Ford Focus Rear Wiper

[teo_st]

Hi,
I have solved the problem! The relay was damaged. It is located in the trunk on the left side. I am so happy about solving it ! Good luck

[catch]

Hi,

I have solved the problem! The relay was damaged. It is located in the trunk on the left side. I am so happy about solving it ! Good luck

Good on you mate, so there is a relay in the boot well fancy that!

Now four years ago I had the boot liner off on the left hand side because I put the electro magnetic reversing sensor unit behind it, plus I needed to run the beep beep cable through to the rear seat compartment where I mounted the beep beep sounder its self. And I must say I did not notice a relay .............mind you I was not looking for one, but that said it must be hard to miss.

Any chance of a picture showing same, or a more detailed explination as to it's exact whereabouts.

cheers

PS: flew through it's MOT today, as per usual. And I notice this year the MOT certificate includes the last 4 MOT mileages, Underclockers wont like that will they. Mind you my motor is eight years old in two weeks and it's only done 49,390miles [certified]

[catch]

seeing as our Bulgarian based freind is not responding, anybody else found this elusive relay hiding out in the boot ?

For a couple of days last week it was not a problem, as the rear wiper deceided to go walk about in the middle lane of a section of the A1 last week. The retaining clip on the arm had partly broke off, but a visit to eBay put that right for little money.

[artscot79]

Im assuming its on the left hand side of tge boot behind the carpet near the light wiring or same location but above the rear strut mount

[catch]

Im assuming its on the left hand side of tge boot behind the carpet near the light wiring or same location but above the rear strut mount

As the tail gate wiper, and heated rear screen wireing harness comes in at roof level from the cabin, I would not have thought a wiper relay would be found left hand side of the boot. Like I said, I've had the side carpeting of when installing rear parking aid.

Arthur are you saying it could be in the pillar that the rear light cluster is set into? I cannot see it being there. Must say as it's quite a common complaint, I would have thought somebody would know where this elusive relay exists. If it does exist at all [which I very much doubt it does] Would have though one of the "I'm a trained Ford Techie" bods who vist the forum would have a definitive answer to the "is there a relay or not" in the boot area.

[teo_st]

Sorry for being offline so long.
The Focus before 03.2005 has that extra relay in the boot and only is has that kind of problem. The newer version 04.2005- did not have it. I have both cars :) I can't make a picture so show you exactly where is located so I will try to use someone's on the web. Hope he doesn't mind. Mine was taped so look carefully. Good luck!

[catch]

Thanks Teodor, for coming back to us eventually

You threw me completley, I just assumed you were having the same problem on a Mk2/2.5 as that is what you are displaying in your avatar. But in actual fact you also own a Mk 1 Focus, and it was that car you had the fault on. :D

In all fairness the thread header only stated " Ford Focus Rear Wiper" albeit the problem actually being discussed was on the Mk 2 Focus. But as English is not your first language your not to blame, hell your English beats my Bulgarian for sure.

Well done mate, and thanks for your efforts.

I'm still living with the manual park solution, as I'm looking to part exchange my Mk2 sometime between summer 2014 to Spring 2015. If and when the right 2.5 to 3 year old motor turns up [will have owned the Mk2 for 5 years] Looking for a 1.6 150bhp Ecoboost Titanium / Titanium X.Estate. At circa 3 years old somebody else will have eaten a massive chunk of "Depreciation Pie" for me.....................

Reason I'm going for an estate, is the fact that Ford [in my opnion] have "hamstrung" the Mk3 Focus by designining it with the smallest boot in it's class. .........http://www.carwow.co.uk/blog/Family-Hatchback-Biggest-Boot-671

That decision by Ford, deserves inclusion in the biggest mistakes in history league, such as ....

Napoleon's invasion of Russia

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Voting for Tony Blair

Letting banks print money

feel free to add to the above, anybody

[David Malmesbury]

My 56 Reg Focus Sport developed a front wiper fault one morning recently - came on immediately I turned on the ignition. No intermittent and they did stop after several sweeps. But each time I stopped then restarted the car, or used the wipers, same thing, with a random park position each time for the wipers.

I've had the car for 8 months.

First (reputable) garage said they couldn't identify any simple problem and with their research they understood it would be a very expensive job requiring programming etc. They mentioned the GEM unit. I talked to the Ford second hand dealer I bought it from and they recommended another garage, suggesting they didn't imagine it would be such an expensive fault.

The second garage (an autoelectrical specialist) identified the fault as the GEM unit and quoted £629 including labour to replace and fix.

I was shocked. Tried doing more online research, but couldn't be sure what the reality was. I thought of living with it, but it is so annoying and would no doubt fail an MOT as the wipers often stop mid-screen.

So I drove into a local Ford/TVR/Subaru garage where I was at least offered the fix at the price of £475 (and a free loan car for two days). I have left the car there and expect to collect tomorrow.

I am just stunned and can't believe such a design concept that leaves a simple thing like wipers (and I understand indicators etc.) at the mercy of a ludicrously expensive piece of electronics.

Do most makes now rely on such systems?

[troy45]

Sadly lots of cars are full of electronic modules to run the different features they are built with these days. Plus you'll usually still have a main central module which controls communication between all the other modules.

The GEM in the Focus doesn't quite do all that I think but being the Generic Electrical Module it does control lots of the basic functions which don't have their own specific modules, wipers like you say, headlights, indicators, interior lighting, alarm features and lots more. Ford will balance out the customer annoyance of having to replace an expensive module against having less modules to package into the car, integrate with the whole electrical system, write and test software for and so on.

If it's any consolation you'll probably find the mk3 Focus to be even worse.

[David Malmesbury]

My 56 Reg Focus Sport developed a front wiper fault [ ]

First (reputable) garage said they couldn't identify any simple problem and with their research they understood it would be a very expensive job requiring programming etc. They mentioned the GEM unit. I talked to the Ford second hand dealer I bought it from and they recommended another garage, suggesting they didn't imagine it would be such an expensive fault.

The second garage (an autoelectrical specialist) identified the fault as the GEM unit and quoted £629 including labour to replace and fix.

[ ]

So I drove into a local Ford/TVR/Subaru garage where I was at least offered the fix at the price of £475 (and a free loan car for two days). I have left the car there and expect to collect tomorrow.

I am just stunned and can't believe such a design concept that leaves a simple thing like wipers (and I understand indicators etc.) at the mercy of a ludicrously expensive piece of electronics.

[ ]

Update: turns out the GEM module was NOT the problem. Found that out after the Ford garage mentioned had ordered the part and installed it only to find the fault was still present. So they looked into the fault further and decided they'd narrowed it down to the loom. Once they'd taken the car apart they found what appeared to be rodent damage to the loom sheath and to four wires inside, which were shorting.

Great (though still expensive) to have the problem found and fixed but I do wonder what the previous garages had done/not done to misdiagnose the problem. Why had they so easily blamed the expensive GEM unit when it was a relatively straight forward wiring issue?

Big thanks to the Ford garage (David Hendry) for letting me use one of their cars for four days free, and three days at £15 a day.

Not sure how recent the rodent present is, so now have to look into keeping the pests away as I do not want to go through that again.

[Stoney871]

Ford looking for an expensive fix before checking the cheap option?

Never would have believed that of them.

(I am being sarcastic btw ;))

Sent from my S5

[puddlejumper]

I know I am a bit late but I have only just found this discusion.

I have had the same problem on my 2005 Focus estate twice, the first time it was one of the contacts inside the motor which I fixed and it worked for about 3 years.

This time when I stripped down the motor and adjusted the contact it made no difference as I think the fault is the relay which I have now found buried in the module and not replaceable without a lot of aggrow (and that may not work as the relay looks like a standard relay which may be controlled by a faulty timing circuit on the board) The relay is working but is not giving a long enough pulse to drive the motor onto the self parking track.

It needs a pulse of around 2 seconds but is only about 0.5 seconds so I intend to fit an old type wiper delay relay into the circuit at the tailgate.

You can check this fault by conecting the centre pin on the wiper to +ve fo about 2 second and it should run and park when switched on.

[puddlejumper]

I have just cured (well sort of) the same problem on my mk2 Focus estate. After listening to the relay as described previously I realised that although it was clicking every 5-6 seconds it was only holding in for about 0.5 secs and needed to hold in for about 2 secs to let the wiper motor reach the self park track. I worked out that the centre cable on the motor plug was the one that supplied the pulse and fitted a relay with two 3300mF capacitors in parallel across the coil operated by this wire. The relay holds in for about 2 secs supplying a Pulse on the centre wire to the motor, fed from the +ve wire. (the three cables are +ve, +ve pulse, -ve )

If you are not good with electrics it means that you cut the centre cable and the input goes to one of the relay coil spades the other spade to the -ve wire. And one of the the relay contact spades goes to the motor the other to the +ve wire.

Make sure the capacitors are connected the right way, the -ve is well marked.

[puddlejumper]

Sorry everyone, I got it wrong. The fault was in the motor, it was one of the 4 spring wipers inside which run around the gearwheel inside the motor. It had moved out of line with the track so the motor was running on the parking pulse only (This is supplied by one of the other wiper contacts) and this is why it sometimes parked. The pulse is not long enough to do a full wipe so it only parked when the contact passed the parking gap on the gear ring.

I have learned quite a bit about wipers but whether I will remember it next time is another matter.