Hello, I’m new to the forum, sadly wish it was under better circumstances. 👋🏻

I have a Ford Focus Mk2 Ghia, 1.6 petrol. Lovely motor, alas it was a bit of a distress-led purchase and has seemingly had a bit of a rough life before I bought it. New problems seem to be revealing themselves as soon as I fix another - I’ve already treated it to new tyres, two front suspension arms, a new head unit as the old one had a tendency to overheat, and a new battery in the five months I’ve had it.

The newest gripe is in the instrument cluster - and I don’t know whether to blame a pothole I hit a few weeks ago or not, but that’s when my problems began. First the rev counter begun to work intermittently, dropping to zero periodically before springing back to life; then the engine temperature gauge began to glitch, remaining at zero for some time after ignition before coming to life.

I put the car into test mode and came out with the error codes D900 and E196, but this threw up another issue: the gauge sweep has managed to break the speedometer. While sweeping, on the rebound the needle got stuck at 90 mph for a second, before settling on 80 mph as its baseline. Repeated sweeps weren’t successful in getting the needle to default to zero, but I did manage to get it slowly but surely down, to 20 mph as a baseline. 

I’m genuinely stumped as to how to go about fixing this one. I rung up my local garage who said sending it to Ford would cost significantly more than the car’s worth, which isn’t a prospect that greatly appeals to me.

Any help and/or advice anyone could give would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks in advance!

Search for threads on cracked solder joints.

The instrument clusters of cars of this age were produced using lead-free solder which goes brittle over time. The natural vibration of the car then causes it to crack, principally on the main connector for the wiring loom. The fact the problems started after hitting the pothole is a strong indication this is your problem. There's plenty of info on the forum about this, including people who can do a repair.

Sounds like a job for Superman @rd457

2 hours ago, romeofoxtrot said:

Any help and/or advice anyone could give would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks in advance!

As already stated, the instrument cluster is a very common fault, one that I experienced last year too. If you're a novice, removing the cluster can seem daunting, it did for me, but it only takes 5 minutes to remove, 2 x screws (need a torx T20) then you ship it off for repair to one of the many services available, and then plug it back in. It's a sub £100 cost so not extortionate...

Top tip... to gain access to the cluster, tilt steering wheel all the way down, and extend it towards you as far as it'll go!

 

@romeofoxtrot You can find my repair service for the common cracked solder joint problem here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/314393033915

I can check that all of the gauges sweep back to zero successfully afterwards. If not I can try to investigate and can swap in another gauge motor from a spare unit if necessary.