1st owner, it was a courtesy car for a fairly large repair shop.

2nd owner, who I purchased it from, only had it 2 months, put 10,000 miles on it, apparently used it for some business traveling (also a company, not a private individual)

Yeah, you figure that out real quick first time you drive it when it is raining!!! When the brakes grabbed so hard and lurched us to a stop, I was sure there was something wrong, but came and searched the forums and read all about the wet brake syndrome

I was wondering about that too, but they don't seem excessively hot after driving. Not sure how to tell otherwise?

After reading all the info here, I went and purchased 5 qts of Mobil 1 (that makes me wonder, what do y'all do with the extra 1/2 quart? seems a shame to clutter a shelf for 15,000 miles waiting for the next oil change!)

Thanks again for the info!

 

I use 4.25 to 4.5 and put the rest on the shelf to wait for next oil change!
I check it every couple thousand miles, and at least I have some to add if need be.
Usually I don't need to add for first 10k... but since I go past 10k I sometimes do add a little between 12k and 15k.

Luckily, now I have two cars that use the same oil so it won't sit on the shelf long!
-John

 

No, not even a little bit. I'm closing in at 40K and have almost no wear at all on mine, and there are users who have gone 90 and 100K miles before needing their first brake pad replacement.

With smart braking and good driving skills, the brake pads can see almost no use in a day save for the little bit from 5 MPH to fully stopped, so being worn out by 30K indicates a lot of hard braking by the previous owner. In fact, outside of a mountainous region, I would be hard pressed to be able to wear the brakes out that fast.

This would certainly go a long way to explaining the previous owners disapointed milage though.

 

"...or you'll get 12 MPG later on down the road as your ICE runs..."

I'm new to owning an FEH too (2007). Not quite a rescue, as it was dealer owned, a 'demo-runabout'. Now, that quote, I was shocked at the 12mpg! Really shocked! Can the Escape's ICE, a little four banger 2.3 really get as bad as mileage as that! Even my big block truck with it's 5.9 V8 pushing a big camper van has to be pushed mighty hard to get that! You've got me going, "What have I bought into, a myth?!"

 

You would be hard pressed to have any long term average that low - It all depends on over how much time you are averaging your mpg. Going up a steep grade, with a low SOC (battery) and trying to keep at 75mph, yeah, you are going to be drinking the gas. But over the average of a tank, there are times when you are using NO GAS and still driving, or even have the ICE running but still making 60mpg because it is mostly down hill.... you average these together and you end up around 30mpg +/- (unless you really work at it, then apparently you can get a lot higher!)

 

Last night as we were EV-ing thru the local store parking lot, I started noticing this squeak squeak.... Surely not us I thought.... but it followed our speeds up and down. Reached down and pulled up the emergency brake and released it, and the squeak went away..... I guess I need to go back and read those threads about the sticking emergency brakes.

 

Well, did an oil change this am, definitely an easy vehicle to change, thanks to all the post here with all the filter / wrench / fluid specs. What I drained out was DIRTY - looks like a normal vehicle after 6000 miles (not good!). I had the engine nice and warm and let it drain out a good long time, so hopefully got most of the yuck out. 4.5 qts of Mobil 1 0-20W, new filter and seals, and hopefully we are good to go for a while.

 

As mentioned, that 12 MPG isn't for a long term, just for a few moments due to the combined drain of the ICE acting as a power generator to the HVB and to moving a SUV during acceleration. That isn't an average or a long term average, just that all ICE perform poorly when accelerating, and the ICE doesn't net good MPGs when recharging the battery, the combined act of doing both nets some pretty poor MPG as a result. Even when it does happen, it doesn't happen for long, and the times where you're getting 80 MPG or more when cruising or infinite when EVing more than balances those scarce moments out, and with wise power management, you can avoid those moments alltogether.

 

I have really seen good improvement lately by finding shorter routes on my commute and in getting my kids to their activities via shorter routes. I cut my commute from 15.5 to 12.3 one-way and my primary kids activity route from 12.5 to 7.9 one-way. Both routes involve more 30-45 miles per hour driving than the 50-60 miles per hour older routes and that naturally leads me to more EV which helps too. The funny thing is that both of these routes actually take less time than they did before, so that's an added bonus.

It took a little time and research with Google Maps to find the shortest routes and then I needed to understand the timing of the traffic lights, so that I would know when to coast farther or accelerate a little to "keep moving". The reward for this effort is that on a warm mornings I can get between 45-48 mpg on my commute and 42-44 mpg on my kids route (and I even had a 58.8 round trip starting with a warm engine and leveraging a tail wind on the way back).

My last two tanks have been 36.1 and 36.9 mpg, up from my average of 33.1, although I'm wondering how much of that is due to the warm air temperatures.

Good luck "reviving" your FEH and I hope this helps!
Rob

 

That is very encouraging. I showed my wife the "drag to re-route" feature on google maps, and she used it yesterday for her running around to optimize her route for streets we know we can do better mpg on (less traffic or better speed limits, etc). Her total trip ended up 2 miles longer (<5%), estimated time on google was essentially the same, and she was able to use her FE methods to gain back some of the lost mpg from my early am commute, which because the air temp was lower (50F) the FEH never warmed up all the way and I got a crummy mpg average for. I have got to get a SGii so I can start tracking the mpg per run better.