Hi,

Looking for some advice from the resident experts please.

I have a Focus 1.0 (2012), 35,000 miles. I had problems with the car 6 months from new where the clutch smelled like I'd been riding it. Took it in to the garage who replaced the clutch and DMF, and I was blamed - had to pay 50%, nearly £1000 if I remember rightly.

Car has been fine since then, but was recalled for the degas hose replacement a couple of months ago. Maybe not relevent but thought I'd mention it.

Driving a month ago and the clutch pedal wouldn't come back up without me hooking my toe under and pulling it up manually. Limped home - next day it seemed fine. About 30 mins into the journey I pulled up at a junction and the clutch pedal was solid, couldn't push it down at all. Was recovered to a garage (non main dealer) as I'm a couple of months out of warranty and they replaced the clutch again.

Picked it up about 3 weeks ago and the engine management light pinged. Dropped it back into the same garage who couldn't work out what it was but it was showing an error code for the knock sensor. Replaced the knock sensor, same error code pings after 20 miles driving.

They had done as much as they could so took the car to a main dealer on my behalf. They troubleshooted for a day and said they recommended the DMF needed replacing. The independent garage then replaced the DMF, no improvement. Back into fords, they have had some super engineer from Daventry in who played with it for whole day, no idea what is going on.

Their final idea is to reprogram the ECU so the tolerance for the knock sensor is widened. This sounds worrying to me, if there is something suspect on the engine, isn't this just the equivalent of removing the warning bulb?

Spoke to Ford UK who don't want to know. They say the independent garage is nothing to do with them which is fair enough, but also said the fact that the main dealer can't fix it is nothing to do with them either as its a franchise.

Any advice on if I should accept this 'fix'? If not, how can I challenge this as no-one, other than the independent garage seems to give a damn.

thanks!

A fault for the knock sensor which isn't the knock sensor can be linked to the ti vct unit on the engine not a cheap Job ...ford always claim its driver fault on clutches even when its not changing the tolerance will work till the issue gets worse then it will exceed those tolerances as well....ford dont give a damn once you've bought the car what IDE do is go to the original dealer and threats to take it to court since all the info is on the database and ask for a copy of all repairs diagnostics and costs as well

isn't there a new law out whereas if its not fit for purpose you can get your money back, not 100% sure but remember hearing something on watchdog