@kckyle thanks for the reply. Yes, I've never run dedicated snow tires for a multitude of reasons. The main ones being the actual amount of days in Iowa with snow/ice on the majority of the roads in the DSM metro is very few. Maybe a few weeks out of the winter season normally. I seek out All Season tires with good winter/snow ratings and they are sufficient for my needs and I can run them year round. But having bad rated all season tires in the winter can be terrible. I've experinced that a few times in my younger days. Plus I don't have to store a full extra set of wheels/tires somewhere.
Gas milage
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Yeah, I had that debate myself, living three hours south of you in KC. On our AWD Mazda CX-5 and our previous Ford Flex AWD, we just stuck with all-seasons. Decided to do the winter tires on this one since it's just FWD and we've got a 4 year old/4 month old so being extra cautious.
@kckyle we actually had a Ford Flex we traded in on our Carnival last fall. We ran all seasons on that (good winter ratings), but it was AWD as well. I grew up on FWD vehicles and my wife has had quite a few in the past. Honestly we would have preferred AWD on the Carnival, but you can't get it that way. We don't live in a hilly area, so shouldn't have any issues. Now if we did live in a hilly area, or on a gravel road, that probably would have swayed us to dedicated snow tires.
Loved our Flex and miss it. Needed those sliding doors but wish Ford still made a van too!
Oh the sliding door are awesome! Especially for daycare drop off and pick up. Also, the Carnival gets waaaay better gas mileage than the Flex did. We'd get maybe 16-17 mpg in combined driving and maybe 21 on the highway. Also, having to replace the water pumps on the Ford 3.5 (internal pump) is stupid expensive. Ours was around like $2300 or something. And the backup camera would work sporadically (known issue). Also had the heater core issue where at idle, there was no heat (Also known issue). Only way to fix is to replace the core ($1800). Ugh
Interesting - I averaged 18.9 with our Flex (EcoBoost motor too, not the N/A one) and am averaging 21.8 with the Carnival in the first 10k miles, of which 80% is probably highway. Only major issue we had in 70k miles with the Flex was the shifter/front control module went bad, which was a 3k repair thankfully covered by our extended warranty.
It was for sure. I am just perplexed how I got better Flex mileage than you, driving the thirstier motor, but your Carnival mileage is so much better than mine. Assuming we both drove both cars similarly, that makes no sense. Ha!
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I was driving around 65 mph. Mostly flat roads. On base trim. I saw it hit 32 mpg at some stretches. Drove mostly in eco mode and I tend to drive very smoothly much of it on cruise control.
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