Hi everyone,

 

I’m having a growing issue with my 2019 Ford Focus Mk4 2.0 TDCi (diesel), which has the 8-speed automatic transmission. Hoping someone here can help or has experienced something similar.

 

The problem:

When driving in Normal or Eco mode, the car becomes very jumpy during upshifts—especially when the RPMs drop below 1500 after a gear change. It feels like the car is struggling and produces fast, strong pulses, kind of like the jerking you’d get in an old manual car if you tried to accelerate hard in a high gear at low RPMs.

 

Additional details:

 

• In Sport mode or manual shifting at higher RPMs, it drives completely fine—no jerkiness at all.
• There are no warning lights, and the car behaves normally otherwise.
• The issue is slowly getting worse over time, becoming more noticeable and frequent.
• No recent work or modifications that would obviously explain it.

 

Any ideas or pointers would be really appreciated before I take it to the dealer or a specialist.

 

Thanks!

Start by checking the condition of the vehicle battery. If it's more than 3 years old, you need to think about replacing it.

I have the same engine/auto gearbox, and if I've not used my car for a week then the gear changes can be a little 'lumpy' for the first 10 minutes until the battery starts to get some charge put back in it.

And also think about changing the "so called" lifetime fluid too, if you're over 70,000 miles.

Ensuring the software in the PCM and TCM is up to date would be a good idea too👍

I know early 2.0 Ecoblues suffered with injector issues too, that won't help shift performance either, you may want to get them checked out