So, I’m looking at a cheap Focus estate for bike duties, when on the test drive I noticed the digital Odometer goes blank on occasion. Is this a know issue and is it cheap to fix, car looks good otherwise. Pic here from my phone during the test drive:

[url=https://flic.kr/p/HEduKL]image[/url]

I’m sure you can find a cheap Focus that doesn’t do that. Walk away, not your problem. Could be a simple fix, could be complicated, why take the risk? Keep looking.

I’d be more worried about you driving at over 140mph whilst taking photos 🙂

I had an 02 focus that had instrument cluster issues; occasionally the needles wouldn’t do anything and the odometer would go blank, although the various warning lights still worked. It got worse until it never worked at all. A garage poked around with it for ages before swapping the whole cluster for a new one. It was something to do with the controller PCB slowly dying. It still drove fine, although working out if you were going to run out of fuel was a sod.

Thankfully Ford paid for all this rather than me, as it was something that had been covered on Watchdog as an issue that Ford knew about but played silly buggers with.

weird dial behaviour is normally an indicator of a low battery or an electrical fault.

The former is normally all the dials flip up to max when you turn the key to the first bit on the ignition.

doing it when driving suggests a bad connection somewhere either in the dash/PCB or in the power supply to it.

Yeah. I wouldn’t buy a car that had been redlined like that…

My 04 Focus did something similar. I took out the instrument panel (not too difficult, but needs care) and cleaned the back of the circuit board and the contacts with electrical cleaner spray and an old toothbrush, which fixed it. It’s a known issue and detailed instructions can be found online.

145mph in a diesel Focus.

Making progress were we?

When the battery on my old Mazda 6 started to die the speedometer & rev counter used to go full scale for a second or so when it was starting, new battery sort it.

Happened to my mates focus and eventually meant it wouldnt pass its mot. He was quoted 500 for a second hand instrument panel fitted so it effectively scrapped the car. If the one you are looking at is cheap and has 12 month ticket might be worth a punt otherwise i would walk away

145mph in a diesel Focus.
Making progress were we?

I’m not sure if an ’01 has a dpf, but I wanted to blow it out with an Italian tune up anyway.

Happened to my mates focus and eventually meant it wouldnt pass its mot. He was quoted 500 for a second hand instrument panel fitted

WTF? buy a DIM on, ebay, fit it (couple of screws and takes about 5min) and recode the PATS / mileage adjustment (will cost you around £50, either buy buying the suitable tool (also off ebay) or from one of the less dubious “mileage correction” service providers)

Chances are however, if it’s just the LCD going blank, it just needs the zebra strip replacing (the lcd is a small glass panel, and the numerous electrical connections for the digits are “linked” to the DIM pcb by a small conductive rubber strip, that is sandwiched in place, but can vibrate and fall out / only make intermittent contact etc)

The dials on my 2005 Focus did this once. I think it was a battery problem. Had trouble starting one time and the dials all went to the maximum.

On mine, if you held in the ‘adjust’ button on the indicator for 5 seconds or so, while having the key at the setting just before ignition then you could display various settings including ‘gauge sweep’. Doing gauge sweep a few times seemed to help and within a day all was back to normal. But probably needs a new battery as said in other posts.

If the gauges are stuck like that, how are you going to know how fast you are driving?

And it’ll clearly fail an mot because that very reason.

Very, very common Focus problem.

Fixed my wife’s 52 plate following instructions on the web.

Only needed a few squirts of WD40 once the instrument panel was out.