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Durashift Fix Using Ebay Type Vcm Diagnostic.


Eddie58
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My car is a 1.4 petrol Fusion 2004, with only 39000 miles. The dreaded no gears problem. My question really is has any one used a clone VCM 2 bought on eBay to reprogram the TCM and set the clutch touch point? Or are there any other diagnostic tools I can buy that will do this job, that wont cost thousands?

My intention here with this new listing is to list what I do, to fix this problem, and advise to the end what goes on. I know many are told, scrap it, or change to manual transmission, when these gearbox's go wrong, but that MUST be wrong. After all they are only manual gearbox's with a few bits bolted on.

A bit about me, I am not a professional mechanic, but have many (too many) years of experience with cars. My dad had me helping him from the age of about 8, he was Rolls Royce trained and taught me a lot. So mechanical problems come to me as second nature. The electronic side I have in recent self taught. My last car being a Renault Scenic which developed a gearbox fault cheapest garage wanted £1600 to fix. It cost me £55.00 for the parts, £40 for new ATF (gearbox oil) and I bought a clone Renault CAN CLIP of eBay for £150.00 which included the re-programming software, which I later sold for £100. So the entire thing cost me £145........ It took a little time to research, and a couple of days for me to actually fix the car. But what a saving........

So my intention here is to try and do the same thing here with the Fusion. This I hope help a lot of people to save one hell of a lot of money. This would also be of help to Fiesta owners as I think the gearbox's are the same or at least very similar

I am going to start over next weekend to see what codes i can get up just using my OBD universal reader. I also am going to check for clutch fluid leaks. That the gear rods are free and not locked up. If there is a mechanical problem, that should be easy to fix. There is one good article where. the guy was quoted over a £1000 to fix, and all he had to do was drill and ream out a bit of plastic using a 16mm router. That job cost him the price of a bit of glue.

Anyway I will as I said start work over this weekend unless it is pouring with rain or snowing, as the car is on the drive. I am to old for getting soaked through without good reason, and as we have another car the Fusion will wait another few days.

As soon as I have some more news I will write again, but I would be very interested in hearing about the right scanner/diagnostic tool I should buy.

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There are some good posts on here about the shift actuator repair (which you have obviously seen), the clutch actuator within the TCM and the wiring.

The TCM self calibrates the actuator and clutch, the only thing to be wary of is NOT selecting reverse gear after doing any work on the clutch side of the system.

For some reason it only self calibrates when using forward gears.

No need for diagnostic or calibration equipment !.

I have done quite a few of them now, most have been caused by the plastic bearing seizing the shaft within the actuator.

Collected lots of info along the way as no garage likes to work on these transmissions.

If you want to help others I would suggest a few videos, whenever I have done the job its been freezing cold and just wanted to get the job done.

The semi-auto box is the same for Fusion, Fiesta and Mazda2

Good luck.

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Hello Dan62 and thanks for your reply. I don't know about a video in this weather, but I was thinking of a few good digital pictures.

So to pick your brains further if I may?

One thing you said was that the TCM self calibrates the gear change and clutch actuators. Does that work, even if parts are replaced? either with new or used parts? Or say the gear change motors are removed to check them. and the mechanism? Or

say I find the clutch needs bleeding?

Another thing to ask you is, will a normal OBD scanner pick up on the fault codes?

Some of the posts I have read seem to want to scare people off. Things like, "second hand parts wont work, only main agent diagnostics", etc etc.So my idea is to try and clarify what is possible, not put obstacles. Both to help me, and others that might read this.

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I have always reassembled the actuator taking care to mark the shaft position but looking at the motors and reading the info it would appear the motors self position.

I bled my clutch and so long as you select drive afterwards it does self adjust. I found out the hard way trying to reverse it out of the garage :oops:

Diagnostic codes are great but there are only 3 components to the system and you can't get spare parts for the assemblies, plus for some issues it has been wiring which again you have to work out for yourself.

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Hello all again.

May I firstly start by thanking Dan62 for all his help so far. He has provided me with some actual Ford drawing and info, along with some really valuable advice..

Talking with him, and reading what I can find on line ,my thoughts so far are that I should attack it in this way, which I will do over the weekend, weather being reasonable.

1. do OBD scan, maybe it will send me either to the clutch or gear shift.
2. check gear change rods are free.
3. bleed clutch if any moisture spotted.
4. start peeling the cables back, after checking fuses including 60 amp by the battery. Check the earths are good.
If none of the above solves it, then I have to test the motors. By then I very much hope I will have cracked it, because that would only leave gear stick box, and of course break pedal switch, brake lights, drivers door switch. Lastly which I very much hope it not to be, the TCM.
If anyone has any other idea please post them here.
Thanks Eddie
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Look in the mot servicing section there is a fix on there?

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Thanks for taking the time to post that James. I will look this evening. Eddie

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Not worries it's certainly a hands on fix

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Hello again James. I have read the MOT service section, Durashift fix cover to cover.

So it seems that very little goes wrong with the electronics, most problems are mechanical, one person did however have his motor brush worn out. His post was last year, so he would have fixed that before now. He didn't tell us how, which rather defeats the object on these type of forums. So what I would say here, is, that if the carbon brush are worn out, rather than try and track down the originals, I would buy any brush that is over sized and just file down to a snug fit. All be it alternator or even washing machine motors etc, in fact anything. As long as the connection wire (if any) will connect properly.

Now looking forward to the weekend more than ever. Eddie

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Fingers crossed as it sounds like a sensible enough idea!

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Hello all, here is a progress report.. Weather has been very over cast so no pictures, but I will take some later, if people want.

So far I removed the wiring from the clutch actuator to gear shift actuator. If you peel back enough outer insulation, it actually separates from the main wiring, so you can bring it inside to work on it. Well I found one wire broken, and corroded. Woopie I thought I have cracked it. I carried on checking every other wire, they were all fine, so I repaired the broken wire, put it back on the car and, still the same fault, with engine not starting.

Undaunted I pressed on.Moved on to the gear change actuator. Found that the one with the white ball joint would not move, So I took the actuator off the gearbox. Removed the motor, and found the rod moved very easily. Put the motor back on and tested the motor. Pin 1 and 6 worked fine. Both ways, just reversing the polarity to make it go both ways. Put it back on the car, and rain stopped play. But what I did do was to disconnect the battery, turn on the side lights, so the ecu might reset itself for tomorrow hopefully. I also intend to have someone turn the key to the on position when I have my hands on the gear change motors to see/feel if they come to life. I have also put the car in to gear, so they should move it in to neutral if they are being controlled correctly.

So thats as far as I got. Maybe it will go when I try to start it tomorrow, of course pigs may fly. I am sure there will be more to this problem. So after trying the start, I will know more, particularly if the motors move or not, then I will just move on the next things to try., I will run back further taking away outer insulation, from more or the wiring under the bonnet. Check fuse box at the back for corrosion etc.

I will let you all know what happens tomorrow. Eddie

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Just a quick update. I just had to try it today. Put the ignition key to on position, same thing inside the car. Motors did not move, it left it in gear. So they obviously are not being controlled correctly. So I think I need a good wiring diagram now. I think I have to check if power is going to the tcm, and ecu. Or I am back to my original posting, should I buy a VCM 2 ids off eBay?????? Eddie

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Thank you once again Dan62. Those wiring diagrams will be very useful. Eddie

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Sunday progress report. Checked all fuses appertaining to start/gearbox. Numbers are 7 14 33 41 45. 14 is the inhibit relay. 60 amp by battery is also good. I pulled back the insulation on as much wiring as I could see. No problems there.

So the gear change motors not being fired up is sending me along the lines that I DO need to buy a VCM 2 clone from eBay so it can look in the CAN powertrain network to see where the fault may be, at least it may say cant communicate with such a such module., otherwise I am just running in circles, as I think there are about 12 components, and 18 different function lines. Different functions may work on lower than 12 v so using a digital volt meter may fry components. It seems to me that one or more of these functions are not firing up. Why that is, could be a broken wire anywhere, or a component failure.

My OBD scanner is just not up to the job. It is trying to tell me that there are codes, but it can not read them. To prove this I told it to erase ALL fault codes and turn of the MIL. Needless to say it erased the codes, but the light stayed on.

So the car is not running, none of the independent garages want to touch Durashift. A tow to Fords, pay them for a scan, get there usual diagnosis of "needs new clutch actuator" and a tow home seems a waste of time, and a LOAD of money. So I think my next step is to buy a VCM 2. I do want to buy something that will not only diagnose faults, but "force" component tests, and reprogram any new or used component I may have to fit. The Renault tool clone I bought could and did do all this without error. Now I need to find a tool I can afford that will do the same job for the Ford.

Any ideas, or things I have overlooked, please let me know. I will keep posting, until the car is working. Eddie

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So a further update. I borrowed a Ford vcm2 with ids laptop. Codes came up P0601-20 TCM MEMORY. P0641-20 WIRING TO GEAR CHANGE P0915-20 GEAR CHANGE AGAIN P0949-60 ADAPTIVE LEARNING NOT COMPLETE P2793 ANOTHER FOR THE GEAR CHANGE AND U0415-20 ABS not communicating with TCU.

The one that seems to be the most important is the P0601-20 TCM. I think the rest may well go when this is fixed, as they all seem to be related to the wires from the TCM to the gear change actuator, which I have now fixed. So any idea what would be the best thing to do next?

My first thoughts were to try and update the TCM programming, but this is the first time I have used ids. I may mess it up further. Or send the unit away for testing and repair? Any ideas here would be greatly appreciated. Eddie.

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So I tried posting an update earlier, but it hasn't appeared here, so if I am doubling up, apologies. progress report. Bowwowed a VCM2 with Ford ids software, got the following codes. p0601-20 TCM memory. p0641-20, p0915-20, p2793-20, all relating to wiring from gear actuator to TCM plus p0949-20 adaptive learning incomplete, and lastly u0415-20 abs not talking to ecu.

I think the gearshift related codes will disappear once the TCM is working again. The u0415 I will track the wiring, or test the abs module using the ids.

Any idea what I should do next????? All help appreciated. Eddie

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So here is another update. On using the Ford diagnostic tool as mentioned before, it became apparent that the clutch actuator/transmission control unit was not doing its job at all. Not sending any messages to the gear change actuator, or even doing anything with the clutch. The plug going in to the clutch actuator ( not the one out going to the gear shift actuator) supplies a constant 30 amp 12 volt a 15 amp 12 volt when the ignition is switched on, and a constant earth. These are the larger terminals in the plug. The bottom left hand corner (if you have the many smaller terminals above) is the earth. The one directly above it is the constant 30 amp and the one to the right is the 15 amp. I tested these were all working as they should, so that only left one thing to do. I removed the clutch actuator from the car. Guess what there were stickers saying warranty void if removed stuck on the unit. So I phoned the company, and guess what they worked on this clutch actuator before I bought the car, and the warranty is still active.. So I sent it off to them. They just phoned to tell me it was defective, the flash was corrupted, that they have fixed it, and are sending it back via UPS 24 hour which I should get tomorrow. GUESS WHAT NO CHARGE.......Not even for return postage. Now this company is in Colchester, but I am not sure if I can give their name and address here. If the forum agrees I can give them the plug they really deserve I will post the details. I highly recommend this company. Fast efficient and HONEST, Hard to find these days. I will continue posting until the car is back on the road...........

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The TCM arrived here today, what a great turn around ACTRONICS did. Now I have to wonder if I should take the car to Fords to set the clutch, and learn the gearbox parameters. So should I chance it on the Clone VCM ,or just bite the bullet and send it to Fords. I am unsure as to what to do. I am thinking, if I just bolt it back on, would it show life by trying to move the gear shift actuator? Would the dash show a different message? Could there still be another fault????? I will have to give this some thought. Any suggestions are welcomed.

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Feel free to post the details, we're always looking for reputable and positive experience companies to share, did it kick to life as you should be able to run the protocols from ids once you push it into place....

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The company that repaired the clutch actuator is. ACTRONICS Ltd. 3-5 De Grey Square De Grey Road Colchester in Essex. Post code CO4 5YQ. Thats for letting me post these details. I will post more once I bolt the actuator back on to the car.......

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So here is another update. Sadly I bolted the repaired clutch actuator to the car, and still the same. Nothing no movement, checking, dash remained exactly the same, and no engine start.

So now I am running out of ideas. I do not know what to do next. Perplexing is maybe a word some would use, I at the moment can only think of rude shorter words. The weather is getting colder, the car is still not running.

I tried re programming the powertrain control module. Then my idea was to move on to the TCM, but the PCM wouldn't take the program. So now I am thinking I have to get that tested. I am now only assuming this is the unit that bolts on beside the battery, that many call the ECU. Can someone please confirm if this is the case??????

Now its flash must be corrupted, as it didn't accept the new flash. This however has done nothing to upset what the dash shows etc, and all the faults are still the same.

This ford ids is nowhere as easy to test CAN systems, as the Renault CLIP I have used in the past. It doesn't show diagram's or show in one picture which systems are working correctly. It also doesn't guide you as to what tests to do.

Anyway any one with ideas gratefully accepted. I will continue to post, as and when I find a solution.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello "Eddie58" and all members.

I'm from France. This is my story :

"
I have a Ford Fiesta 2004 with the ASM (auto-shift manual) transmission - Durashift - which now doesn't want to start. 118.gif

The warning light of Durashift was blinking and sometimes the car
started after I play with the wires. I inspected the wire loom
(2S6T-14K039-AD) from the clutch actuator (TCM : 2S6R-7M168-GC) to the
selector & shift motors (2S6R-7K004-AC) and all was OK.

After some days, the warning light of Durashift was solid and the car didn't want to start.

In the dashboard, the number of the gear selected was a 8 barred.

So I decided to buy a VCM II clone from obd2tool to read the DTC.

I saw an error code (P0810) about a "clutch postion error" in the TCM so
I decided to reprogram this module. IDS v91.01 said me that a new
calibration file (2S6R-7P170-AD) is available and it will upgrade the
TCM.

But at the end, it displays me an error (0 -0x0 851082).

But after that the TCM doesn't want to respond and at the dashboard the number of the gear selected is now a double-dash. sweating.gif

I ask for some help to restore this TCM or flash the PCM.

"

I post this on another forum. I think that my TCM is dead or need a reflash, or the two things.

In some forums, people says that to reactivate ECUs, the solution is to send "as-build" data, which you can retrieve only at ford motorcraft service, after paying a subscription.

Maybe some people here can help us.

thanks.

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Hello satrader. yes I know of this problem -- in the dashboard. means the clutch actuator is corrupted. No good you trying to do this with your vcm2 clone. needs to go to a specialist company, like the one I sent my defective actuator to, and most important no further updates........then it needs to learn again. costs in the UK about 150 euro plus postage. it may be worth you doing this......

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