So this morning I was driving off to my placement for the day, and about 10 minutes from home, sitting in the wonderful Manchester traffic, the engine note changes. Not a significant change, and not something I'd normally worry about- I was wondering if it was doing a DPF regen (I think a 57 plate 1.6 TDCI has a DPF?). Moved forward a bit in traffic, and I'm sitting at the lights and there's a beep, and the dash display says 'Steering Assist Failure'. Ah. Then the radio cuts out, and goes back to just displaying the clock (like when it's turned 'off') and the indicator turns off, even though the stalk is still up. I'm now slightly panicking- I'm at the front of a queue of traffic turning right at traffic lights, and the electrics are going.

My old Polo had a slightly odd electrical glitch that would come and go, where it would turn the engine off at lights by itself like a car with stop/start but you'd have to turn the whole car off and on again to restart, so I figured I'd try that and hope it was just a random electrical glitch. Nope. Wouldn't start up again. Lights wouldn't turn on. Hazards wouldn't turn on. Dash display says something like 'Shipping Mode?' on it.

I get out to direct cars around me, and pop the bonnet to smell burning. Luckily a friend happens to be driving along that road too and stops behind me to act as the hazard lights, and I call a local garage who come within 15 minutes with a big flatbed (HUGE thankyou to Charles Wilson Garages- no connection other than a very satisfied and relieved customer!) and take it off to the garage to be fixed.

Apparently some 'main connector' has failed under the bonnet, shorted, melted (hence the smell) and the car of course now has no power whatsoever. They're fixing this, but they're not a specialist Ford garage or anything. Is it likely that anything else is likely to have been damaged, or was the original source of this sort of problem? The car's done 137k, which is quite a lot in 8 years but nothing unreasonable for a diesel from what I've heard.

Any ideas?

Its possible it was just a fraid wire, which has shorted and melted the rest. Its possible some other wiring has been damaged, as a voltage spike may have blown other elements of the electrical system further down the line...

ask for the old parts back, we might be able to identify the cause from some pictures.

They actually repaired the car the same day. I went and spoke to the mechanic, and he said that the alternator was 'over charging' (I didn't know this was a thing?), which caused it to get very hot, which melted a bunch of plastic insulation allowing wires to touch each other, shorting things out. The bill said that it was a replaced alternator.

Had to go to Wigan yesterday and it was fine. Of course, that doesn't mean that it's going to be fine long term! It does worry me, I've only had the car a month, and it's already broken down on me. How long is it going to last?

I tried to start my 2014 focus estate and every thing electrical shut down nothing is working any ideas