Car will not start

[kinshi]

It has been almost two weeks now and the car is still behaving, and I have but a lot of new miles on it since getting it back, along with multiple power on/off cycles and charge cycles on my home and public chargers, as well as having it unplugged all night at the hotel I stayed in last night.

My use pattern/commute tend to push the edge of max range. I make a 37+mile one way trip daily with it (it can get me home and back w/o a recharge in between, with about 15-18 miles range to spare. I was already a hyper-miler before I got this car, and that was an easy adaption to the EV. At any rate, I am not babying this car at all, its full use or nothing, as I am intent on keeping up normal use and seeing if the "bug" is truly flushed out or not, so I have been regularly testing my range limits, doing as much brake regen as I can, and then trying to squeeze out more, and at time running it down to <10 mile range left. My home charger is not even a L2 lol, I still use the included L1 charger for home, and public chargers as needed (I found a cpl convenient, free L2 Chargepoint stations that are on my commonly used routes, along with a Blink station.

So far so good. When I (if) hit a month of no issues I will update again.

 

[triangles]

Good to hear. Glad you got it back and all appears to be good. Maybe next time you'll be lucky enough to get a new bigger battery :lol:

 

[kinshi]

Well it almost a month since my last post, and the fix has held so far!

I have put nearly 2k more miles on my 2013, and a helluva lot of power on/off cycles, and various combos of home charging and public charge stations, and so far so good.

It would have been nice to have gotten the bigger battery pack for sure, but I have gotten really good at hyper-miling in this car, and get the most out of the braking, and have been pressing the range limit quite a bit. I won;t complain too much given I wound up with a new motor with zero miles on it, and still have 3-years left on the factory warranty.

I suppose the next milestone will be 3-months Ay any rate, I know the dealer is happy to NOT see my car parked outside their service bay anymore.

 

[triangles]

Thanks for letting us know. Glad your car is treating you well again. Sounds like you have 3 more years to root for a new battery.. :lol:

I just got my car back from the dealer for a 12V issue. Apparently my 3rd TCU has gone bad. TCU is no longer under warranty and it's not worth the money to fix it especially considering the last 2 only lasted about a year. So, no more TCU for me :-(

 

[scottt]

Thanks for letting us know. Glad your car is treating you well again. Sounds like you have 3 more years to root for a new battery.. :lol:

I just got my car back from the dealer for a 12V issue. Apparently my 3rd TCU has gone bad. TCU is no longer under warranty and it's not worth the money to fix it especially considering the last 2 only lasted about a year. So, no more TCU for me :-(

I'd contact Ford and explain the situation. Worst they can say is no.

I had a 2003 PT Cruiser. It was my Grandfathers. He only drove it 9300 miles in 3 years. The power steering pump failed just after I bought it from the estate. Fixing it required taking most of the front part of the car apart. Was going to be $1500+. I contacted Chrysler and explained the situation. A few days later they called back and said if I paid $150, they'd cover the rest.

So, a simple phone call saved me over $1350.

 

[triangles]

I plan to. I am just waiting a while to see if anything else is killing my 12V battery or if it was just the TCU.

 

[tinilk]

I got my car back on Tuesday after its 3rd dealer visit for the SSN problem. The first time was in January, the longest I've had the car since then was most of the month of June. After driving only the Volt for the past 2 months I really forgot how much more I like driving the FFE.

This time the dealer apparently didn't do anything to fix it -- I assume they re-seated the HV connectors and got the SSN / wrench messages to go away, then pretty much let it sit around on the lot and drove it occasionally to see if they could trigger another SSN instead of returning it to me. Which I don't mind, it's nice that they would rather hang onto it awhile instead of me being the unpaid road tester & guinea pig. But I don't think they drove it in heavy rain despite my suggestion that they need to do that. Driving in rain or snow is the consistent trigger that preceded every SSN that has happened on the car.

Kinshi, I don't understand why they would throw everything and the kitchen sink at your car and get it fixed, when mine has been in for repairs just as long as yours, but comparatively has only one little thing wrong. Water ingress at the rear HV battery connector. If they would just take that apart, clean up the corrosion and seal it up, problem solved. Ford sent out field engineers the last two times it was in the shop -- why the hell couldn't they simply walk the dealer's techs through how to permanently fix it and get Ford to reimburse the labor? Wouldn't that be cheaper than replacing the battery with a 33.5 kWh pack, or buying back the car from me? They're going to have to do one or the other in the end.

Meanwhile the forecast is dry the next 7 days so I can actually drive my favorite car for awhile.

 

[kinshi]

I got my car back on Tuesday after its 3rd dealer visit for the SSN problem. The first time was in January, the longest I've had the car since then was most of the month of June. After driving only the Volt for the past 2 months I really forgot how much more I like driving the FFE.

This time the dealer apparently didn't do anything to fix it -- I assume they re-seated the HV connectors and got the SSN / wrench messages to go away, then pretty much let it sit around on the lot and drove it occasionally to see if they could trigger another SSN instead of returning it to me. Which I don't mind, it's nice that they would rather hang onto it awhile instead of me being the unpaid road tester & guinea pig. But I don't think they drove it in heavy rain despite my suggestion that they need to do that. Driving in rain or snow is the consistent trigger that preceded every SSN that has happened on the car.

Kinshi, I don't understand why they would throw everything and the kitchen sink at your car and get it fixed, when mine has been in for repairs just as long as yours, but comparatively has only one little thing wrong. Water ingress at the rear HV battery connector. If they would just take that apart, clean up the corrosion and seal it up, problem solved. Ford sent out field engineers the last two times it was in the shop -- why the hell couldn't they simply walk the dealer's techs through how to permanently fix it and get Ford to reimburse the labor? Wouldn't that be cheaper than replacing the battery with a 33.5 kWh pack, or buying back the car from me? They're going to have to do one or the other in the end.

Meanwhile the forecast is dry the next 7 days so I can actually drive my favorite car for awhile.

Its been a while now and my 2013 Focus has remained "fixed"

In my case, I think my dealer had a lot to do with keeping Ford's attention, as they were on the phone regularly with the regional reps weekly, then almost daily bugging them for status updates, and my car was the primary topic of the service dept. weekly meetings for most of its time there. Im the end it took the Ford engineer coming out to re-program the TCM at a very low level that requires a level of access usually only available at the factory (seems that code is not part of whatever updates the sealer techs are able to re-flash themselves)

Anyway, my dealer really held Ford's feet to the fire over this, rather than doing what some dealers mention in this thread did (which was to punt and buy the car back or simply give up.not really put any effort into finding an answer). I am just glad I got this resolved while the 100k/8 year factory warranty on the 'hybrid' parts was still in effect, rather than trying to get my extended warranty provider to pay for it (whihc of course would fail anyway as this issue is only fixable by a Ford engineer), and glad I still have a lot of time left on that warranty still .

So I really have to give kudos to West Hills Ford of Bremerton, WA service department for staying on top of this and not letting Ford slack, and making it their mission to get this car working as well.It seemed to me like a matter of pride that they got this car working reliably, the concept of a "cant/wont fix" car seemed like it was simply not an option for them. I bought the car from them and they wound up really standing behind the sale, even absorbing loaner costs once Ford decided they were not going to cover it any more.

 

[carbuff]

Well, I never thought Id be posting in this thread again. My car is haunting me now. I just got a text message that the cars 12v battery was low and to plug it in. I had deleted the mfm app from my phone long ago. Last text I got from the car was from Nov, 2018. So, I went online to the mfm website and signed in. My car is in a junkyard in Parryville PA. I google earthed the location and its an LKQ facility. Its called Thruway Auto parts. The phone number is 6103770331. I read it off the sign on google earth. LOL. So if youre looking for brand new parts for a 2013 (minus the battery) just give them a call. LOL. Actually the battery was never diagnosed as being bad, and it held a good charge. Only had 10k on it. They never did narrow down where the problem was located. Other than that issue the car was a creampuff and worked great. New motor and sobdm among other things. Great body,new tires, mint interior, etc. Its that pearl white in case you need body parts to match. Probably the end of the road for the car, but who knows?

 

[kinshi]

Its almost a year now, and my 2013 FFE is still "fixed", and over 50k miles on it now. I think it is more than safe to say they figured it out, though thank heavens for the 8 year/100k mile warranty that took care of all the craziness that it required to make the car work right. (and the extended warranty purchase that also covers the "hybrid" parts.)

Anyway, its been a solid runner, starting to see a wee bit of battery degradation, usually only able to get the battery up to 72 miles instead of 76, big whoop.

I do occasionally still hit an issue others have reported, finding their 12v battery inexplicably dead. It does not happen to me often, but I did two things to mitigate, 1) I replaced the crappy Motorcraft battery with a deep cycle replacement 2) I bought a 12v Lithium battery jump-starter from Costco. (when this happens, just have to get the car powered on, then it will start charging from the main battery)

I thought about bringing it into the dealer to try and fix, but its such a spotty issue, I know I would probably take them forever again to hit the issue, let alone get an error code they can follow up on, and I am not eager to repeat all that again. The portable jump start battery has served me well the couple times I have needed it.

 

[triangles]

Pull your F1 fuse and 99% likely you will never have another 12V issue. Ford's TCU us garbage!

 

[kinshi]

Been a while, thought I would update...

Still going with the same 2013 FFE, up to 55k miles. and I have not had the 12v issue in months now (seems to have gone away on its own), and the original "Won't start" issue has remained fixed as well.

I still mostly use the convenience cord for home charging, and its likely been helping preserve battery life, as I have yet to witness any battery degradation (still holds full charge)

 

[tinilk]

Still going with the same 2013 FFE, up to 55k miles. and I have not had the 12v issue in months now (seems to have gone away on its own)

Glad to hear no more problems with your 12v! The 12v on mine was dead a couple weeks ago after sitting for a week without driving. I'm guessing some module or other didn't shut down properly. After charging it up with my old Sears charger it was still at 12.8 volts a couple days later, so maybe it'll be ok.

Besides that my 2014 is still going strong at almost 75k miles. It's been 17 months since the remanufactured 23 kWh pack was installed, no yellow wrenches or SSNs since.

I'm taking it to the dealer this week to see if they can fix the horn, which intermittently hasn't worked in the past (I suspect dirty or corroded contacts). This time I haven't been able to get it to work again by just pushing the horn button a bunch of times.