Hi guys, any help and advice is much appreciated !

So i bought a brand new 1L red edition 3 years ago in September. Never had any issues with it till it came out of its 3 year service back in September. Im having a couple of problems. My first being the radio and controls on the steering wheel. Randomly if im listening to the Radio it will switch to CD and back again, sometimes just a couple of times sometimes just constantly sometimes not at all. Also when i use the radio control keys on my steering wheel, lets say i press up volume, it might turn the volume down instead, or skip to the next radio station. or say i press to skip to next station, or next track if it were a CD, it would go up volume. Again sometimes it did it sometimes it didn't. I've taken it in to a electrical specialist and they could find nothing wrong with it. He spoke to someone that works/worked at Ford, and he said that Ford do this to see that you bring your car back to them to fix or back to be serviced, and it could just need software updating. Has anyone heard of this before? I have updated the software tonight, but haven't had chance to test it as of yet.

 

My second issue is this. Again ever since it has come out from its 3 year service i've lost around 10-15MPG depending on how i drive it. Im quite anal in looking at how many MPG i'm doing so i always refresh the records after everytime i fill up. So i know exactly what i used to get and what im getting now. When i used to drive it carefully before the issue i could get 520 miles to a tank. Think that was around 57MPG. now i struggle to get 400 when im driving it as carefully. I do the same trips now as i used to back then, so i know that it should be the same. Again has anyone had a similar issue ? Or any advice where to take it to look at testing this sort of thing. Obviously i dont want to take it back to Ford because of obvious reasons, but should i take it to a garage that are specialists in remaps, so they can use their rolling roads and software to test? Or should i just take it to a normal garage for them to test the mechanics and workings of the car engine etc? 

Thanks for having a read, and any help appreciated.

Cheers

19 hours ago, Newmski10 said:

When i used to drive it carefully before the issue i could get 520 miles to a tank. Think that was around 57MPG. now i struggle to get 400 when im driving it as carefully.

That is quite a drop, 2 gallons per tank, or £10 extra each time.

I would first check a few basics: Binding brakes (one or more disks getting hot even if only used for very low speed braking). Tyre pressures, don't rely on TPMS, use a gauge. Heavy electrical load like heated windows stuck on. Visible exhaust smoke when accelerating.

It is worth getting a Ford specific diagnostic system like Forscan. It can find error codes that generic OBD2 readers and some independant garage systems will not find. This might lead to a faulty sensor or valve.

It can also do live monitoring while driving, but without previous results to compare to, or a lot of knowledge of what to expect, this may not tell you much.

If the above tests draw a blank, then I rather doubt if a basic non-Ford franchise garage will be able to find a problem. I also doubt if many Ford franchise garages will be any better. A mapping place may be a better bet. Some maps claim to increase MPG as well as power, so they will need to check that, and if it does not deliver, you have a bit of leverage to get them to investigate some more. Tests under power (rolling road) are much more likely to be useful than just idle, or revving out of gear, in a garage.