2014 Ford Flex Owner Manual Printing 1 - Page 326

Wheels and Tires 325 Note: Your all-wheel drive vehicle is not intended for off-road use. This feature gives your vehicle some limited off-road capabilities in which driving surfaces are relatively level, obstruction-free and otherwise similar to normal on-road driving conditions. Operating your vehicle under other than those conditions could subject the vehicle to excessive stress which might result in damage which is not covered under your warranty. With the all-wheel drive option, power will be delivered to the front wheels and distributed to the rear wheels as needed. This increases traction which may enable you to safely drive over terrain and road conditions that a conventional two-wheel drive vehicle cannot. The system is active all the time and requires no input from the operator. For all-wheel drive vehicles, a spare tire of a different size other than the tire provided should never be used. A dissimilar spare tire size (other than the spare tire provided) or major dissimilar tire sized between the front and rear axles could cause the system to stop functioning and default to front-wheel drive. How Your Vehicle Differs from Other Vehicles Crossover vehicles can differ from some other vehicles in a few noticeable ways. Your vehicle may be: • Higher - to allow higher load carrying capacity. • Shorter - to give it the capability to approach inclines. All other things held equal, a shorter wheelbase may make your vehicle quicker to respond to steering inputs than a vehicle with a longer wheelbase. • Narrower - to provide greater maneuverability in tight spaces. As a result of the above dimensional differences, crossover vehicles often will have a higher center of gravity and a greater difference in center of gravity between the loaded and unloaded condition. These differences that make your vehicle so versatile also make it handle differently than an ordinary passenger car. 2014 Flex (471) Owners Guide gf, 1st Printing, April 2013 USA (fus)