2015 focus towbar fitting.

[Matt92]

Hi everyone, long time member, but this is my first post. I’ve owned an 07 focus for a little over 5 years now and I’ve just recently upgraded to a 15 plate facelift (mk3.5?). So recently in fact I haven’t yet picked it up, hopefully I’ll get it next week, but it’s got to go to ford to have a recall sorted out first on the camshaft.

So the new one is a 1.5 tdci, Titanium in magnetic grey, lovely car, got loads of toys on it with the sync 2 system. One of the first things I need to do is fit a towbar and I’ve a funny feeling that scotch locks and electrical tape aren’t going to work this time. Can anyone tell me if this is a job which I can do myself (I am a mechanic by trade 10 years and counting) and really what is involved. I’m not sure what the with trailer prep and without trailer prep that I’ve read about is. I can order parts from ford though work which might save me a few pennies over taking it straight to the dealership and I can fit the towbar myself, but it’s the electrical side that’s worrying me. I’m going to need a 13pin socket (or dual electrics if that’s even possible) as I’m towing a small caravan.

Thanks in advance for any help, sorry if I’ve rambled on a bit.🤐

[iantt]

Electrics for your car can be either fords kit or aftermarket kit is available . Both will need programming to the body control control module via central car configuration. Cheapest way to program it is using elm 327 adapter ( £16 ish) and free forscan software. Both the ford and aftermarket kits will give full instructions to connecting kit to vehicle wiring harness. 

[Matt92]

Thanks Ian, I’ll have to give ford a ring and see what they want for the kit. I’ve got an elm327 cable that I used with elmconfig to program a few bits on my mk2, so I can just download the Forscan program. 

Just curious, when I fitted the last towbar I used a bypass relay which I gather is supposed to put a lighter load on the vehicle lighting system and therefore shouldn’t cause any problems. Is this an absolute no no on the new one, or would it work like an old fashioned system without any of the fancy control modules? My knowledge is a little poor when it comes to vehicle electrics and with modern cars it just blows my mind.🤯

 

Thanks again.

[iantt]

I wouldn't say bypass relay is such a good idea. The ford electric kit is quite expensive , but pf Jones do an aftermarket kit with or without trailer prep at a reasonable price. 

Basically the kit just wires into the canbus with a trailer module then outputting to the socket.  With trailer prep means the plugs are already in the boot area to plug module in , "without" means an extension wiring kit is required to run can bus from up front by glove box to the rear. It's not as difficult as it sounds.  

[Matt92]

Ok, I think I’m with you. I see the Pf Jones wiring kits on eBay, so I will wait and see when I get my car if it’s got the plugs in the boot. Fingers crossed, save some money. I’ll get some prices off ford just for my amusement (last time it was £450 for an egr valve on a ford ranger) and then I’ll report back here. I’m sure with other questions along the way too. 👍

 

Thanks, kind regards Matt.

[Matt92]

So, an update. I’ve had the car nearly 2 weeks now it had the camshaft recall sorted before I picked it up, all seems good so far.🤫

I’ve just had a poke around in the boot area behind the carpet and I’ve found what I believe to be the plugs for the towing module. Grey taped up at the top with a thick blue with red stripe and a thinner blue. Then the green plug taped lower down with four wires.

Look like they should fit in one of these (picture by iantt from another thread).

Then I take it a 40 amp cartridge fuse would be fitted in the position just below the relay where you can see two spade terminals.

Once that’s done and I’ve used Forscan to do the programming, will I then (in theory) have a complete 13 pin setup ready and working?

[Matt92]

Also I spoke to our ford suppliers and they were quoting £194 + vat for a fixed towbar, we would get a 10% trade discount. That didn’t sound too bad, I presume that is a swan neck style rather than a flange type.

But I was told that no wiring was listed for the fixed towbar, only for the detachable. Which is surely wrong, would it not just be the same wiring kit for both fixed and detachable?

[iantt]

Should be pretty much the same, it's where the socket/bracket  is positioned I'm guessing. 

Good to see you found the connectors, does the green connector have all wires fitted? Earlier vehicles didn't and you had to insert an extra wire from the kit in . 

[iantt]

Ford can supply a wiring kit for the fixed tow bar. 

See the link and have a look . 

https://www.ford-accessories.co.uk/transportation/tow-bars/fixed-tow-bar/1724861?model=focus&year=2014

[Matt92]

I haven’t pulled the connector away from the loom yet, but there are four wires going to it, so I think it’s good to go.

Looks like a couple of purple with stripes, a black with a blue stripe and white/orange

 

I’ll have another word with Ford, the chap I spoke to admitted he didn’t really know much about it. If the towbar looks like the one in that link you just sent, then I’d be happy with that. But then looking at the drop down “required fitting parts” there are two modules and two wiring kits listed one for 01/2016 onwards and one up to 12/2015 mine being the latter. 

I’m different to most caravan users, as mine is 30 years old and doesn’t have a battery of it’s own, I use the car battery to run the water pump and lights, it’s not ideal, but I’m a low power user with additional solar lights. I hope this modern system allows for this type of use with a permanent power supply.

[iantt]

I'm not a caravan user so no idea. 

At least you know the parts and part numbers required for your vehicle and there availability for fixed bar. 

[Matt92]

Yes, thank you for your help. I’ll update this thread when I’ve got everything fitted and hopefully working.

[Matt92]

Update time, I bought all the parts I needed off eBay, all genuine Ford parts. Fitted everything today and it seemed to go well, until... what you would think was the easy part, programming the module.

I used FORScan, looked through the different areas and found in PAM were two options, I can’t remember the exact wording but they were both towbar related and both disabled. So I selected each one in turn clicked edit selected and changed them to enabled then clicked write. That seemed to go fine and all looked successful, I couldn’t check to see everything was working though as I don’t have an adapter to go from the 13 pin plug to the twin 7 pins on the caravan. 

But with that done I found a code in the PAM module as can be seen below and when I selected reverse I’d get a message on the sync screen telling me there was a fault with the parking aid system and then the parking sensors just wouldn’t work. I went back and disabled the two settings in the PAM module and the codes cleared and everything works as it should.

Is there anything else I need to do? I saw an option in service functions I think it was that said reset module but I didn’t fancy clicking it just in case I shouldn’t.

[iantt]

You need to configure the bcm module to switch the trailer module on. Have you got the extended licence? 

[Matt92]

I have the extended licence, when I click on the BCM it says something about a boot file I need to download, so it won’t let me in there. I’ll have another look and see if I can get in there. I’ll report back

thank you, kind regards.

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, Matt92 said:

I have the extended licence, when I click on the BCM it says something about a boot file I need to download, so it won’t let me in there. I’ll have another look and see if I can get in there. I’ll report back

thank you, kind regards.

You need to download this archive which contains the calibration files http://forscan.org/download/CalibrationFiles.zip

Unzip them and put them in the forscan folder in my documents on your laptop, you'll be able to access the bcm etc then

[Matt92]

Here is what I have below.

The PAM module looks like this inside at the moment, this is where I tried to enable it but it throws the fault when I do.

When I click on the BCMii it comes up with this which looks a little scary to me, like it’s going to load new software into the car or some thing. I’d much rather download something when it’s not connected to the car. Really don’t want a dead car on my drive.😓

And here’s the information it tells me about the BCM.

[Matt92]

@Tebba I’ve just downloaded that, which folder on the computer do I put that in? It did tell me where they should be before, but when I clicked yes to download from FORScan it came up the the warning in the post above.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Matt92 said:

@Tebba I’ve just downloaded that, which folder on the computer do I put that in? It did tell me where they should be before, but when I clicked yes to download from FORScan it came up the the warning in the post above.

You need to close forscan down and unzip the contents into the forscan folder in my documents on your laptop then restart the program

[Guest]

When you've done that connect forscan back to the car and follow the prompts, click on the chip symbol on the left and pick bcmii main and press the play button on the bottom, it will then display the asbuilt data which you can then modify for your towbar etc

[Guest]

As forscan reads your car data it will cause your dash to display several warnings etc, ignore these it's normal but very scary when you do it for the first time 

[iantt]

If forscan is like fords diagnostics , there's 2 tow  alterations,

1 with trailer tow attachment

2 with 13pin socket 

[Guest]

If I remember correctly it's lines 20 & 76 that have to be edited in the bcmii for a towbar. 

[Matt92]

I’ve done that, put those files in the folder, then when I restarted FORScan, it told me there was a new version of FORScan available 2.3.20. I downloaded that too, so I was hoping everything would work better. 

When I click on BCMii main it still tells me it wants to download a secondary boot file and to make sure the vehicle battery is full and so is the laptop battery and that it won’t go to sleep, god knows how long it would take if I continued.

In this new version of FORScan it now includes “TRM trailer tow activation”. Which I clicked and it said it would activate all necessary modules so I did, but it says “TRM: error reading module configuration” and then “service procedure has been interrupted” and then doesn’t do anything else.

Starting to make me wonder if the module I’ve got is faulty or if I’m going to end up giving ford a chunk of my cash.

[iantt]

13 minutes ago, Tebba said:

If I remember correctly it's lines 20 & 76 that have to be edited in the bcmii for a towbar. 

Yep, those sound right to me, and 19 if you want fogs to switch off?