£2K repair bill - BER?

[whitevanman10]

Firstly I should say hi as this is my first post and apologies for signing up just to ask questions - I'm a long serving member of Porsche and VW forums and I know how annoying this can be.

I was shocked by a £2K repair bill for electrical problems on a 58 S-Max. Okay, its done 180K but the airbag light came on followed by complete failure of the LCD panel in the cluster. These are probably unrelated but I have been quoted £500 for an airbag ECU and £1500 for a new cluster - ouch! I expect both are coded to the car making a DIY fix with second hand parts a non-starter but do I have any other options? Given the age and mileage this is beyond economical repair. I need the car to last another 12 months when 2 of the 3 kids will be out of car seats opening up more options for family transport.

Its a 2008 2.0D Titanium

Thanks for any help

Mark

 

[TomsFocus]

That sounds like a Ford dealer quote?  You can have clusters repaired for much less than that but main dealers won't do it.  You can send it away to somewhere like 'BBAReman'.

I don't believe the airbag ECU is coded so should be a simple swap, but will obviously need to come from car of the same spec and will most likely need to be reset with Ford software.  Do you have Forscan?  If not, it's essentially the equivalent of VCDS but it's free and just requires a £15 modified ELM cable/dongle to use.

[whitevanman10]

Yes, Ford quote. They don't want to do any diagnosis, just replace parts and hope for the best. I've found an independent company that claims to be able to recover data from airbag ECU and reflash to the spare. I'll try and check the cluster connections myself then use the company above if needed. Thanks for your reply.

Mark

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[whitevanman10]

Now I know the S-Max is a truly terrible car and the world will be a better place with them all crushed but in case someone else needs to prolong the agony of owning one due to kids in car seats or moving loads of stuff etc here's how I saved mine.

Crashdata.co.uk can reflash the airbag module or copy the settings to a spare for £70. You may get lucky with a £20 spare from eBay. Very easy to swap, located below the handbrake. It's a failsafe system is if the warning lights not on it should be good.

Cartronix fixed the cluster for £350. Needed a new LCD panel. Cluster took about 10mins to remove.

So £400 all in, a fifth the cost of a Ford repair

Mark

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[isetta]

Thanks for letting us know end result, so often people never let us know what the final fix / resolution was