Ford Focus Gearbox & Transmission Problems

Unless you’ve been the victim of a cruel twist of fate where something else has gone wrong at the exact moment you fitted the new neutral safety switch, it stands to reason that the new switch is not playing the game. You say you’ve tightened the selector linkage, but did you make sure the new switch was located precisely so that it could detect when the car was not in neutral (and, therefore, prevent it from starting)? By tightening the linkage, you may have moved the trigger for the safety switch to a position where it isn’t allowing the switch to make contact and let the engine crank.

In the meantime, try this: If the engine won’t turn with the gearbox in Park, move the selector to Neutral and see if that changes anything. If the car suddenly starts, you know that the new switch is working but needs adjustment to get it into the correct position.

By buying a manual Focus, you neatly sidestep the biggest problem with this car, that of the perennially faulty DCT transmission. As a rule of thumb, the advice is to never buy a Ford with this transmission, purely because its failure is a question of when, not if.

The irony is that the rest of the car was actually pretty reliable, so as long as the recall for a potential fuel leak caused by a blocked carbon-canister has been attended to, you stand a good chance of buying a reliable car.

They might both be Ford Focuses, but they're a couple of generations apart meaning that they are not only physically different, they also used different transmissions to each other. Even if, by some miracle, the older gearbox would bolt to the newer engine, the car still wouldn't have the correct electronics to make the transmission work properly.

Even if the transmission in question was a manual which requires much less in the way of electronic control, the unit in the 2008 Focus was a five-speed, while the later car used a completely different six-speed. Even things like the clutch and flywheel would be incompatible. You'd probably even find the gear-shifter for each transmission enters the cabin in a physically different spot, meaning the interior trim would no longer fit.

Luckily, your car is in the clear, and the LW Model Focus was the one with the hugely problematic dual-clutch transmission. In fact, these gearboxes were more or less ticking time bombs and more than half of them suffered – sometimes multiple – failures requiring replacement units. Ford was taken to task by the ACCC over its handling of the whole thing and was forced to quickly revise the Fiesta, Ecosport and Focus ranges. Which is why your car, the LZ model, has a turbocharged 1.5-litre engine and a conventional automatic transmission which is not only a better thing to drive, but also vastly less likely to fail prematurely and expensively.

Ford made the switch to the LZ model in 2015, largely as a response to the fearful reputation for transmission failures the LW model had gained. Our advice to anybody shopping for a Ford Focus (or Fiesta or Ecosport) is to absolutely avoid any example with the dual-clutch gearbox. Its demise will be a question of when, not if.

Perhaps you've been lucky and simply bought a freakish Focus without any DCT Powershift transmission problems. But when more than half the small Fords sold in Australia fitted with that transmission  experiencing either single or multiple failures, I'm afraid the odds are stacked against you in the longer term. It seems there are two types of Focus Powershift transmissions: Those that have failed, and; those that will fail at some stage.

The price you paid is probably about where the market is now, but this is a car we can't recommend at any price.

Ford has a responsibility to fix the problem, and they seem to have tried, but failed on five separate occasions. The next step is to contact Ford directly (13 3673) and lodge a complaint about the problem and your concerns with the dealership. If that doesn’t elicit a satisfactory response contact the ACCC and ask for their advice on further action you could take.

The most likely cause is a faulty neutral/park start switch that prevents the car from starting unless it’s either in Park or Reverse.

Ford changed from the LW model to the LZ in 2015. The LW had a dual-clutch automatic, which was very problematic and should be avoided; the later LZ had a regular automatic transmission and has none of the problems that beset the LW. In short the LZ is worth buying, and can be compared to the Mazda3 and Toyota Corolla for reliability.

All Ford focus models are front wheel drive except for the turbocharged RS performance car, which is an all-wheel-drive.

The auto had serious problems with the Powershift dual-clutch automatic transmission, so serious that it’s a car to avoid, but of course those problems don’t affect cars with a manual gearbox. The manual is a good little car that can be bought with confidence.