Do I keep and repair or sell it?

[bddo]

I just recently bought a 2012 Focus SEL Hatchback with 127,000 miles for my 16 year old daughter. My wife has been spending time with her driving as she gets in her hours in order to get her license. Yesterday, my wife informed me that she noticed something with the car regarding the transmission. She went to accelerate to pass a car, the engine rpm's went up, but the car did not accelerate. It's like it didn't know what gear to go in. She also noticed a small, but noticeable shake of of the steering wheel when taking off from a stop.

After now researching, I have discovered the nightmare that is the 6 speed, dual dry clutch, automatic transmission. My question is this:

Do I just sell this thing and take my loss, or do I invest in getting it fixed? It's my understanding that the TCM is still under warranty but none of the other transmission parts are. I have not been to the dealer yet.

Thanks.
Bryan

 

[Mike]

I would suggest at least getting a diagnostic or repair estimate first before writing off the car.

 

[MKVIIST]

I agree with Mike, find out what's wrong first. It could be a host of reason why the car didn't accelerate. Could be a fuel issues or something else unrelated to the transmission.

 

[Armando G]

We bought a 2013 about two months ago and experienced the same exact issues. The car is for my daughter and she didn't know any better, but when I took it out one day I noticed the hard vibration and the high RPM when trying to accelerate. Luckily ours only had 64k miles on it and was covered under warranty. The total for the transmission was about $6700, but they threw in a couple of other gaskets and seals that were deteriorating, so it came out to a little more. That cost was of course the retail price. All of it was covered under warranty. My other daughter owns a 2015 and when she started getting the shuddering they tried reprogramming it at first, but after it came back twice they took it in to do the whole transmission job... all under warranty.

Moral of the story, it's expensive and if you let it go, it gets worse. Register on the Ford site and see if the job has ever been done on your car. If not call Ford and ask if they will still honor the transmission recall on the car. They will usually honor it to 100k miles, but you never know. Hopefully you got it for a good price so if you have to pay for it, it's still worth it. I would hate to pass a problem on top the next guy... If you are able to unload it.

FYI... since the work was done, they've been great cars. Only other issue was a starting issue on the 2015, that was just a bad ground to the battery. I fixed that myself. Too much paint at the grounding point.

 

[Tom]

Rebuilding that particular transmission is not going to be cheap. My suggestion would be similar to what @Armando G suggested, call Ford Customer Support to see if the transmission has been fixed before, if it hasn't you might be in luck since it was part of the extended recall. Here's the number you need to call 833-805-3673

 

[bddo]

Thanks for the responses. I did go to my local Ford dealership and was able to get a printout of all of the warranty work on record. The car has been taken in for transmission related issues multiple times. It looks like to this point that the TCM has been replaced once and multiple reprograms/learnings done. It does not appear that the clutch work has ever been done. After driving the car for a while, I can confirm the "shudder" from 1-2 and 2-3. The issue my wife had I believe is just the way the transmission works when it is unsure which gear to be in when accelerating hard (slight delay). I did go out and do the "clutch scrubbing" procedure that I found on Youtube. I can say that it did improve the overall shifting, but I still get the shudder.

I'm scheduled to have the car go in and have it checked out next week. I'm also going to call Ford and see if they will do anything to help at its current mileage.

 

[Armando G]

Keep us updated.