I have only just joined and hope I have put this in the right place.

Whilst my wife was driving the car the Sat Nav / Audio / Climate Control Unit decided to go blank and now fails to turn on. I checked the fuse straight away and that was fine and it has been into Ford who managed to get to the back and ran some kind of diagnostic that told them it was the unit that is faulty not cables to and from or anything else. However they were unable to remove the unit. It appears it has been fitted incorrectly or has been out and gone back in incorrectly in the past.

I have had a look around and have been able to find places that repair them from £550 whereas a “new” unit is around £900 and from Ford is around £3500.

Ford’s solution is to brake the front off of the unit to get it out. I am not keen on this as it would mean having to buy a new unit rather than just repair the existing one. I would have thought that I or they would be able to remove the trim and some of the dash etc to get to the cage holding the unit in place and after speaking to an other garage this was there thoughts as well but they were reluctant to give a quote as they had no idea how long it could take.

Has anyone on here had any similar experiences or any knowledge of how to fix it or get it out or even recommend a company who could do it?

I’m thinking of trying to remove all the trim my self but am a bit worried I will brake something trying to get it off and will then have to spend even more replacing those parts. I found a guide for removing some of it but this was for a Mondeo and although some of it is similar it is different enough for me to believe the order and position of screws and fixings will be somewhat different. Is there a similar guide for the S-Max any where?

Sorry this is a bit long winded and thank you in anticipation to any one who can help.

If it's been fitted wrong then perhaps they trapped the wires , i'm not sure how they come out TBH , perhaps take some pictures for us to see.

I doubt that the wire is trapped as it was working fine then suddenly stopped and as I said Ford ran a diagnostic that said it was the unit that was faulty not the cables.

This is very similar to my car. I will put an actual pic up tomorrow.

There are 4 key slots as seen in this photo but for some reason it won’t come out. The audio specialist I spoke to who suggested removing the trim and dash said that the pins that hold it in place can get misaligned which would prevent it from coming out.