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So just spent £850 getting repairs done to my focus, mainly due to suspension and other bits under the car. First drive after that it comes up with "engine malfunction reduced acceleration" and goes into limp home mode. So now I have to get that investigated and fixed before MoT on 20th Oct.
So today I borrowed my dad's car to go and see my daughter. Just dropped her home and on the way between Buckingham and the A5 the engine temp goes into the red. Now been sat for 45 minutes waiting for the engine to cool so I can check the coolant. Checked the level and it's fine but the engine is still saying it's over 100 degrees when I turn the ignition on. It's getting annoying now.
Aaaaaaaaaand relax
I feel your pain.
Years ago I was working down south and commuting back each Friday evening.
Outside lane of a packed M1 the bike (RD350LC) coughed. It <span style="text-decoration: underline;">never</span> coughed. The twitch in my third eye got me into the middle lane, checked the mirror and I was producing bloody great flames from one pipe. So after being recovered home, stripping it, getting the barrels and head off to be repaired, sourcing new pistons rings and gaskets, giving everything a good go over to ensure a swift rebuild, I am cruising back from the engine place with the repaired parts in my Mum's elderly Fiesta, only a mile to go and Screeeech! Seized that solid.
Good luck getting them both up and running again, hopefully nothing catastrophic in either of them.
Update:
Left the car a total of 1hr 45 mins. Started it with air con off, heaters on full to get rid of heat from the engine. Needle buried itself and stayed there.... right at the reddest end of red. Heat came out of the heaters and fan was working, engine was cold to touch. Not happy
Sounds like the flux capacitor has had it, if it’s not that then it can only be the built in toaster causing the issues.
Your thermostat is stuck shut imo
Hence instant overheating
Is the heater chucking out sahara air? IF not, water pump failure is a possibility
Hot wire the cooling fan, set cabin temps to 30c, blowers on max sttack
Might just get you moving
Is it a Vauxhall? Faulty dpf sensor if so.
It's because you touch yourself at night.
Hope that helps.
If it is a petrol vauxhall then it is possibly the thermostat, they were a cheap plastic consumable.
It is a petrol Vauxhall. A 2007 Vectra
When cold starting (but it is reading reddest red) is the top hose to the rad cold? If so thermostat would be my suspect as above.
Cheap intro to parts bingo, read up an owners forum to see if anything else is worth changing whilst in there/ odd tools needed for the job.
Good luck
If it was that hot it should have been blowing steam out of the reservoir! Are you sure it's not just a faulty temperature sensor? If the engine feels cold after more than an hour, and it goes instantly to the red, sensor's kaput. If on the other hand you drive for a while and it then climbs into the red, that's a different story, as above check the top hose/radiator to see if they're hot; if not, thermostat is likely culprit.
Yea, if it was that hot, something would surely have actually gone kaput in a big way.
My money would be on a short circuit on the temp sensor.
I'd also say faulty temp sensor.
If the thermostat was stuck shut but the engine was stone cold then starting it wouldn't cause the coolant to heat up instantly. There's still water circulating in the system (AFAIK anyway), just not as much. As for heat coming from the vents, it's possible it has an electric heater for the cabin air. Both my most recent diesels had this, not sure if your car does.
My "best" run of motoring expenses to miles was last year, admittedly not from a new purchase but I serviced and MOTed my 3 series and then it needed some suspension thing which took it to £650 total, that was the end of Feb 2020. I did about 70 miles before lockdown, then in the summer lockdown break one of the front brakes had seized, so that had to be replaced for another few hundred. I was told to make sure I used the car to prevent these issues, we went back into lockdown and I stopped using it again, rear brakes seized and another few hundred had to be spent. All in all I think I paid out around 1200 in exchange for about 150 miles of motoring between Feb and November
Had a restricted performance light on my car yesterday - ordered a £15 OBD reader off Amazon which came up with a fault on one of the mass airflow sensors. £40 for a new one from eurocarparts and 10 minutes to fit and all working fine now. So I’d say it’s worth a punt to get a reader if you haven’t got one.
Ok.... Full on ranting and anger/despair mode engaged.
Just had a call from the garage where my 2009 Focus has been for 3 days. I took it in on Monday morning (it drove, just in limp home mode) because it came up with error code U0001 on my scanner. "High speed CAN bus". Contacted the garage Tuesday to be told it was just a glitch, they had fault cleared and it was good to go. Went to pick up Tuesday night and it wouldn't start. Turned the key and got an alarm with "engine malfunction" on the dash. They just called me today (Thursday lunchtime) to say there are a number of fault codes including the original one. Selected others are "theft detected" and "lost connection to anti-lock braking system". They have said this can be fixed with a software update. The main dealer they referred me to have just said "no, that's not a software issue. It's something the garage themselves have done when clearing the original fault code otherwise it couldn't have been driven there". So now I have to have a conversation with the original garage and explain that they need to pay for recovery to main dealer, fault diagnosis and any cost of repair. This will be fun as the owner is someone I've known for 35 years.
Oh dear, you need to get your garage guy to speak to the main dealer himself though. So he doesn't shoot the messenger.
But, still, dare anyone to beat that ratio!
Haha, not me but my pal bought an old Lotus Elite for about a grand in the 1990s.
It only ever left his drive to go to a specialist garage and have thousands spent on its various faults, before he eventually cut his losses.
When I had a long list of apparently unconnected error codes in all different modules across the car, it was water ingress into one of the modules that was causing random crap on the CanBUS which caused it all. Water ingress related to a small bump which was poorly fixed and let water into the boot.
Cost me a few grand in incompetent mechanics ****ing things up before I found this out myself.
The main dealer they referred me to have just said “no, that’s not a software issue. It’s something the garage themselves have done when clearing the original fault code otherwise it couldn’t have been driven there”
I'd disagree they have done it when clearing the fault code. Code readers are pretty bulletproof, and a 'clear codes' is fairly straightforwards. I'd also disagree it could be fixed just by applying a software update - that's a garage that doesn't know what they're doing.
got aa coverage? they'll probably get it going again if it broke down on the road. or just disconnect the battery for 1/2 an hour and see if that sorts it
the main dealer is unlikely to be any good at fixing it, and for an old machine like this, its not worth spending the money there.
But, still, dare anyone to beat that ratio!
£2.5k on a mint Mk1 MR2 (back in 2004 so they were just cheap cars). Bought it off a friend so knew it was good but he'd fallen on hard times and needed the money hence no MOT and no test drive (had driven it before) and as it was winter I had it trailered to me. Pushed it into my lockup after it was delivered ready for use in the spring, planned to do a few things to it first so it sat there for a week until I had time to see to it. Well, I thought it did. Stolen the first morning it was in the lockup and before I had managed to arrange insurance. It was found 3 weeks later smashed up and burnt out in an old quarry near Brynmawr. So that's £2.5k for 0 miles. I even had to pay the scrappy £100 to get rid of the remains as even though the weight was worth £150 it cost £250 to get it out of the quarry.
My son's blown up two engines in the last 6 months. Bloody tuning causing it. Currently has a dead car, and I've two engines in my garage, grrr.
JUST today I got my car back from the MOT
They had to bolt the replacement nsr caliper to the osr to get it through as it was low on pads.
only problem with the is its efffectively upside down, so the blled nipple points at the floor and is at the bottom of the piston
so now when i put the brakes on the initial bite is OK , but fades away as you push harder
complete and utter blithering idiocy of the highest level of incompetance known to man. these people shouldnt be allowed spanners. ever
Well now my story has taken another turn of incompetence. Having told the garage twice what the fault code was and told them twice that it seems the most common cause is a dieing battery, they decided to "take a punt" on a new battery. The car started again. But then it didn't just as I was about to go collect it. The immobiliser won't let the engine turn over as it thinks it's being stolen. Spoke to 2 other mechanics who have both said the cascade of fault codes would have been avoided by testing, then replacing, the battery which was causing the initial fault codes.
I've told the garage I am happy to pay for the battery and fitting, but that any further costs should be down to them. I see it as a lack of communication between staff and failure to listen as being the cause of the additional problems that they have encountered now. They were aware of the fault code a week before I took it in and I made them aware again before I dropped it off and once more when I dropped it off, along with the info about the battery being the most common cause.
Pissed off now.
And I was feeling grumpy about the 500€ bill for my Renault's annual service, feeling better about it now!
My Focus is now being recovered from the garage it's at and taken to a proper diagnostic place in Milton Keynes now. The battery was finally replaced and it worked temporarily but now the immobiliser has kicked back in and it won't start again. Same error code as the original (U0001 for the knowledgeable). If it wasn't the battery that caused the cascade of error codes then an electrical fault of unknown magnitude has happened. Scared of the potential repair bill now