hi can anyone help i have a ford focus 1.6lx 2005 and in the past 24mths i have had 3 coil packs 2 of which have been original packs,but after a while car starts to get sluggish and then orange light comes on.my local garage do not know why this is happenening.now i have had the red light on twice in 2 mths and my friend put his code reader on and it gave him the code p060c (main processer performance)how do i get this fixed and will it be expensive.

thanks in advance

Hi Graham, sounds like a powertrain control issue. It could be either the gem board, or ECU that is erroneous, either way, it sounds like your not going to be blowing the dust away to fix it!

thankyou for answering but sounds quite expensive

Sadly I think it might be.

My best advice to you is this: take the car to the dealer, and get them to do a thorough diagnostics. This will cost you anywhere from £60 to £120.

As part of their diagnostics, they will quote you a rediculous price for the repair, but they will confirm what the issue is.

If they give you confirmation that it is the GEM Board, then take your car without replacing the part and start searching. You can sign up to a site such as breakeryard.com or other breakers sites. Then put the details of the gem board you require. I would recommend that before you do this, you disconnect the battery from your car, wait ten minutes, then go to the fuseboard under the glove box. Disconnect all connections, and remove it (this is the GEM board). You would then need to find the part number on your GEM board, and in your request for parts from the breakers, put the GEM boards part number in there. If a breaker has a like for like, then buy it from them (preferably with warranty) and just swap it. If the GEM boards differ slightly (maybe the last two digits are different for example) then you probably could still get away with it. as you have the LX variant, you dont have many features to lose (for example, you could perhaps have temporarily lost cruise control or some minor feature) this could be rectified later, but you could at least get the car running better in the meantime.

A new GEM from Ford would be rediculous amounts (many hundreds) whereas from a breaker, you could be looking at £150 or less (considerably less from some breakers!), its also worth having a look on the likes of Ebay, and contacting your local car breakers, as you might find one down the road. There are also cars available on this forum (one in particular I am thinking of is a titanium) the chap (his name escapes me) is hoping to sell the car as one piece, however is willing to break it, so it might be worth having a look at the for sale section, and posting an ad in the Wanted section with the details you require.

This is the most cost effective way to go, but beware that you might have to do a little more work, ordinarily swapping the GEM straight up is fine, but you might find that in a small number of instances it can cause a couple of difficulties, if you do have any though, we are all here and should be able to help!

hi

just to let you know i took my car to a local ford specialist and he confirms the ecu is at fault.is now going to send away for repair in stead of getting another one been quoted about £300-£400 for repair.hope this finally sorts it.will keep you posted.many thanks

Shame it wasnt the GEM it would have been cheaper, but at least you have it on the right path now!

Still, up to £600 for a repair, or over £1100 for a new... its the better option!