As title.

I have a problem with my smax neither the RAC or my local Ford dealer can fathom !!

Needless to say Im £140 down and still have a car that wont start !

What’s the problem? I’ve just had a problem with my SMax with the battery draining. I ended up fixing it myself as I don’t trust Ford Technicians after my last experience with them with an old Focus. I can make a guess as well as any technician!

Yep sorry should of given more info.

I have a 2010 Ford smax 2.0 ecoboost. 41k on the clock.

Its been running fine and gave us no problems what so ever.

Wednesday I got in it to go to Edinburgh and pushed the button to start it and…. nothing, it wouldn’t turn over.

I then got “engine malfunction” come up on the dash followed by “immobilizer active”

So I called the RAC out and he had a good luck over the car, disconnected the battery and left it and then reconnected it. #The battery was reading 12.3 volts. It still wouldn’t start after this so he scanned the fault codes and it kept coming up with “lost comms with ecm/pcm” when checking the various systems.

So after that he arranged to have the car recovered to my local Ford dealer and they had a look at it yesterday and still could not find what is wrong with it??

I mentioned about a battery fault I had found on the net but they seemed a bit dismissive of this. apparently the master tech is have a look at the car today as he wasnt in yesterday.

Any ideas???

I have also had a couple of low battery warnings on the dash recently to.

Its a later one then. Mines a 2009. I wouldn’t read too much into the fact the battery is reading over 12 volts. I did this check a few times and the car still failed to start – it seems if the battery doesn’t have quite enough juice it won’t turn rather than turn lazily. The first thing I did was to change the battery – this didn’t fix the issue. I then got my local garage to scan the ECU codes (he did it for free – the local Ford dealership wanted £50 for that pleasure). It came up with a myriad of codes, but none seemed to relate to anything electric – a lot related to the turbo and clutch and some general catch-all codes. I was confident there was nothing wrong with it mechanically so the ECU codes were no help at all. After a lot of internet research there seemed that earlier cars can have a problems with the alarm/immobiliser system which can cause many different symptoms including starting problems through to strange windscreen wiper behaviour (everything is interconnected via the CAN BUS system). But with yours being a 2010 car that sounds like an unlikely cause as its related to water ingress in the alarm sounder which takes a few years. However I disconnected Bluetooth module as that was starting to play up just before I got the starting/battery draining problems and that seems to have fixed it. If that wasn’t the problem then a closer look at the alarm system was my next port of call.

The Bluetooth modules do seem to be unreliable and can fail after three years or so and obviously can fail in a way that causes a battery drain. The only thing that led me to suspect the Bluetooth module was that it started to play up just before I started having the problem.

Sorry I can’t be more specific. It does seem earlier cars do have some known issues and i’m not sure if all of those have been addressed in later cars, and it also seems that electrical issues like this are tricky to diagnose – hence the usual trial and error approach – I figured i’d have a go before handing it over to Ford along with a blank cheque. But my research seemed to come up with the alarm system being a big cause of electrical issues, the Bluetooth module, but not much else stood out.

Might also be worth checking out if your car has the very latest ECU software. Some of the early problems were sorted out via ECU software updates. If you’re car hasn’t got the latest and greatest software then you might be missing a fix for something.

Hope this helps in some way even if it doesn’t positively diagnose the problem. Good luck.

I just remembered that there are two potential issues with the alarm system. The first is related to water ingress into the sounder (its located behind the wheel arch liner in the nearside wheel arch so is susceptible to getting wet), the other is a problem with the ultrasonic sensors – obviously this could occur any time. Both can cause random and unrelated electrical issues which are difficult to diagnose. Definitely worth considering. It is possible to test these things. On my car you can isolate/disconnect the ultrasonic sensors via the system – you can set it so you are asked if you want to disable the ultrasonics when you switch the car off (e.g. if you’ve got kids or dogs in the car). You can try isolating this and see if that helps.

Just an update. I’ve just been to the garage and they have managed to get it started but it cut out again when it was connected to the diagnosis machine. The battery was tested and it was showing less than 6volts. It’s been on charge for 3 hours today and isn’t showing signs of improving so they are going to fit a new one and then test the system to see if anything is drawing current when it shouldn’t be.

All sorted.

The battery was the problem. One of the cells had died so it wasn’t holding a charge. New battery fitted and then the charging system was tested for excessive current draw with no problems found.

Fault codes cleared and it’s all sorted.

I’m surprised the AA chap didn’t diagnose the battery, 12.3v is about 30-40% state of charge, anything under 50% is basically flat. He should also have done a proper battery test and it would tell him if it had a dud cell or just needed replacing due to lack of capacity. Even if he didn’t have a suitable battery at the roadside he would be able to give you a copy of the results and then the garage would know to replace it before any further diagnosis.

Modern cars are fairly fussy and won’t try to crank over on a partially discharged battery like older ones.