Ford C-MAX - New Grand C-Max 1.6TDCi - poor performance

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Sat 7 Jan 2012 10:23
Ford C-MAX - New Grand C-Max 1.6TDCi - poor performance - Ravenger

I bought a new 1.6 TDCi 115 Grand C-Max a week ago, and the performance is extremely poor compared to my old 1.8 TDCi C-Max.

1st gear is extremely short, with huge turbo lag. It's very difficult to get going smoothly. It seems to have an extremely narrow rev range - below 2000 revs it has no pull at all. 2nd Gear is not much better, and 3rd gets bogged down very easily. It makes driving up hills and getting out of junctions very tricky. On the whole it feels laggy and unresponsive, like the car is deliberately holding back. I realise the Grand is a bigger, heavier car than my old C-Max, but I would have thought performance should be better than this.

It has improved somewhat over the last week (350 miles done) - maybe due to me getting used to the very short 1st gear, and maybe due to the engine loosening up.

I see that some other owners of the new 1.6TDCi engined Fords have complained of similar issues. I'm wondering if this is just the way these new diesels drive due to the emissions regs, or if there is something wrong with the car. Anyone else experienced anything like it?

I'm going to go back to the dealer today to express my concerns, and shall be contacting Ford to do the same.

Edited by Ravenger on 07/01/2012 at 10:23

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Sat 7 Jan 2012 10:48
Ford C-MAX - New Grand C-Max 1.6TDCi - poor performance - thunderbird

We had a 55 plate 1.6 TDCi C-Max for 5 happy years, excellent car never had a problem, other than servicing and tyres only part we replaced was the alternator belt which stated to crack. When the new model was imminent the old model was available with huge discounts thus we decided to get one. Fortunately we decided to try them to make sure that drove the same. 1.6TDCi was poor compared to ours, easy to stall with no power until you were in 2nd, dangerous out of juctions. 1.8TDCI was exactly the same. Offered a huge deal on a S-Max, guess what, exactly the same again. In comparrison our 5 year old car felt like a greyhound out of the traps. Concluded it was a modern Ford thing and bought elsewhere. Its well documented on the C-Max forum.

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Sat 7 Jan 2012 14:31
Ford C-MAX - New Grand C-Max 1.6TDCi - poor performance - MikeTorque

I've driven a new Ford Focus mk3 TDCi 115 and it was reasonably responsive in 1st gear, it didn't fly off from a standing start like a 2.0 TDCi does but it didn't get bogged down either. The C-Max being a slightly heavier car would I suspect be slightly slower off the mark from a standing start.

New diesel engines are tight until they have a few thousand miles on the clock. Our 1.8 TDCi Focus mk2 use to be dreadful when trying to drive off, trying to stall/cut out at every opportunity until it had over 15k miles on the clock, then it became somewhat more friendly but it still had a tendency to try to bog down at low revs ((i.e. 1000rpm) and stall given the half the chance.

I find the 1.6 TDCi more friendly at low revs than the 1.8 TDCi, whereas the 2.0 TDCi is easily the most driver friendly and is a dream to drive although it does drink more fuel.

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Sat 7 Jan 2012 21:30
Ford C-MAX - New Grand C-Max 1.6TDCi - poor performance - gordonbennet

Was the demonstrator as bad as this one?

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Wed 12 Feb 2014 21:56
Ford C-MAX - New Grand C-Max 1.6TDCi - poor performance - TVman

Get the engine "chipped" or remapped.

I had the same issue with my Ford TDCi and after a remap by Superchips it was transformed (there are others who will also do it, but this one comes with a handset so you can restore the normal settings, say when taking the vehicle for a service)

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Thu 13 Feb 2014 06:39
Ford C-MAX - New Grand C-Max 1.6TDCi - poor performance - madf

Drive at least 2,000 miles.

It's brand new....

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