What's going on here...

Amleto

Amleto

Amleto

Soldato
Joined
13 Feb 2003
Posts
6,158
edit: This is 'old'. Follow-on thread here.


Wife's 07 focus has issues (apologies in advance for long post, there is a TLDR VVV):

Problems Start
Car started intermittently going into limp mode. Happened ~ twice in one month. Went away and drove normally after restarting. Then the engine management light started to come on with it, and often when changing gears the needles on the dash would drop and then a bunch more lights would flash on momentarily. Limp mode come on every journey...

First Fix
Sent to garage, they did 1hr labour 'diagnosing' and checking connections. It's "fixed"...

Still Problems... Try new battery
Next day the problems came back, car back to garage. They say could be battery or dash cluster, so we start with the battery.

New Battery didn't help, Dash Console looks dodgy...
Get the car back, and also the problem is still there - car goes into limp mode. Car goes back to garage and they say the console is definitely faulty, needs replacing.

They send to Ford to do it.

Lets Put a Mismatching Console in...
Car comes back with wrong console in! Missing trip computer features like mpg, temperature, miles to empty, making a whole control stalk nearly redundant. Hasn't fixed the problem either.

Lets Not...
Car is returned to put the correct console in. They keep the car for testing after the (2nd) console replacement (FOC), but problem is still there! I double check here that they can't just put the original console back in - they say there is definitely something wrong with it and cite some error codes on the paperwork.

OK, Must be ECU
Since problem is still present garage say it must be ECU, should be about £600 - they will check and get back to me. They phone saying it will be more like £1000 for the ECU, but wait, there is a company who do ECU rebuilds for about £200. I say lets do the rebuild

It's not the ECU
Garage ship the parts over to the other company - ECU rebuild company turn around and say there is nothing wrong at all, here's your stuff back, £60 please.

So from being 'this close' to buying a new ECU because it MUST be the ECU that's faulty for £600-£1000, to now being told there is nothing wrong with the ECU, and there is a £60 bill for no work (from my perspective), I don't know whether to be happy or not!

Should I even be thinking about arguing about the £60? What else could be wrong with the car!?!?

(I've asked them about 6 times about the throttle body/throttle body loom since that looked like common issue according to my searches)


TLDR:
garage tells me there must be something wrong with the ECU. ECU is sent away for a rebuild, but is returned as-is because no fault was found, with a bill for £60.

1) Who pays the bill - garage or me?
2) After changing battery, dash console and checking all connections, what else could cause limp mode?
 
Last edited:
Sounds like a terrible garage.

I would probably have a strop and say you are not happy paying, but i wouldn't waste too much energy on it.
 
What engine does this Focus have? Would make it slightly easier to suggest things...
 
What engine?
What fault codes?

From your description it sounds electrical. I bet it's throwing multiple codes that don't make much sense. I'm thinking you've got a bad earth or one of the block connectors has worked loose.

It needs a proper diagnostic machine on it reading live data when it goes in to limp mode.
 
general question, if they don't fix it, do customers still have to pay for the work done? it could be endless with bills rising, makes me nervous going to garages
 
Until you have actually tried a Known Working ECU, you haven't moved forward.
This is an intermittent problem, therefore there is no way the rebuild company can be sure that the ECU was working consistently.

This is why Electronic Repair Technicians often have a stock of known working PCA's, so they can prove that PCA XYZ is not the source of the problem.

Also, that garage appears to know nothing about the basics of fault finding, go elsewhere.
 
Take it to an auto electrician. I had a similar problem, it turned out to be a problem with one of the 5 volt feeds to the pedal. Joining the two together fixed the issue.
 
What's going on is you have taken it to a bunch of clueless clustermonkeys.
I'd be asking for car back and refund of anything you've paid so far.

Diagnosis
Fault find
PROVE THE FAULT
Fix the fault
Return to customer.
 
When a garage says "The ecu has had it", what they really mean is: "Whe don't have a ******* clue and will keep guessing at parts".
 
Last edited:
Precisely that /\
It's very VERY rare that solid state parts like that pack up, or when they do there is usually an underlying cause
 
blueboy2001 said:
What engine?
What fault codes?

From your description it sounds electrical. I bet it's throwing multiple codes that don't make much sense. I'm thinking you've got a bad earth or one of the block connectors has worked loose.

It needs a proper diagnostic machine on it reading live data when it goes in to limp mode.
Click to expand...

They've done that - drove the car around until the codes came up so they could investigate with 'live' codes.
 
update: Garage got an 'expert' from some where. Mentioned the term 'master tech'.

They are now 100% that the clutch cable is pulling on something connected to the ecu loom so the problem is a loose connection somewhere. He says the dash has been out before - it's not fitting properly atm and asked if we'd ever changed the windscreen.

He advised that depending on the type of connection problem, new loom would be needed at ~ £800 (presumably + labour + VAT).

Thinking I'd be better off just selling it. I really need to check the evidence for the fault on the cluster that was replaced as well. I'm not convinced that there is any fault there.
 
They are now 100% that the clutch cable is pulling on something connected to the ecu loom so the problem is a loose connection somewhere. He says the dash has been out before - it's not fitting properly atm and asked if we'd ever changed the windscreen.
Click to expand...

Yeah.. by Ford when they fitted the console(s)!

I doubt it's going to need a whole new loom, any competent auto-electrician should be able to repair a loom that's had a cable pulling on it.
 
Hang on a minute - clutch cable?? What clutch cable? Your car has a hydraulic clutch!

The garage sound like a bunch of jokers. Get it in writing and take them to the small claims courts.
 
I remember seeing a fault similar to this on a Mk1 Focus and the problem turned out to be that the negative terminal on the battery was not the best and it could not be seen and it needed the connector to be removed and re-fitted as taking it off the terminal did not cure the fault.

Your car definitely sounds like a fault with an earth that is throwing up all sort of error codes, so more than likely a good auto electrician could find the problem earth and cure it quite easily and probably would be not that bad in price to run a new earth from the problem part.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom