Hi..

I have a 2006 ford focus estate and in all my years of tinkering with cars I've never encountered this.

Randomly the instrument cluster turns itself off. It starts of with the abs light coming on then the handbrake light and then all the lights. Next I lose speddo and rev counter bur the car still drives fine.

Then all off a sudden  everything is back to normal.

The sister in law who I got the car from said it happened to her as well and sometimes it lasts for days. She says her ford mech just reset something each time to fix but she doesn't know what.

Anyone have any ideas and how to permenatly fix.

 

Many thanks in advance 

I'm not claiming to be a mechanic or anything, but this sounds like an alternator/battery issue. I've seen similar on another car - the alternator stops charging, the battery drains and instruments start turning off. Normally this means the alternator and/or battery need replacing - but since yours seems to recover, maybe a loose connection in the charging system that occasionally jolts loose? The permanent solution: replace alternator & battery, check connections are tight & cables aren't soft/squishy (I once had a soft cable which when tested could only pass a reduced current - caused a whole range of strange issues & was very hard to track down!)

Just me two bob's worth :)

Hmm , you probably know this already but start with simple things first . I would try leaving the battery disconnected for a few hours . My experience with electronics taught  me that IC's micro-controllers and circuits tend to glitch and behave erratically  from time to time , most of the time this was fixed with a simple power down or hard reset aka discharge 

 

 

For some reason  electronics allways work better after a complete discharge , I also heard this applies with error codes and management lights . Might be worth a try , before you start pulling her apart