Hi all,

 

As per my topic.  My 08 plater 1.6tdci started playing up this weekend.  It seems that I have absolutely no power to anything inside the car once I start up, after about 20seconds or so the cluster and all other electrical components start working.  My cluster also has warning lights that are coming up now. 

 

Any advice would be appreciated 

19 minutes ago, Stanley Searra said:

Any advice would be appreciated 

In the early Mk2 Focus, Ford had the ingenious idea to use lead free solder on their instrument clusters in the hope of saving a few dolphins. This worked fine, until time passed, and the solder joints started to dry out. This causes a multiple of electrical gremlins as the cluster is so central to the running of the car. It's likely the cluster simply needs resoldered. There are loads of companies offering this service (check Ebay) on a day return basis if you ship them the cluster.

I have 1st hand experience of this having just last week having my own cluster repaired... 

If you don't want the cluster to leave the island, I can recommend these people who just repaired mine.

If you need advice on how to remove the cluster, post back here and I''ll walk you through - very easy, held on by just 2 x screws.

18 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

Ford had the ingenious idea to use lead free solder on their instrument clusters in the hope of saving a few dolphins.

Not Ford. The entire electronics industry transitioned to lead free solder after about 2006 as a means of complying with RoHS (Restrictions of Hazardous Substances) guidelines.  I do however still have a couple of reels of different sizes of Ersin Multicore 60/40 for my own use that are many decades old now 😁

1 minute ago, agraham said:

I do however still have a couple of reels of different sizes of Ersin Multicore 60/40 for my own use that are many decades old now 😁

My own dates from 1975 LOL

6 hours ago, agraham said:

I do however still have a couple of reels of different sizes of Ersin Multicore 60/40 for my own use

So do I and when I repaired my cluster I removed the old lead-free stuff using solder wick and resoldered with proper solder because I have my doubts that simply reflowing the lead-free stuff will give a long-term fix.

Having said that, if it lasted another 12 years that would see the car onto the scrap heap.

7 hours ago, StephenFord said:

In the early Mk2 Focus...

Not just the early Mk2s, it affects the Mk2.5s also. A relative's '58 reg just suffered from this. She experienced an "engine malfunction acceleration reduced" message, ABS/ESC light lit up, random other instrument lights flickering, and then it was refusing to start. She panicked and took it to a local garage who just cleaned up some of the ECU connector pins which was inadequate since it refused to start when I went to collect it with her the next day. I proved that it was the solder joint issue by getting it started temporarily from a thump on the dash. The mechanic was very nice about it and only charged a diagnostic fee for his time. I re-soldered it with 60/40 (leaded) solder and problem solved. Upon close inspection (with only a basic magnifying glass to hand), two pins on one end showed signs of cracking solder.

That was just a few days ago. Today I took a look at the IC from my own '08 Mk2.5 out of precaution (I'd mistakenly previously thought Mk2.5s were unaffected). Six pins on the same end showed definite signs of cracks. It was too hard to be certain about the others with the magnifying glass. So I re-soldered mine also.

17 hours ago, rd457 said:

Not just the early Mk2s, it affects the Mk2.5s also.

My bad, I actually knew that, just phrased it badly. I believe they started killing dolphins again from the Mk3 onwards!

7 hours ago, Stanley Searra said:

My 08 plater 1.6tdci started playing up this weekend.  It seems that I have absolutely no power to anything inside the car once I start up, after about 20seconds or so the cluster and all other electrical components start working.  My cluster also has warning lights that are coming up now.

I concur that this is very likely the common instrument cluster solder joint issue that plagues Mk2/Mk2.5s.

I've just added an offer of my own repair service for this on eBay, see here. Please read the description carefully. I'd be happy to fix it for you if you'd like me to. No offence taken if you'd rather go with someone else 😉.