Sounds like the Witworth flim flam tappets are discombobulating.

Try some injector cleaner, drive thwe car until warm put injector cleaner in fuel tank, and then drive like a top gear presenter when its safe high revs and speed,low gear, and watch all te crap come out the back, repaet the process after a few days.

again take it to the main dealer , dont ponce around a this stage, get them fault codes , your main dealer will give you the print outs as to wots up with it , you then decide weather you want them or an indipendent to repair ,

Dropped it off tonight at the main dealer – full diagnostic tomorrow. Took along some of the suggestions I’d found from here and the ford forums as it is in fact recognised as a common fault, but when I handed the service manager the bit of paper he threw a strop and said he wouldn’t look at it.

**** tosser!

Why is it I have no faith in these folk?

service managers are a bit like that mate , dont be put off or concerned by it, all you want is the fault code read out,let him chuck his toys out of his pram lol, i got a mate who works with me, has just come from a main ford dealer here in devon , post the codes here ( should be p codes ) i will give him a shout ) and get back to you asp. cheers

Thanks, Scraprider. Good Karma coming your way! 😉

Right, car update (for those following the fun and games)

Just spoke to the Ford Garage, who have just finished a full diagnostic on my car.

Any guesses what they found?

Anybody?

Yup. You guessed it. **** All!

They say it looks fine from the computer readout. Well if you call a car that turns itself completely off 15 times in a day and a half, usually while doing 50-60 mph on the motorway, fine. Then I guess it would be tip top!

(Seriously depressed)

They said they suspect a camshaft sensor (£75) and said they would take it our over the weekend with the computer hooked up and drive it till it happened again, so we’ll see what that brings.

They also told me other stuff that they found. Does any of this lot sound expensive to you?

(Price include parts, labour & VAT)

Dip headlight bulb – £22
Rear axle bushes – £186
Handbrake cable seized – £190
2 x new rear hubs £587

Shoot me now!

I’m sorry, but if it had been me I’d have walked out when the manager refused to look at the suggestions I’d brought in. Don’t pay for any of that work, looks to be a complete rip-off.

Go to a local independant garage!

Get a reccommnedation form someone, or failing that try and find a Ford specialist. There’s bound to be one. The better local garages have diagnosic equipment too, you don’t have to pay dealer prices!
🙂

Just looked at that again….

£22 for a fookin’ headlight bulb!!!!

Run away as fast as possible!

OBD scanners are cheap from eBay, and pretty widespread. Take it to an independent garage get the fault codes read.

I would almost put money on the cam position sensor.

As for the other stuff, get a decent garage to check it out and see what actually needs to be changed.

Conks

Done a bit of a ring to a few local garages I use and it seems I could cut those prices in half. Trouble is I won’t throw money at it if they can’t identify the problem it shows when it just cuts out.

The car is prob only worth £2500 and I have about $4000 of finance outstanding.

On taking it to another garage to get fault codes read. Would they show up elsewhere if Ford’s diagnostic check can’t find them?

CONK – They did say they thought it was most likely the cam sensor too. (£75, they are claiming.)

Dropped it off tonight at the main dealer

Why is it I have no faith in these folk?

Cos they’re the main dealer. Main dealers are always absolutely terrible. Never ever go near them, unless you want a new or ex demo car. You are right to have no faith in them.

I also had the same problem with my 2003 2.0 tdci.

Of the problems you listed. It seems that the most likely and cheapest are Crankshaft/Camshaft sensor problems and injectors needing recoding. In my case it was the injectors that needed recoding I took it to a diesel specialist and it cost about £60. It hasn’t reoccurred since. The fuel economy was also down before the re-code which might give you a bot of a clue. To replace the sensor if also apparently relatively cheap to get done and seems like it could be a diy job. So I would try that next.

I’ve read literally hundreds of posts online with folk experiencing hte same problem. Pretty disgraceful of Ford, if you ask me.

When you look at the reliability of Fords they generally come out middle to above average these days. However that masks the fact that some models are much more unreliable than others. It seems that Mondeos have more reliability issues than other the other Fords. Diesel Mondeos are more unreliable than the petrol ones. Mondeos manufactured between 2002 and 2004 were more unreliable than later ones.

I found this out by analyzing in detail the model by model breakdown in the which reports.

AB,

Cam position sensors are a common failure point on the TDCi motors. The 1.8 in the focus is literally a 5 min job. From memory the part was £20 or so. Never played with the 2.0 motor, but I imagine it will be similar.

Take engine cover off.
Undo connector to sensor (on top of the cam cover)
Remove fastening bolt (8mm IIRC).
Put it back together.

As for the other bits for the OP.

Headlight bulb – Do this youself. Easy peasy. £5.

Rear bushes – pretty common failure on a lot of cars, decent independent should be a lot cheaper.

Handbrake cable – Is a relatively easy DIY job. Get a Haynes manual and check it out.

Was it explained wht on earth you would need rear hubs?? Are the bearings a bit flakey?

Sounds like the Ford Garage was trying to shift you a new car. Cheeky Feckers.

As said earlier. A decent Garage will sort this for a fraction of the cost and only replace what needs to be replaced.

COnks

Sound like the irrate service manager is now trying it on . Did you ask for a full vehicle check that required putting it up on a ramp . You will be billed at whatever £60 an hour for someone to check your handbrake cable, which just guessin by the milage you do probably actually works well.
Maybe they threw it in the air to check the connections to the fuel pump,its most likely next to the tank.
I refuse to believe there is no eror code , if there was there will not be now as it will have been reset.
You need a Bosch deisel specialist, Can t see how 1 wonky injector would make the whole car shut down though, maybe through forward voltage perhaps a signal returned to the ecu to say yep, done that little job.

Is the car , stay with me on this , cutting out like someone has switched the switch on to accessory , just for a second, enought o switch off the motor?? So a simple key off / on will restart the car. Could be as simple as a loose /corroded wire in the back of the ign.switch. No eror code as the carthinks its you turning it off.

FixOrRepairDaily.
.
They are not selling enough cars so need to rob people to keep the gagrage in profit.
. Trading standards might like your story , if your bloody minded, bet another garage wouldn’t find half those faults if you asked them to check the car over.
£22 for a bulb. Which would cost £6 if its an H4 halogen ,not a HID, I suppose it would be £100’s then

Keep us informed.

hi sorry for not replying before , but we had our hands full in exeter, bugger no fault found , its your choice weather you leave it with them , some times the fault will not be logged because the ignition is cycled, also what he has given you is a vehicle health check , all main stream dealers do this A to get work and B a safty issue , tyres, brakes etc , im sure you would like to know if your brakes are worn out ,it also is free, yes you must be off your trolly if pay main dealer prices, there are pleanty of indipendents that will do that stuff for you at less than half the price,any ways see what they say after the test drive with the diog machine plugged into it, also an indipendent is also not garenteed to find the fault, cheers

also im not defending that service manager , he does sound like a knob , thats how it is from somone in the trade,

Sorry for the long post..
I read your posts with interest I have a 2001 Mondeo 2.0 TDCI 81,000 miles with similar problems.
A few days ago I was driving on a motorway when I tried to overtake, I put my footdown and car felt like it had lost power, the glow plug light started to flash(this indicates the ECU has detected a fault) carried on with journey slowly without full power avaliable.
Got home and searched internet for possible solutions, disconnected battery to see it this would clear fault codes but this did not work – actually made it worse, after starting engine sounded like bag of bolts and loads of smoke, would not rev over 1500rpm.
(i now know that after disconnecting battery the ECU has to relearn and I should have followed these setps –
1. Hold engine near to idle speed until engine up to normal temperature.
2. Hold engine at 1200rpm for Two minutes
3. Take car on 5 mile run to allow ECU to relearn

RAC called who put car on diagnostic laptop and gave two fault codes P2288 ‘Injector Control pressure above expected level’ and P2336 ‘Cylinder 1 knock control limit attained’
RAC man said it needed to go to a garage as he could not fix it.
Taken to Ford main dealer who I instructed to just put car on dianostic machine and give me estimate for repair.
Guess What!! Same fault codes as RAC had given me and said that it was probably cylinder injector 1 that would need replacing £200 + £100 fitting, but…they would advise replacing all 4 injectors to be sure. total cost about £1,600 including all pipes etc.
I wanted a second opinion so after various phone calls found a independant workshop who would clear the fault codes and recode the injectors.
This was done and car was back to normal, loads of power, no smoke 😀 test drive was completed and back to put on diagnostic pc to check that no new fault codes had been created, this was all ok.
Next day started fine and drove different journeys for about 50 miles…..then after a bit of quick acceleration the car cut out completly,- flasing glow plug light again. Coasted to side of road and tried to restart. Engine turned over but nothing…no life…
I don’t know what to do next,I certainly dont want to pay £1,600 to get it fixed. I think i’ll tow it back to the independent again and get it checked to see if any fault codes are there.
I’ll give an update when I have one. – any sugestions please let me know.

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/garage-services/26838-diesel-03-mondeo-flashing-2.html

this may be worth a look
seems the sensor is £14

As the OP, I’m happy to report that my problems seemed to be solved after a new fuel filter was fitted. 2 weeks and no problems so far {reaches for some wood}.

nice one m8 , was starting to wonder if you if you had broken down in the middle of nowear with no bike ,wot was up with old filter, water or just not seviced / changed , cheers

Don’t ever take you car to a main Ford dealer mate. Ford use monkeys who aren’t even qualified mechanics at their dealerships- to do servicing and even bigger jobs.
Also, the prices they quote you for the other bits are firstly, expensive, and the time they allow for each job is to get it into the garage, on a ramp, and back out- it doesn’t allow for the fact that your car is already on the ramp if your having several things done.
They once tried to charge my Mum 180 quid to have a throttle position sensor changed. I did it myself in 10 minutes, including testing it on our road, for 30 quid for the part. I’m a competent home mechanic but this was a very easy job.
Glad to hear your problems are sorted.

Throttle pedal? Tank Breather tube? Get the codes read. Did glow plug light come on indicating fault logged?

Hello Again, todays update….
Tried to start car first thing and wouldn’t start, as sugested got new Camshaft sensor and fitted it, cleaned connector with WD40 and car started first time. 😆
Been on test drive for about 40 miles and left to idle for an hour or so and seems OK…best £15 i’ve spent.
If I don’t post here again, take it as read that the car is all fixed…Lets hope I dont put on any more replys!!
Thanks to all and hope this is of some use to others with the same problem.
Dave