Back in late 2023, YouTuber John Ross of the WatchJRGo channel became the latest victim of a rather common problem centered around the Powershift transmission present in his girlfriend’s 2015 Ford Focus, which only had 70k miles on it at the time. Unfortunately, a dealer denied his warranty claim, noting that it wasn’t his Transmission Control Module (TCM) that was failing, but rather, his clutches. Ross later discovered that the clutches weren’t the root cause of the problem, however, and his saga continues to this day.
In this new video, Ross discusses just how broad of a problem this is, which is precisely why it’s pretty easy to find Ford Focus models with failed Powershift transmissions selling for cheap on a regular basis. The TCM is just seemingly destined to fail at some point in all of these cars, though Ross did wind up pulling the transmission in his car and discovered that the clutches were bad – however, replacing them didn’t rectify the root cause of the problem. Making matters worse, clutches shouldn’t fail at 70k miles, either.
After the new clutches were installed, the Ford Focus started driving perfectly again – but only for three months. At that point, the car started experiencing the same old issues, signaling that it was a TCM failure that was to blame from the start. Problem is, TCMs are expensive and difficult to find given how many failures folks are experiencing at the moment, and as such, Ross hasn’t yet secured a replacement for his Focus after Ford denied his warranty claim.
This certainly should serve as a warning to anyone that owns a Ford Focus with the Powershift transmission, or anybody that’s tempted to buy one used, given how cheap they’re selling for. Fixing this particular problem could wind up becoming more of a headache than it’s worth, after all, as we can clearly see in this case.
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