MaineFusion

There is some kind of relationship between the two, because my collision warning system went out when my RCM failed and it is now alarming for stuff it never alarmed for before on roads I drive regularly.

The Ford customer service manager told me that parts were held up for everyone because they had to wait for the new parts to become available. Since the recall was issued one day after I got my car back and the part had been constantly back ordered, I'm pretty sure Ford had pulled all the old parts from their supply chain. I can't prove it with any 100% certainty, but I'd be really surprised if Ford allowed one of the old versions of this part to get shipped to a dealer. On a separate note, one thing that I have noticed since the RCM was replaced is that my collision avoidance alarm has become really twitchy. I've had go off several times for polls that would be in the path of travel if I weren't going into a curve. I hadn't seen that happen since several months after first getting my FFH. This makes me believe the new RCM might be "learning" when such things actually pose a risk.

I got the impression that because of the redesign of the part people with early failures had to wait while the new part was approved and manufactured. Hopefully production has ramped up enough for everyone to start getting the part in a more expedient fashion.

I am happy to report that I got my FFH back this evening. The service adviser said she's been seeing about one failed RCM per week for the past three months and mine was the fastest one they had received from Ford so it would seem sending a PM to Crystal really did the trick. The Ford representative who called me today to follow up said that the RCM has had a high failure rate and it had to be redesigned, which caused a backlog while the redesigned part got the necessary approvals. The dealer's service adviser thought that Ford could end up having to issue a recall on the part given the failure rate. Hopefully her hunch is right so that the bad module can be replaced out proactively rather than it failing on people at really inconvenient times leaving people with unsafe cars that have to be at least driven home and then to a shop. If you have a 2013 Fusion or other similar model, and your advanced safety systems all go bad at once like mine did, get your car into the shop right away.

With the front passenger seat pushed forward, I was able to put a pair of full sized door panels (80"x24") into my FFH and close the trunk. I measured out how much I could put in and I think I could almost get full length 8' boards in with the front passenger seat moved all the way forward and tilted forward and both back seats laid down. It would be tight and would depend on the other dimensions of the boards. I have stuck 10' trim molding in by flexing it around the passenger seat.

I took the grille cover off for the summer. I mostly plan to use it in the winter. I've had an insanely busy summer so I haven't yet modified the extra grille cover blocks I got from you. It is somewhere on my to-do list once I get my car back. I've been running my tire pressure at 37psi, which helps quite a bit. I haven't notice any unusual tire wear. I forgot to mention that my daily commute also has a whole mess of construction zones that have lowered speed limits for much of the summer. This has also helped boost fuel economy.

All the info I posted came from their own website so I didn't figure it was that big of a deal.

Well in this case, having the throw popups like an infected copy of Windowns was all the service agent needed to see. She told me I had to have a loaner after looking at the dash for five seconds. Apparently they had seen enough of these blown RCMs to know the light and popup combination could only mean one thing and it wasn't good. So far I've never gotten a VHR that didn't tell me what I already knew or could see from the dash. The problems I can't justify to my dealer don't show up on the VHR: I still can't figure out why I blew white smoke a couple months back when accelerating hard and couldn't reproduce the behavior with the service tech riding along. A passenger side mirror that will randomly go off in some odd direction every now and then when I start the car.A driver side window that sometimes doesn't go down.I figure I'm just stuck with those issues until they can be reproduced at the right time to diagnose the issue.

I did send her a PM, with same message, plus my dealer name (with city and state) along with my VIN and real name. I didn't think of mileage. @Crystal, My mileage is right around 30,050mi +/-50. My dealer's contact info: 857 Portland Road Saco, ME 04072 (855) 347-9584

I didn't order the active park assist package so I don't have front cross traffic, I only have rear cross traffic. It seems to be working fine, but is not as sensitive as I'd like. It is good to know these things are covered for five years unlimited mileage. It is quite disorienting and distracting when all the alarms first go off at once isn't it? Maybe Ford should work on the way the alarms trigger so that a massive system failure doesn't cause a mess of alarms from becoming a major driving distraction. When the alarms did go off I stopped at a service plaza and triggered a vehicle health report thinking they get sent to my dealer. I was pretty disappointed that these don't go to my dealer. It seems like them getting the reports before I could get the car into the shop could give them an opportunity to pre-order parts that would be needed saving time. I didn't need the VHR in my owner.ford.com profile to tell me something was seriously wrong; the car was doing a good enough job of this itself. The car was pretty obsessive about reminding me that the hill start assist was out of service (like every 30 seconds to couple minutes at most).

Hi Crystal, The gang here says I should reach out to you. My 2013 FFH is in the shop for an indeterminate time frame due to a dead restraint control module. The dealer says they've seen a rash of these thing failing on Fusions and other Ford models. They also say it has been taking them up to a month or longer to get replacement RCMs. They have given me a loaner; however, my commute is 100 miles round trip three days per week. Going from getting 50+ mpg in my most comfortable 2013 FFH to getting 29mpg in a loaner is going to be a pretty significant bummer if I'm out of my car for a month. Not to mention how much more comfortable my FFH is plus all the driver assist technologies make the commute so much less tiring. Is there any way to help get help my dealer get the necessary part(s) in a more timely manner? I've only had the loaner for two days now and I so miss my own car. Being without it for weeks or longer is not a happy thought. My thread on this issue is at: http://fordfusionhybridforum.com/topic/9241-mainefusion-in-the-shop-for-failed-restraint-control-module/

So I was driving home the other night on my 50mi commute from work when part way through the trip my dash lit up with more popup alerts than an infected Windows computer. I'd clear them and they'd keep coming back. Adding to the concern factor were lots of yellow icons that I normally only seen when starting the car. I stopped at the next service plaza and shut off the car thinking a reboot might resolve the issue. It was to no avail. It took me some time to figure out what all I lost, but it was apparent most of my advanced driver assist technologies were on the fritz. Here's what I lost: cruise controlcollision avoidancelane keepinghill start assistback up assistadvanced trakair bagsJust about the only advanced features I had still operating was BLIS and the backup camera. the hill start assist was the most annoying alert because it alarmed every single time the engine kicked in, which on a road with rolling hills is very frequently. Although I lost the systems this past Thursday, today (Thursday) was the earliest I that the dealer had an availability and I had the ability to bring the car in. When I took the car in this morning the service representative took one look at my dash lights and said I'd need a loaner. When I asked if it was just for a day or two she gave me that "you wish" look. Without even plugging in any diagnostic device she said she was pretty sure my restraint control module had failed. She then said they had seen this issue quite a few times on Fusions and some other models recently and that it must be a pretty systemic problem because the modules are constantly on back order. When I asked how long the wait was she said sometimes a month or longer. A few hours later she called to confirm that it was the restraint control module that had failed and that they would try to get one as quickly as possible, but was not overly optimistic about the time frame. This means I've gone from driving my awesome 2013 FFH that is consistently getting me around 52 mpg on my 100mi round trip commute to a 2011 Fusion SE that is getting 29mpg and has none of the advance driving and comfort features I've become so used to. At least this happened while I was under the full warrentee. But I am very bummed because I'm only about one tank of gas away from finally achieving a lifetime fuel economy rating of 47MPG. If I lose use of my FFH for a month, we will be into October and I will be running out of high MPG driving days before the coldness of fall sets in hard and my MPG starts dropping dramatically. Of course this is assuming that something doesn't happen to cause my lifetime MPG to get reset as part of the fix. I did take pictures of my dash, and could get an approximate lifetime by comparing the pre and post RCM transplant averages, but this wouldn't be the same as finally getting to see the big 47.0 appear for the full lifetime MPG after 30,000 miles of very careful driving.

We could probably beat most all of those "coal burners" in acceleration. They may have lots of power, but it is all for naught if they aren't towing heavy loads (bigger than a trailer with ATVs, or other similar "boys" toys).

If blowing white smoke is a common event with a FFH under hard acceleration, maybe, someone should (if it's safe) pull out and pass one of these black smokers with full acceleration. The combination of smoke and rate of acceleration might cause surprise. It would be most effective from a complete stop with the added spinning tires.

Oddly, I've blown grey smoke from under the hood with my FFH the two times I have stomped on the gas to accelerate as fast as I could to get into traffic. Once was from a dead stop (yesterday, I even peeled rubber), and once was over a year ago when I was trying to merge when I was already doing 50mpg. Oh, the acceleration was way faster than I was expecting or needed (especially off the stop). The blowing smoke from under the hood has me kind of worried; I don't think it is normal.

I had to stomp on the gas with my FFH the other day to get into traffic. I had no idea that their acceleration from zero to 25 was so good. I wasn't expecting it and it threw me back in my seat and my foot came up from the gas pedal. None of my ICE cars ever came off a stop like that.

They are free to burn their money supporting the dinosaur recycling industry if they so choose. I suspect, however, that if they blow smoke at the wrong time and it is seen by a patrol officer in need of filling a monthly quota they'd be getting a quick citation for emissions. I could also see them being held criminally liable if in the process of blowing smoke they create a road hazard that causes an accident. Another reason I doubt I'll see the black smoke thing is that we just don't have the same redneck density as parts of Virginia.

From the cutting off nose to spite face department comes the ultimate in blowing smoke. It boils down to some owners of diesel pickups modifying them to blow black smoke on demand by means of dumping extra fuel into the engine. They then target drivers of hybrids with the smoke as a political statement against efforts to fight climate change via reducing CO2 emissions. Of course we're laughing all the way to the bank with the money we're not spending on fuel, while they cry about how much fuel costs when they fill up at the pump. http://www.businessinsider.com/conservatives-purposely-making-cars-spew-black-smoke-2014-7?google_editors_picks=true I intentionally avoided the rhetoric of conservative vs liberal used in the article, because it unfairly stereotypes all drivers of hybrids as tree hugging liberals and conservatives as highway trolls who are bent on being obnoxious to make a political point. I personally found the article interesting not for the politics but because of how obnoxious some people can be. I have not experienced this issue my self and I doubt FFH drivers in general will experience this. The FFH doesn't shout "hey I'm a hybrid" like the Prius and the FFH isn't a "foreign rice burner" as these trolls call "foreign" made cars thus we won't attract their attention (never mind most of these foreign jobs are made in the U.S. and our "domestic" FFH is actually made in Mexico).

I'm still not seeing many FFHs here in Maine. A couple of days ago a FFH Titanium (I think black if I remember correctly) passed me, but not before letting me out into the left lane to pass something else. I can't remember exactly why I had to go to the left lane.

How much do you typically put in your tank?

If I don't fill past first click, the amount of gas the pump says I put in and the amount the car thinks I used will usually be less than 1/2 gallon. When I fill up gets dictated by my commute. It is 100mi round trip and a prefer to fill up at on station near my home. Thus if DTE is less than 100 mi near home and I have to commute the next day I will fill up. If I'm at work and DTE is over 50mi then I'll wait to get home to fill up.

I've never been able to put in much more than 11.5gal myself and that would be after I went several miles past zero DTE. I track both the gallons that my FFH says I used and how much the gas pump says I put in. I also try to use the same pumps every time. What I have observed is that if I don't kick the pump after it kicks out the difference between what my FFH says I used and the amount the pump says I put in is much smaller. Over the long run, I've decreased the difference between what my FFH says I've used and how much I pump by no longer adding more after the first click. This makes me think that much of the extra gas I was putting in after the click was being lost.

Oddly enough, EV+ did kick in this morning as I neared work. Its the first time I've seen it come on when arriving at work for quite a while. I'm still parking in the same spot so I have no explanation as to what is going on.

A lot of ours are controlled in a similar fashion, but something I learned driving tour buses nearly 20 years ago still holds true for most any traffic light. The longer a light has been green the sooner it will turn red. With a MSL controlled light if a car pulls up on a cross street to a red light, there is a very high probability that your green light will quickly turn yellow and then red. If there is solid traffic in all directions, even an MSL controlled light will kick over into some form of timed light giving each direction their turn at green. How much green each direction will get will usually be some factor of typical traffic density in each direction. Being observant of what traffic lights are doing along with everything that the traffic around you is doing is instructive in being able to gauge if you will get caught by the traffic light anyways so you might as well let off the gas early. In a tour bus being observant in this way to traffic lights and surrounding traffic was this was the difference between having to stop short and possibly throw a passenger off their feet and providing a consistently smooth ride. In a hybrid it is the difference between mediocre MPG and stellar MPG.

Ours do goofy things like that as well, but their goofiness is predictable to a degree. For instance one light will always turn red before I get to it unless it is already red. If it is green I know I'll have to stop. If it is red and I time my slowdown right, I won't have to stop. A lot of our lights are controlled by cross traffic so I watch for that. If I see cross traffic waiting at the light I know they will turn red before I get to them if I'm X distance away from them. Other lights alternate flows of traffic in the same pattern every time so I know which direction will get green next. At one light, for instance, I make a right where I only have to yield to cross traffic. The right turn is kind of like an off ramp so I have a long approach and I can tell well in advance if I'll have to stop based on who has the green light at the time. When I time it right, I barely have to slow down.