
Ford knew Focus, Fiesta models had flawed transmission, sold them anyway - aaronarduino
https://www.freep.com/in-depth/money/cars/ford/2019/07/11/ford-focus-fiesta-transmission-defect/1671198001/
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Knight0fNever
I drive a 2013 Ford Focus and have had the transmission serviced twice in the
26k miles its been driven. There's at least a 1-2 second delay in acceleration
lag when I need to accelerate quickly; and it's gotten to the point where I
consciously try to avoid those situations. I guess it has made me a more
cautious driver, if I want to look on the bright side.

Luckily, I've never had it slip into neutral on the highway or randomly
accelerate, but I have had it refuse to shift into a higher gear while getting
onto the freeway. The issue would only resolve once I pulled to the side of
the road and completely turned off the car and started it back up.

Definitely going to replace the car once it's paid off in January.

~~~
aaronarduino
I owned a 2013 Ford Focus as well. In the nine months of ownership, the
transmission was replaced twice. Every transmission worked fairly well and
then after about a month would start to stutter on acceleration and
acceleration would lag then accelerate quickly startling me.

I was so glad to get rid of that car.

~~~
jaclaz
Cannot say if it is exactly the same issue, but it seems that the Ford
mechanics (at least here) are not trained to repair them and are not even
capable of finding what the actual "root" issue is.

Additionally it seems that Ford has not found a good procedure to revive the
transmission (i.e. new or rehauled transmission fail the same way).

A number of out-of-warranty cars (not that having Ford do anything effective
within the warranty period is in any way easy) here in Italy (Focus and S-Max)
have been seemingly recovered by using a special procedure to wash/clean the
transmission of the old fluid, put in new "special" one + additives (and
replace the filter) , then there is the need (via ODB2) to reset/calibrate the
gearbox electronics.

The same or similar issue affects/affected also the DSG-7 gearbox mounted on
many VW's/small Audi's (and Sjoda's/Seat's).

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mikestew
Subtitle: "The carmaker says that it's not a safety problem if your car slips
into neutral on the highway."

It might not be a safety issue (and of course it is, who do you think you're
kidding?), but it's illegal in the two states for which I've looked it up (my
home state of IN, and current residence of WA). Here's WA's law:
[https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=46.61.630](https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=46.61.630)

~~~
cr0sh
Reread that law - it applies to downgrades (which makes sense - engine braking
to limit speed going downhill).

On the flat, going into neutral - while if it happens unexpectedly can be
cause for concern (as you'll be rapidly slowing down due to wind resistance),
it shouldn't harm drivability, braking, or steering.

Any issue with safety at that point would be on the driver in control of the
vehicle, imho.

~~~
nudiustertian
Why is rapidly decelerating on the highway not a safety risk? Pileups happen
because of this

~~~
mrguyorama
A car slowing down from wind resistance will not be slowing down more rapidly
than the car behind it can use friction brakes

~~~
zaroth
There are documented accidents where this happened and the car was then rear-
ended.

Speed differential kills on the highway. Loss of ability to accelerate can
quickly get you in a dangerous situation where it’s very hard to get to the
break-down lane, for example, if you are in a middle lane and traffic is
passing on the right and left as you continue to lose more and more speed, now
people are swerving to get aronund you, etc.

Ford knew this was dangerous. Their own legal team rated it as a “FMEA
severity 10” fault which is the highest severity fault which “effects safe
vehicle operation and involves non-compliance with government regulation
without warning.” [1]

[1] - [https://accendoreliability.com/understanding-fmea-
severity-p...](https://accendoreliability.com/understanding-fmea-severity-
part-1/)

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zaroth
This is a great peace of reporting. The amount of research and investigation
put into this, the interviews with insiders, the look inside the engineering
process, internal company emails, etc.

It shines an extraordinary light onto this catastrophic failure. And in this
case, truly, the engineers do not come out looking good at all.

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opwieurposiu
This pdf has pictures of the guts of this transmision:

[https://atracom.blob.core.windows.net/webinars/ford/dps6_int...](https://atracom.blob.core.windows.net/webinars/ford/dps6_internal_operation.pdf)

I drive a stick, but recently I have been driving my moms's automatic subaru
and it has a really nice crawl feature for steep dirt roads. You put the car
in x-mode, take your foot off the gas and the car will maintain the speed you
are at regardless of changes in grade or traction. You can adjust the speed
with momentary application of brake and gas pedals. The computer controls
throttle and brakes on each individual wheel, you can hear the ABS on downhill
grades. Anyway it was the first automatic I have driven that worked well
enough to be better then a stick for my use cases.

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gm_fan_boi
GM declined to use a dry clutch DCT in their performance vehicles for this
very reason. GM was able to anticipate this problem, you need to have a wet
DCT to avoid these problems. When you have a dry clutch manual transmission
the human leg compensates for the variability in the driving conditions that
ford wants the computer to handle. A torque converter is much more reliable in
these types of vehicles.

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tomatotomato37
The implied cause of the T-bone accident in the article is wrong; a
transmission slipping into gear while stopped would stall a small idling
engine like what would be in a Focus. That would be the throttle body issue,
which in my opinion should have been the focus of the article over crap
transmissions

Edit: better article - [https://www.ncconsumer.org/news-articles/nhtsa-opens-
investi...](https://www.ncconsumer.org/news-articles/nhtsa-opens-
investigation-into-2005-2012-ford-escape-vehicles-following-petition-from-
nccc.html)

~~~
mywittyname
I disagree. The transmission in the Focus/Fiesta fails to apply clutch torque
correctly pretty often. This problem is especially noticeable at low speeds.
Clutch engagement failure would not cause a stall, since the engine would just
spin freely in neutral the entire time, burning up the clutch and causing it
to engage even less.

It only takes an hour behind the wheel of one of these to realize that Ford
knowingly sold a poorly designed, dangerous product to customers. People don't
realize how bad these are until they actually drive them. All lawyers would
have to do to win a class-action against Ford for this would be to let the
jury take one of these home for the night, they will come back the next day
with a unanimous guilty verdict.

~~~
Knight0fNever
Ford settled:
[http://fordtransmissionsettlement.com/](http://fordtransmissionsettlement.com/)

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angmarsbane
My family has always been a Toyota/Honda family but my sister broke from the
pack and bought a Ford Focus. She had to replace the transmission within a
year. Once she sells it, if she buys another car, she's going back to
Toyota/Honda.

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olliej
I don’t understand why so many customers are still fretting about paying off
the vehicle.

Ford knowingly sold m, and continued to sell a faulty product. The warrantee
is irrelevant: those customers should be able to return for a full refund,
including load interest. End of story.

