away from metallics since they are impossible to match. My C Max was backed into so a rear door and rear quarter panel had to be repaired and repainted. It is a perfect match and you can't tell it was ever injured. If it was Platinum White I guarantee the new paint would not have matched.

Interesting story about Ann Arbor. My son-in-law switched jobs from Detroit police to Ann Arbor police. After several years of regular shoot outs and other violent encounters in Detroit, his first call on his first day on patrol in Ann Arbor was to stop traffic for a mother duck and ducklings crossing a street.

First off, print copies of all the posts from this thread where people talk about getting new batteries on warranty. And, where they talk about the dealer doing something to fix the problem that kills batteries. Insist that your dealer check the known problem with the charging system and with various current drains. The dealer can test the battery and see if it is bad. If it's been drained it probably has been damaged and should be replaced. But, keep in mind, it really wasn't the battery's fault. The system on some cars just doesn't charge it to a high enough level and there is a TSB for that. On other cars, there are mysterious current drains that drain it over a relatively short time

You need the TSB and a new battery. A totally drained battery is a damaged battery. Ask for a new one. Read all the proceeding posts. There are multiple possible causes including bad programming, frayed wiring to the tailgate and bad connectors behind the front bumper. Not to mention that the Original Equipment 12V battery is just too small to begin with.

Since my dealer did the TSB 13-3-11 mine has worked just fine. No wandering off into cornfields, oceans, etc. But, by that I mean it is working as designed. The basic design still sucks in terms of user friendliness and accuracy. It still calls a freeway exit "A Slight Right Turn" and it still forgets to announce turns on occasion. Many times navigation to an address is an adventure having nothing to do with the intended destination. As many have said before me, the functionality of this Nav system is far below the cheapest unit Garmin makes which can be bought on sale for less than $100.

NHTSA stands for National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. From their web site: NHTSA was established by the Highway Safety Act of 1970 and is dedicated to achieving the highest standards of excellence in motor vehicle and highway safety. It works daily to help prevent crashes and their attendant costs, both human and financial. Their mission is to improve vehicle safety, period. They are not interested in quality problems. To issue a recall the defect must: "cause a sudden and unexpected loss of control of the vehicle" A dead battery is not a safety issue, in fact it guarantees the car will not be involved in a moving accident. You're wasting your time bugging NHTSA about battery problems, they have no power to get involved with quality issues, only safety issues.

But, if this is real, it is really interesting. First, it's amazing that a dealer would buy it back after only 1,000 miles. Everyone else has just gotten the "needs more break-in", "you're an idiot and can't drive a hybrid", "it's too cold", etc stories. Soon it will be "it's too hot, don't use your AC so much" Second, there may be some truth to this. On this forum there are multiple reports (mostly recently) of new owners getting great mileage off the first tank and only improving after that. Others, like me, can't break 40 no matter how dorky I drive. And, mine spent from 2500 to 4000 odo miles in the south with mild temperatures. Did something change between the first builds and now? Maybe. I've complained every time I've taken mine in, hoping that there is a secret fix they're not talking about. No results yet. If the good mileage requires driving real slow and not using the heater or AC I might as well have my old '68 VW back. It got great mileage but was slow and the heater didn't work and there was no AC.

No, that's not how cruise control works. It monitors speed - when it senses the car is slowing down it adds throttle until speed is no longer dropping. ECO cruise just adds throttle slower than normal cruise so speed may drop a few miles per hour before catching back up.

When you hit the button with the car in neutral, it doesn't matter whether your foot is on the brake or not, stuff is still drawing current somewhere in the car and the battery will eventually run down. I tried all combinations on my six week trip this winter and nothing worked - the battery always ran down. Didn't find out about the brake shift lock override until I got back home. Only towed once since then. You're right about running the car for five minutes in neutral. It is not made that way and that is why my guess is that whoever one of the posters spoke to at Ford didn't know what they were talking about. You can press on the gas pedal and get the engine to run in neutral, but weird stuff starts happening and sometimes it will go to 4000 rpm and you can't get it to stop. Sometimes nothing happens it just runs about 2000 rpm and then stops. Other times it will rev up and slow down over and over again. All in all, probably not a good idea to do this. It makes the car unhappy and will probably eventually blow something up, like the transmission.

If you "don't want to go digging into the emergency brake slot to do any gerry-rigging, as far as shifting it out of Park" and you don't have a charge line from the motor home, the battery will run down after about two hours towing, the first time. Over the next few tows, the time to dead battery will get shorter and shorter as the battery is destroyed. Then it will start dying at other, non towing times, like overnight. The problem, as you described, is that the thing is never turned off. Stuff is still running in there despite your having pushed the off button. You'll be fine on your 20 mile trip. Longer trips will be problematic. If you don't use a charge line or override the brake shift interlock, carry a Stanley Simple Start or similar device.

On my PC, I got rid of it by using Ghostery. Don't know what to do with an I Pad.

My dealer told me Ford is working on a fix for the inadvertent reverse. It has happened to us a couple of times.

I've noticed a cool breeze inside the console when fan is running. I wonder if some creative hole cutting could lead to a refrigerated console like some other cars have? Maybe a small penalty for the rear seat passengers, but we seldom have passengers anyway.

Don't know what was happening, but the time period on the history screen is adjustable from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. If you set it on 30 minutes, each bar is a five minute average and at that setting my bars are fairly stable. If you're set on the 5 minute range, the bars are only for a 1 minute period and do fluctuate. I finally figured out that the blue horizontal line is the average shown on all the Empower, Engage etc. screens.

Good point! A $350 IPad would be way more functional and powerful than the MFT and a $100 Garmin GPS works way better than the FordNav and you get four free updates a year.

If you battery pukes, you can get into neutral by popping off the gearshift boot plate. Look down in there and you'll find a white plastic thing about 4 inches down. Flip it back and you can shift into neutral. The owner's manual is totally wrong on the procedure to defeat the Brake Shift Interlock to get the vehicle in neutral with a failed interlock or a dead battery.