FRS Posted May 13, 2023 Report Share Posted May 13, 2023 I just bought a 2016 C=Mac Energi with 63k miles. We are enjoying the car but when the hybrid battery is depleted and the engine starts the car has a loud, deep whine that is present at high speed or in town. When in town the whine is extremely irritating and often interferes with conversations. I took the car to our local Ford dealer with a response of nothing is wrong with the car and the dealer service representative stated they have another C=Max in the shop that does the same thing so it must be normal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cr08 Posted May 14, 2023 Report Share Posted May 14, 2023 Can you confirm exactly how the noise sounds? Is it more of a low hum? Does it only happen when the ICE/engine is running? If so, it's the active noise cancellation system in these vehicles misbehaving. There's a workaround to disable it entirely covered below. There are some TSBs for a supposed proper fix that your dealer can do so it will remain active but won't drone anymore. Hard to say if those fixes have had any success or not. Doesn't seem like anybody has reported following through and like a lot of other 'issues' with this vehicle it feels like most owners are too cheap to follow through with their dealers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Meek Posted October 28, 2023 Report Share Posted October 28, 2023 If you have another Ford dealer available I'd try them. I recently bought a second 2016 C-Max Energi with 59k miles and it has a low roar/howl under load my first 16 with the same miles does not. The dealer I use has a Shop Foreman who has a 2017 C-Max as his personal vehicle. We drove the car and he diagnosed it as the pinion in the final drive going bad - the dealer is replacing the transmission. The Energi has an 8/100k warranty on the powertrain including the transmission (in CARB states like California it's 10/150k) so don't accept one opinion. The C-Max should be very quiet if it's right. Good luck. jestevens 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jestevens Posted October 29, 2023 Report Share Posted October 29, 2023 (edited) If your car still has transmission warranty it might be worth having a second look like Tom says above. The very first time I drove our SE fleet vehicle at work the HV battery was completely depleted and the engine seemed obnoxiously loud and whiny because the car had sat there was at least a week without being driven -- so at first I hated it. But after driving the car for a while I got to like it a lot, so much so that I eventually traded both my Prius and HHR in to get enough money to buy an SEL of my own. My car has always made a light whirring noise on acceleration and deacceleration .. I think that is normal. I think the "bad" transmission noise is a grinding noise .. here is a video I found recently that seems to explain the problem .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbQoUmKhcdQ My 2013 has 135K now and still no problem .. I -hope- it stays that way for at least another 30K, that would be nice. Edited October 29, 2023 by jestevens Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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