Greetings to all,

Have just joined the forum which I hope will help me keep my Focus on the road and reliable. You never know, I may be able to help someone else as well!

Our 2008 1.6 petrol Focus is driven mainly by 'er indoors, but I do enjoy driving it myself and consider it to be a great little car. Unfortunately, despite still having only 19k on the clock, it has proved somewhat problematic.

First problem was the heater matrix failed and apart from a full fascia out job to replace it, I was left with the problem of removing 4 litres of coolant from the inside of the car in the middle of winter. This was a horrible job to do, but was over a year ago now and it hasn't leaked since.

Next was a clutch fluid leak from the master cylinder - probably caused by disconnecting it to do the job above. This needed a new pipe from Ford. After cleaning up the spilt fluid, which had soaked into the sound proofing under the bonnet I thought the job was complete. Unfortunately, the local rodents - presumably attracted by the fruity smell of the washing up liquid that I used, climbed up and ate all the sound proofing! That wouldn't have been so bad, but they started nibbling through the wiring loom as well. I got 3 of them as revenge though.

Next to go was the top engine mounting, which I discovered was oil filled when it started leaking. A second hand replacement from ebay has sorted that for the moment.

So, while a great car to drive, this has been the most unreliable modern car I've had for a long while. I just hope it will now settle down and give us some reliable service.

I've always tried to maintain my own cars and other vehicles at home at the moment are a 2000 Jaguar S-Type, 2009 Nissan Xtrail and a 1986 BMW K100RS motorbike, which only comes out on very hot days.

I look forward to contributing to the forum.

JonS.

Hi and welcome to the club. Please take the time to have a quick glance over the forum rule and refrain from posting offensive language even *'d out the way that you posted it. Thanks :)

Hi and Welcome to the Forums , nothing worse when you fix something and then get a problem after you have fixed it

Hello, Welcome to the Forum!

Welcome to the Forum John.