Goodbye to Ford Focus

Hi all,

Yes, after some consideration I've decided to get trade in the Focus. It's not been too bad, but leaking battery at 3 years old and the MOT showing it was burning fuel, did send off some alarm bells about longevity of keeping it, coupled with recently a strange screeching noise when on full lock only to not be able to duplicate it so slight concern there also, not sure if it will come back or not. Also, car is now approx. 3.5 years old and still not too sure about the wet belt issues as lots people online suggest replacing year 4 or 5 and I certainly didn't want to start paying for that.

Other than above, it has been fine, done what it needed to, I just had reservations about potential bills on running costs as just had a feeling there was something wrong with it and didn't want large repair bills.

Existing Focus has done 24,446.4 miles at time of parking it up at the dealership.

So decision became what to replace it with. In the end I opted for another Focus but the newer shape with the petrol 155 mild hybrid engine as opposed to 125 petrol. This car is the newer shaped Focus and slightly more powerful engine and with the new sync 4 system (mine was the sync 3). Now comes the interesting part... Spec'd a car up on local dealers site, went down there and it seems now Fords are no longer doing leather & Elec front seats, all cars being ordered now are cloth seats and manual. So they then advised they had a car in the group with driver assistance pack only (no parking pack) but had leather & Elec seats and there is a company they use to fit OEM/original rear cameras that I can get it fitted after. Or I ordered a new car but would be cloth & manual seats. So after some deliberating, I decided to go with car that was in the group. So finance all sorted, signed etc, insurance all set to go live today when collected.

Yesterday get a call, Car has been delivered to them and he just looked round it and it seems all cars are now cloth and manual seats..... hmmm rather disappointed but I've also now geared to wards changing the car today... so left it at that, had a thought whilst at work and phoned back when i could and checked it still had parking sensors as otherwise no point getting the rear camera fitted, fortunately it did so after questioning if any money off, nothing was forth coming so thought well at least car is new, better engine, has warranty so no big expenses in next 3 years so I'll go with it as I'm now all set on the new car.

So go down there today, guy showed us the car and it has cloth seats and electric seats! no idea why he didn't advise this yesterday, clearly never opened the door just looked in..

So fortunately not as bad as could have been in terms of disappointment as tbh I'm not too fussed about leather seats, it was the electric I'd prefer.

So car is now with me, at home. Now in contact with a company to get the rear camera OEM/Original fitted, just waiting to hear when they can do it.

Not taken any pics of my car but it looks identical to this one I found online:-


Kev

 

Nice looking car that, great colour and wheel combo. Hope this one is a good one for you.

The dealer sounds utterly clueless to me, says it has leather/electric then turns up with cloth!

 

Good luck with the new car. It looks great

 

Thanks all. Yes, it seems the spec that they are viewing is different to what Fords actually fitting. I presume this is due to them stopping to make the Focus in Nov this year.

Fingers crossed this one is trouble free

Kev

 

Thanks @Spuffington

Kev

 

Nice Focus - good colour.

 

Update
Had rear camera fitted last weekend, was expecting the guy to msg to say can we re-arrange as was raining but nope, turned up as planned and fitted it in the rain.... Was expecting some kind of cover to be erected but nope and then came the part where I started to think maybe I've made the wrong decision here.... He opened the boot, took all the tri off, then went to the front and effectively removed the display screen, centre vents, glove box, trims, gear box leaver cover, trim on side of the foot wells - I was thinking wasn't expecting this, I was expecting it to simply plug in somewhere at the back.....

Fortunately it has all gone back ok and more importantly, the rear camera now works and has the 3 options, rear camera view, zoom and the other one which gives a bit of a wider view with 2 black lines to effective give left rear side , straight rear and right side view.

TBH i only ever use the standard view that comes on but good to have options.

Now done just over 300 miles in it.

Got service plan now sorted, the effectively transferred money I've already paid to the new service plan and that effectively has reduced my monthly payments so all good there. I'm covered for services/checks/mot's until 2029.

Kev

 

Update on the car...

So have now done just over 6k miles and I have noticed that if I leave the car for 3 days unused, i get a remote features disabled message in the Ford app and when i get in the car, I'm greeting with a 12v battery low message. I had got this once or twice before i.e. when off on holiday and not using the car or at xmas time etc but I didn't think too much of it as once I drove the car, I never got the message. However, since May I'm no longer using the car for work on daily basis, maybe use it the odd day here and there but nothing regular and now I get it every time I get in the car, I basically have to take it out for 2 hours at reasonable speeds only for it to last 3 days and then complain again. I've taken the car in for its convenance check that Ford do after 1 year old and told them and I've been advised to use the car more and for longer periods of time. I did advise I can drive it for 4hrs and then not use it for 3 days and it will complain of which I was told the modern cars tend to use the battery more and drain it.... at this point I advised my Dad has the same car and his can sit for a week or so and no battery messages like mine but nothing. They have done a battery test and it passed so its all good.

I did even advised that previous cars I'd left 3 weeks not being used and no issued but I might as well of talked to a brick wall as they were not interested. So basically I can either connect it up to a battery charger or I need to drive it more and for longer.... to which basically implies I got to go drive the car every day just to avoid getting the alerts? I been on a ford forum and they suggest getting a 75amp battery fitted and changing the charge from 80 to 90 or 95% and then you get no more alerts. However why Fords are not fixing this by fitting these batteries must be purely down to cost I'm not keen to pay for the battery as this should be what Fords do to fix it not me and tbh i'm not sure i'll be keeping the car.

Kev

 

That doesn’t sound right to me. Surely a fault on the supplied battery if it can’t hold charge for those lengths of time.

 

Agree it doesn’t sound right. I leave my M5 one or two weeks in my garage with no battery charger connected and never get any messages. I used to get a message which when investigated revealed it had had a tracker installed. I had that disabled and never had a problem since.

Maybe related to your rear camera installation? It does sound like a parasitic drain somewhere.

 

Thanks all, I agree doesn't sound right but was told the modern cars can't be left, they need to be used as they drain the battery more. However, they not doing anything about it so will see how it goes now. If not, will be reporting it again and see what they say. Lots of people on the ford forum I'm on have said the same thing, they cannot leave there car for long before it complains. Some have gone as far as having Ford turn off all remote features so the car isn't communicating with anything but the most common fix seems to be to fit a 75amp battery and change the amount of charge the battery can take to 90/95% from the default 80% that Fords set it to and I believe Fords provide a 65amp battery as standard. However at a cost of around £180- £200, I'm not overly keen to do this myself, I'd sooner Fords acknowledge this as a issue and fit the 75amp battery and not the 65amp battery and set the charging to the 90/95% instead of 80% but I suspect when the car goes in each time, they will no doubt reset it back to 80% again.

The car so far has started every time but does show the red box saying 12v battery low on dash every time I start it so whilst it obviously still has sufficient charge to start the car, its a concern as will it continue to start or will it just fail to start one day.

Will see how it goes but not overly impressed so far, only good thing was no charge as I have a service plan and car under warranty. I've been looking and seems some other complains regarding 12v battery low messages on other makes so maybe this is a thing with newer cars if manufacturers are not fitting suitable sizes batteries to compensate for the additional battery usage with modern cars and fitting lower size batteries to save cost?

Kev