help needed ASAP!!!

Hi all i was out and about last night when randomly the speedometer in my focus just stopped working. Ive just took it round the block again this morning and its still not working. Any ideas on whats happened to it or how to fix it.

cheers
Ben

could have came out of the back of the speedo mate, take the clocks out and make sure its all tight..

only other things cable could of snapped OR came out the other end

what he said ^^

ben, it'll be the VSS sensor. a very common fault on mk1 foci

well i say that but i also remember something else, watchdog did a episode about the instrument cluster, and in the end ford gave in and will replace it for £99.

But this is only applies for certain ages, what reg/age is yours?

mines a W reg mate. wheres the best place to get it sorted out you reckon

cheers
ben

depends, give me a few minutes and i'll try and find a diagnosis of whether it is the VSS or the cluster

But if its the VSS almost any garage will do it for around £40-£60 (£23 parts, 1/2hour labour)

But if cluster you need to go to a ford garage and they will do it for £99 rather than £450 or so

This is what watchdog said, but im still waiting on confirmation to diagnose if yours is the cluster or VSS

Watchdog wrote: 14 April 2008
We have received dozens of complaints from you saying all the dials on the dashboard of your Ford Focus have failed. Smita Patel got in touch with Watchdog when it happened to her in 2007. She was terrified when her dials froze while she was driving on the motorway.

Driving without a working speedometer is against the law, unless it's just happened and you're making your way home or to a garage. You could even be fined £1,000.

Our experts told us that the problem is with the instrument cluster, which is failing because the printer circuit board fitted behind it can corrode over time. Our research suggests it only occurs on the 130,000 Mark I Focus cars made in 2003. Newer models have a modified circuit board.

Ford dealers tell customers the whole cluster needs to be replaced, at a cost of £350 to £500. Automotive engineer Mark Brown thinks these dealers could charge less by supplying the circuit board separately at a cost of £60 to £100 instead of over £300.

Ford claims it knows nothing about this design fault and it has written to its customers to say that: "there are no known concerns with the instrument cluster". But its own dealers aren't saying the same thing. When we visited three Ford dealerships in London, two of them were familiar with the fault and had fixed several recently.

There could be an even cheaper way to fix the fault, with a contact spray like WD40. This is what Matt Skinner used when his instrument cluster failed. He found the solution on the internet. Four months on and Matt's car's working fine, though engineer Mark Brown says this remedy is unlikely to fix the problem permanently.

The Ford Focus isn't the first car to have a problem with its instrument cluster. On Watchdog in 2004, we highlighted a similar issue with the Audi TT. Audi admitted there was a problem and replaced many of the faulty parts for free. Mark Brown thinks Ford should do the same because the part should last the life of the car. He says the company has a "moral responsibility to fix them under an extended warranty or at least to bring the cost of the repair down".

Ford says it's grateful to us for bringing this to its attention. Although it had heard from around 120 drivers about this fault, that information seemed isolated and didn't suggest the issue could be more widespread. The company doesn't think it's a safety issue, but agrees it's unsettling, and needs to be fixed urgently. The company says the new information provided by Watchdog will help it pin down the cause of the problem, so it can work out a permanent repair. It'll be announcing a plan for that as soon as possible. And Ford has reiterated that it's only Mark One Focus cars from 2003 or earlier that can be affected.

If you have been affected by this fault you can use our letter template to write to Ford.

I can't comment on the symptoms of cluster failure but, in my experience, the symptoms of a failing vss include speedo dropping to zero for anything from a few seconds to a many minutes, occasionally followed by the odometer reading -/--/-- and occasionally a total loss of power.

My car would not always exhibit all of those symptoms, but they'd always be in that order. Changing the vss solved my problems.

I'm guessing that getting a new vss will be cheaper than getting a new cluster fitted, but isn't there a quick-fix for the cluster that involves spraying WD-40 on the back of the cluster panel to get rid of moisture ? Don't quote me on that though - you better look that up first.

my odometer was reading that aswell last night after a while. looks like its the vss then. il av to av a ring about and see who does it the cheapest. thanks for the help slacker

cheers
ben