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Issues with new 2012 Ford Focus

888K views 2K replies 468 participants last post by  PrDawg 
#1 ·
Well purchased my brand new 2012 Ford Focus on May 21, 2011. My vehicle had to be ordered and was delivered to me on May 24th. Upon driving it, I found that when I would come to a stop and push the gas to go, it would sputter and hesitate. I have been dealing with it for over 2 weeks and decided to contact my dealership.

I took the vehicle to the shop on June 3rd. The tech drove with me and felt exactly what I was talking about. He stated that he had to put it on the computer. Within 30 minutes, he came out with a piece of paper stating 2012 Focus automatic transmission shudder. Some 2012 focus vehicles equipped with the powershift/DPS6 transmission may experience a shudder/shake on start up or when slowing to a stop. This condition does not cause durability or reliably concerns and will deminish as the clutch breaks in. "IF CUSTOMERS COMPLAIN OF THIS ISSUE, PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REPAIR THE VEHICLE AND SHARE THIS SERVICE MESSAGE WITH THE CUSTOMER.

My question was, how long does this go on and when will it stop? No on could answer. Has anyone else felt this issue? I could not find any post on this prior to me putting this up. I stated I do not feel safe in the vehicle. The car at times when I pull out on the road feels just like it will stall out. After sending an email to the VP of the dealership, I was contacted by the service manager. He stated that he is working on getting an answer from Ford.. At the time of service there were 781 miles on my car. Today there are 1291 and still nothing has changed. I am awaiting a reply and will move forward if I don't like the answer.[bigcry]

Also, yesterday while driving, my shoe lace got caught on brake peddle. Has anyone else ever gotten stuck on the brake peddle? Just curious. It freaked me out.
 
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#1,344 ·
the airbags will not deploy unless its life or death.. they do not pop out unless the impact is WAY worse, earlier airbags deplayed to easy.. they have it so that G forces need to be high enough to warrent it. 35mph is not it, more like 55 would have deployed them..

And not only that.. direction of impact will be a big factor.


Most frontal air bags from the 1990s were designed to deploy in crashes above a threshold level of 14 mph into a solid concrete barrier. At the same time, most air bag systems were also designed to never deploy in crashes below 8 mph into a solid concrete barrier. Between these two speeds, the air bags may or may not deploy, depending on the specifics of the accident and vehicle.



Also take into account the deceleration meters may have warrented it not needed to,,, I mean think of it, she is ok right?

The car airbags would have hurt something bad with burn marks from the rub of the airbags... IMO they worked perfectly if everyone spent no more then a few hours to get checked out in hospital.
 
#1,346 ·
the airbags will not deploy unless its life or death.. they do not pop out unless the impact is WAY worse, earlier airbags deplayed to easy.. they have it so that G forces need to be high enough to warrent it. 35mph is not it, more like 55 would have deployed them..

And not only that.. direction of impact will be a big factor.


Most frontal air bags from the 1990s were designed to deploy in crashes above a threshold level of 14 mph into a solid concrete barrier. At the same time, most air bag systems were also designed to never deploy in crashes below 8 mph into a solid concrete barrier. Between these two speeds, the air bags may or may not deploy, depending on the specifics of the accident and


Also take into account the deceleration meters may have warrented it not needed to,,, I mean think of it, she is ok right?

The car airbags would have hurt something bad with burn marks from the rub of the airbags... IMO they worked perfectly if everyone spent no more then a few hours to get checked out in hospital.
What about the seat belts not working...how fast do you have to be going before they engage???
 
#1,347 ·
Here is what I found, Obviously we do not have Mechanical Pre Tensioner


"Electronic/Pyrotechnic Pre Tensioner
This pre tensioner operates with an ECU and a gas generator system in a similar way to the airbag. In fact the electronic pre tensioner usually works together with the airbag and may even use the same ECU as the airbag and that increases its effectiveness.
An explosive charge is used and causes the gas generator to produce a volume of gas. This volume of gas produces a pressure which acts on a mechanical linkage to pull the seat belt. This pre tensioner is usually located in the B-pillar.

Both pre tensioners are designed to slacken off slightly around the same time the airbag deploys, this can be around 30 milliseconds after the collision. This slight lapse allows the passenger to have a controlled contact with the airbag.
Both pre tensioners are intended to be used once. Once a pre tensioner has been deployed the entire mechanism including the seat belts should be replaced. The seat belt pre tensioner can be found on the front and rear seats to provide all round safety and protection. "



So either the force was not enough for the ECU to say deploy, or it worked and released very fast..


This system is not perfect but is fairly strong. It takes allot to deploy the system because of complaints that they went off to soon, or to easy.
 
#1,349 ·
yea, because clearly the $7000 damage is fords fault.
Good thing the Airbags didnt Deploy and cause another $3000 in damage unnecessarily..

And before you challenge my statment I been there, and yes.. my damage was $7000 and my Airbags did not deploy thank god..

 
#1,350 ·
So what does it take to deploy Airbags, here is my Silver car... this was 55+mph

No I was not driving it.. but the old guy that did suffered more hurt from the airbag then the dash...










Here is the car today, all better... most of the airbag system has been repaired, almost finished with the little stuff...


 
#1,359 ·
So you are telling us that the silver car was in a frontal crash a 55+ mph...was the other car that was hit rear ended doing around 30 (25mph difference)or did it hit a stopped car or whatever where it was a true 55+ impact...cause if it was a true 55+ impact the engine would be in the front seat...B-lou
 
#1,362 ·
thats a immovable object.... the car he hit moved forward on impact, he hit a honda...
No skid marks, speed determined in police report by police and judgement of statement of driver saying he was doing just over limit 55mph


t in mv = F(

Also the impack on this car was just off center, the car in the test is 70% on driver side..
 
#1,365 ·
Dont try to teach me about cars and physics...I have been in the car game for 32 years and there is no way that silver focus rear ended a stopped car at 55+ an sustained that minimal damage....I think your drivers judgement was about 30mph off...I am done arguing and just keep your fords cause I am done with those P'sOS....B-lou
 
#1,369 ·
I think it might be, this is the first automatic car iv ever owned so I didn't even notice at my test drive. After about 1,000 the transmission is super smooth, yet the girlfriend still thinks the car drives funny but I can't tell.
 
#1,371 ·
Just want to chip in here; I love the transmission on my oh-twelve focus Ti. I think I've noticed what you guys are talking about, the slight shuddering at times when starting up. I don't find any particular fault in that, I just think the computer is confused by what I want and wasn't expecting shifts or starts. It reminds me of when I was first learning manual and dropped my foot off the clutch a bit too fast and almost stalled out.

I have found that I am now leaving it almost constantly in S mode now that I've taught it how I like to drive. For the first couple hundred klicks I shifted manually in S-mode: downshifting when braking (especially downhill), and it now knows to downshift for me.

I can honestly say this is the first automatic transmission I have actively liked. Given that this is the first mass produced ford with a dual-clutch computer-controlled manual, I can be a bit forgiving about the occasional clutch hiccough; and as yet it has never failed to kick in when I've needed.



All that having been said, recently I've been having some issues with the touchscreen Sync system. The radio frequencies have disappeared from the home screen, and occasionally all of the text will simply not appear in any of the screens, though the screen will still respond to touches if you remember where you want to touch and what it does.

Next scheduled service is in a month, so I'll bug them about it when it goes in. Just leaving a comment here.

Oh, and also: does anyone know if it's possible to recalibrate the gas tank? Last time I filled it up, I got in about 30 Litres (the capacity of the tank is about 49 litres, right?) despite the fact that it was a bit below the 1/4 mark.
 
#1,375 ·
Just want to chip in here; I love the transmission on my oh-twelve focus Ti. I think I've noticed what you guys are talking about, the slight shuddering at times when starting up. I don't find any particular fault in that, I just think the computer is confused by what I want and wasn't expecting shifts or starts. It reminds me of when I was first learning manual and dropped my foot off the clutch a bit too fast and almost stalled out.

I have found that I am now leaving it almost constantly in S mode now that I've taught it how I like to drive. For the first couple hundred klicks I shifted manually in S-mode: downshifting when braking (especially downhill), and it now knows to downshift for me.

I can honestly say this is the first automatic transmission I have actively liked. Given that this is the first mass produced ford with a dual-clutch computer-controlled manual, I can be a bit forgiving about the occasional clutch hiccough; and as yet it has never failed to kick in when I've needed.
Next scheduled service is in a month, so I'll bug them about it when it goes in. Just leaving a comment here.

Snip

Oh, and also: does anyone know if it's possible to recalibrate the gas tank? Last time I filled it up, I got in about 30 Litres (the capacity of the tank is about 49 litres, right?) despite the fact that it was a bit below the 1/4 mark.
No you can't re-calibrate the fuel gauge, its designed this way on purpose.

There are at least two reasons why the analog gauge lies to you.

One it's programmed to get you to refuel before you have the chance to run out of fuel.

Secondly once you use the reserve fuel you risk damaging the fuel pump as you start to either over heat it, or start actively sucking out any of the debris and deposits that formed on the bottom of the tank over time.

The guage is optimistic over the first half so that people feel that the fuel is going further and then drops aggressively on the lower half to remind you to get fuel sooner, or so that's how it appears in pretty much every car I've seen or driven in the last 6 or 7 years.
 
#1,377 ·
New Clutches

I guess I spoke too soon about having my transmission repaired by having new clutches installed twice. The car has reverted back to the "leaping, lurching, and/or jumping" from 1st to 2nd gear. It is worse when car is cold. And the trans refuses to downshift when needed. Like I have to get out of someone's way, press down on the gas, it hesitates too long. Then it will go into a much lower gear than needed.
Will take it back to the dealer, and back again, and again if necessary, I wish I had never purchased this car.
 
#1,381 ·
I guess I spoke too soon about having my transmission repaired by having new clutches installed twice. The car has reverted back to the "leaping, lurching, and/or jumping" from 1st to 2nd gear. It is worse when car is cold. And the trans refuses to downshift when needed. Like I have to get out of someone's way, press down on the gas, it hesitates too long. Then it will go into a much lower gear than needed.
Will take it back to the dealer, and back again, and again if necessary, I wish I had never purchased this car.
This is why I decided not to keep my Focus. Ford service managers told me that Ford didn't know how to fix the transmission problems, and attempts to do so didn't last. I didn't need months and months of headaches.
 
#1,379 ·
DCT shudder

Well it's nice to see I'm not the only one with this problem. I love the car except for the shudder on takeoff. I just got back from a 600+ mile trip on secondary roads and averaged 40.3 mpg, this was with two people, three scuba tanks and all my dive gear. I bought it in July '11 and it presently has 25000+ miles on it. No trouble up 'til now, they did the reprogram last time I had it in for an oil chg, about 4000 ago. It seems like the problem started then. Anyway, it does the shudder thing when taking off and going into 2nd. I've worked on cars all of my life and have done numerous clutch jobs, the clutch disc has to be either glazed or it has fluid on it from a leaky seal. It's temp related, the hotter the ambient, the bigger the problem. Used to be in the old days when you had a glazed disc you would do a few high RPM clutch dumps and it would remove the glazing and all would be good, can't do that with this one. Anyway I'm making an appt. I traded my '04 F350 CC 6.0 diesel for this, I don't have to tell you guys about the 6 OH! problems I'm sure. I will give Ford one more chance, if they don't take care of this it will be Toyo, Subaru, Nissan, Huyandi, etc. I will never give a cent to Obama motors and I will never buy a Chrysler. IMHO, Ford missed the boat on the DCT when they went with dry clutches, should have gone the multi-plate wet clutch route but they cost more. They are much smoother and don't have glazing probls. and only chatter if there is a mech. problem, ie. broken pressure plate, etc. Sorry for the long one.
 
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