[Safecracker]

Hi

Please, does anyone know how the Focus´door locking system works? I need that information in order to plan on what will I do to fix my Focus´ strange behaviour:

Whenever the weather gets cold (and where I live - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - "cold" also means "pouring rain" or "high air humidity") the driver´s door lock fails to also operate on the other three (I own a 4-door Sedan). This failure can range from a few seconds delay until the other locks operate to a several minutes delay to no operation at all, depending on how cold the weather is.

Worse still, sometimes during a trip I hear a click from the doors as if someone was operating on them (for example, trying to unlock an already unlocked door). There were also a couple of times I found my car unlocked upon returning but I swear it was locked when I left.

The problem vanishes as soon as the sun shines again or temperature is high anyway. Also, when operated from the passenger´s door or from the key´s remote the locking system always works as expected, but random locking/unlocking can still occur.

Any ideas, please?

Thank you,
Otto

 

[penguin]

Popular Mechanics sez:

"Does some ghost haunt your 2003-05 Ford Focus and make the central power door locks lock and unlock themselves at random? Ford Technical Service Bulletin (TSB) 05-10-21 says to clean any corrosion from the door latch connectors, then pack them full of dielectric grease."

 

[Safecracker]

Thank you, I´ll try that.

 

[exsodius]

Hi
Whenever the weather gets cold (and where I live - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - "cold" also means "pouring rain" or "high air humidity") the driver´s door lock fails to also operate on the other three (I own a 4-door Sedan). This failure can range from a few seconds delay until the other locks operate to a several minutes delay to no operation at all, depending on how cold the weather is.

Worse still, sometimes during a trip I hear a click from the doors as if someone was operating on them (for example, trying to unlock an already unlocked door). There were also a couple of times I found my car unlocked upon returning but I swear it was locked when I left.

The problem vanishes as soon as the sun shines again or temperature is high anyway. Also, when operated from the passenger´s door or from the key´s remote the locking system always works as expected, but random locking/unlocking can still occur.

Any ideas, please?

Thank you,
Otto

Maybe a little late. But i have exactly the same problem. Even " sometimes during a trip I hear a click from the doors as if someone was operating on them" are the same om mine.

Today i opened up my door trim. And the latch connector had drops of water on it. Elsewere inside the door it was pretty dry. I took some grease "called vaselin here in norway." inside the connector after drying it up.

Do you have a grease called Vaselin in usa?

I don't know if this will work but i feel this could be it. It's hard with periodical problems.

Anyway how did it work out for you??

 

[AllanGreen]

Hi, not sure whether this is helpful nine years later but someone else might get here via Google or whatever. Anyway, I believe that this problem (doors unlocking after heavy rain) is actually due to a horrible Ford design error. Anyone who has ever run cables outdoors knows that before bringing them to any termination (or even through a wall!) you must make a downwards pointing loop in the cable. Any drips travelling along the wire then fall safely away rather than travelling along the to the connector (or whatever).

Now have a look at the cable run to the lock actuator in a Mk 1 Focus front door (haven't looked at the back doors but...) The guys who designed the actuator were thoughtful enough to locate the socket so that the cable plugs in at an upward angle (so no water will tend to migrate into the actuator). However the cable run to the connector goes diagonally downwards straight to the back of the connector. On my car the pathetic piece of sleeving had largely rotted away and there were obvious watermarks on the connector body. (I'm counting myself very lucky that the copper wire hadn't all rotted too as it would surely eventually have done.) The loom designer presumeably thought this through in the original design because (on my car anyway) there was sufficient slack cable taped up for it to be rerouted around the lower edge of the access hole so that it hit the connector from below. I secured it with a couple of tie-wraps in its new position to prevent it rattling around. I added some extra protectiion to the loom to prevent any chance of it rubbing against the door panel edges. For good measure I've also replaced the original connector "sleeving" with tape being careful not to obscure the release clip.

Anyway we've had torrential rain since I did this on Saturday and so far no phantom unlocking...

 

[amc49]

Yeah, you see stuff like that and you begin to wonder just where they get their engineers from now.......................I thought the same things on Tempo door lock motors, or, I'll just put this under the flood of water just to see how long it lasts. Oh, and protect it in a shield that disintegrates in 6 months..............I actually got better results putting the motors in ziplock plastic sandwich bags properly rotated, LOL. One hundred dollar motors, that I rebuilt for the price of the bag, the rebuilds far outlasted the factory parts (insert LOL even louder now).

 

[AllanGreen]

Oh dear...

After 6 months freedom from phantom unlocking of my passenger door it has just started doing it all over again. Interestingly enough, after heavy rain... Although I still think that rerouting the cable was a good idea clearly not a complete solution. []