Help please

[garymcc]

Hi. Sorry if this is in the wrong part of the forum but the servicing/maintenance part didnt seem particularly active.

Basically,  3 weeks ago i was on the motorway in slow moving traffic due to the amount of surface water and a spanner light came on and my car started to "limp". I managed to get on to the hard shoulder, phoned arounda few garages and got someone to take a look. They saw nothing wrong and simply reset the spanner light by holding brake and accelator for 10 secs with only ignition on. This is ALL they done apart from run diagnostics and have a quick look around. I was good to go. 

The next day i noticed my stop start button light was on and remained on so I could not use stop start which isn't really an issue for me so i was hoping i could just wait until after Christmas to have this looked at. Car ran ok from then until Tuesday this week. I nipped to my local Tesco and came out to the spanner light,  an amber engine light and a message to service engine now. I went to my local independent garage who (like the one 3 weeks previous) found absolutely nothing wrong and the next day I was off again with no issues apart from not being able to turn on Stop Start. I was out both Wednesday and Thursday pretty short journeys but everything seemed fine again.

 

Then today... I was at my parents house for an hour or so, came out to the spanner, amber engine lights and service engine message again and the car in limp mode. I tried a few times and used the accelator brake trick to reset the spanner warning light and exit limp mode. I restarted the car and now have just the amber engine light but the car has plenty power again and i make my way home on the amber engine light. Out of interest,  when i get home i switch off and then restart the engine... no lights at all... full power.

 

Does anyone have any ideas? How can two seperate independent garages find nothing wrong here? The first garage had no vested interest as they knew i was not from that area so should anything go wrong at a later date they wouldn't get the work.. and the 2nd is one I've used and trusted for years. 

 

Wtf is going on? 

 

Eta its a 15 plate 1.0 ecoboost Fiesta with just over 20k miles. 

[Eric Bloodaxe]

Just a thought on this one. I had a very similar experience/set of symptoms with a previous car (non - Ford), including the stop-start issue. It took ages to diagnose, but was found to be an internal short in the starter motor. This was replaced under warranty and I had no further problems. 

[Jonro2009]

Fin you can get your hands on a code reader then you should be able to check for any stored DTCs. That would be my first choice of action.

[chongobambino]

My brother had this problem, especially the stop start gizmo on his 2015 focus estate (taxi). Turned out to be the single wire from the alternator that hangs downwards. Its outer shielding was hard and had cracked to the point it had gained about 2mm of fresh-air were the copper strands had snapped. Im not saying its the same thing but it costs nothing but time to check it out.