LT Focus Coupe-Cabriolet Issues

[brettr_focus]

Ford Focus Issues

I bought the '08 Ford Focus Cabriolet for my wife about 6 months ago. It was one owner, low kms, as new condition. It has been plagued by a number of issues since we took ownership and have not had much luck getting them solved, we've been to three Ford Dealers thus far. Has anyone else experienced these issues in their Focus Cabrio (or even hatch or sedan)?

1) Air conditioner: will just turn itself off and you will need to manually turn it back on. One of the dealers we went to just topped up the gas and says that the a/c is working fine.

2) Automatic transmission: Coming up to a stop the trans is changing down gears and when it changes into first the change is quite harsh and jolts the whole car. Sometimes when stopped on an incline and you go to take off and the car just starts rolling backwards and when you try and accelerate away the car will jerk around, like the torque converter is slipping, before you start moving forwards.

The first dealer we went to said that there is nothing wrong with the transmission. The second dealer has experienced this behaviour and says the car rolling backwards is not normal and a definitely safety issue. We got sent to a third dealer who says that the rolling backwards issue is normal, but they did not experience jerking around it sometimes does.

3) Cruise control: say cruise control speed is set to 110km/h (state limit in WA) and you press resume at about 80km/h. The cruise control will drop the transmission back to third gear and you speed up to 100km/h then it changes up to fourth gear. Then it will drop back to third and back up to fourth, and it does this about 4 - 5 times from 100km/h until the car reaches 110km/h. The car jerks around a bit whilst it is changing down - up - down - up - etc

The last two dealers have experienced the car do this. The last dealer we went to says that the Cabrio has the same cruise control calibration as the sedan and hatch, and the extra weight of the Cabrio is the cause of the issue. They also say that Ford are unlikely fix it. We live in the country and do 110km/h daily, so this behaviour is a pain.

Does anyone have any experiences of other Focus models with these issues?

So here we are with three issues with the vehicle, and my wife is losing confidence in driving it. I don't want to trade the car because I will probably lose $10k for the 6 months we have had it. It's a sweet little car and it would be a shame to have to get rid of it. I will now be contacting Ford Customer Relations directly so wish me luck.

[leakey]

1/. sounds like a thermostat issue. I'm assuming your talking about when the roof is up?

2/. The 1st gear clunk is common, and fixable. Have a dig through previous posts. Very common. The rolling back not sure about? I had a torana with a trimatic that did that!!!! but they are poles apart. The jerking is related to the clunk. Its in the programming of your computer. This needs to be updated.

Here's one - http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?t=11280622


3/. I would hazard a guess that this issue is related to issue 1/.

If the car did not have these issues, it'd be a great car! Try to keep it and get it sorted, and enjoy it. $10K is a lot to lose over relatively minor issues. All that look like they can be sorted.

But do a search on the first gear clunk thing. Plenty of posts on that and other people's experiences. You can print them out and go armed with information. If anything, that should embarrass the heck out of the dealer that you had to do the leg work. Mention you'll pass that around the local as a bit of a yarn...

Good luck with it. I'm no expert BTW. Just what I recall reading around here.

PS - I recall another Cabrio owner with similar issues, and then some. Look that up too.

[DZFord]

Originally Posted by brettr_focus

2) Automatic transmission: Coming up to a stop the trans is changing down gears and when it changes into first the change is quite harsh and jolts the whole car.

This is a very common problem, read the following thread and you will see many others are having the same experience: http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?t=11251888

I wouldn't go so far to say that it is fixable. It looks like only some people, in some states have had a PCU update applied to their Focus, which just modifies the downshift point.

I personally had my auto trans rebuilt twice under warranty, as Ford tried to find a fix for this problem.

[leakey]

Apologies Brettr if I gave the impression all issues could be fixed. "Some" of them can be, as spelled out in quite a few threads. But have a read, and note what dealers had success too.