Focus flat battery

[Busker]

Hello Folks,

My Dad has a 56 focus with a flat battery after the side lights were left on. We can't turn the lights off now or lock the car and there are no ignition lights or interior lights?

Obviously we need to jump start the car but could there be other problems that we need to avoid - could this car damage a second car trying to jump start it?

Any help much appreciated

Graham

[dilateous]

In these days of computer (ECU) controlled cars and unless I was in the middle of a desert 500 miles from anywhere else, I wouldn't 'jump start' a modern car who's gubbins pieces are controlled by a computer. In general, computers don't like surge currents and voltages.

Although I don't quite understand your comment about not being able to turn off the lights, since that seems to indicate the battery is still functional to some degree.

But as for things apparently getting corrupted (can't turn off etc), perhaps as the battery volts slowly decreased when the side lights were left on a crisis point was reached, and information got corrupted.

But if it were mine I'd start by charging the battery for an hour or few with a conventional charger. I wouldn't contemplate 'jump starting' a modern car unless EVERY other option has failed to solve the problem.

Edited by dilateous on Monday 12th March 12:06

[Busker]

Hello,

Thanks for you reply - first some good news. The car has been on charge for about 6 hours and started first time without any problems and has been fine since so that is ok.

With regard to the headlights we were turning the light switch to the off position but the lights were still on - don't understand that either. Maybe it takes more power to switch them off than was available at the time? Who knows?

Anyway all is ok now and thank you for taking the time to reply - it is very much appreciated.

[dilateous]

Busker said:

Maybe it takes more power to switch them off than was available at the time? Who knows?

With computers one never knows - with possibly millions of lines of coding who knows what's concealed within?

[ooOoo]

it will more than likely be one of these 2 things..

1. clocks are fubar
2. control unit is fubar

replacing the clocks is easy. go to the scrapyard and buy another set. or off ebay. just pay pennies

the control unit can be found behind the small peice of plastic trim on the right hand side of the drivers footwell. the control unit is situated just below the main ECU. the main ecu is the metal box. the control unit is the plastic thing with the large wiring harness going into it directly underneath the ecu.

i have fixed this issue on numerous focus's of the same age.

only slight issue is, you 'MAY' require some coding to be done if the control unit is fubar. i would strongly advise avoiding a ford dealership as they charge huge money. the downside is... you NEED to plug your car into a proper Ford WDS system. so you need to track someone down who has one. this is not such an easy job! as technically speaking... no one is meant to own one of these large computers except ford dealers! there are, of course, a few people out there who has managed to 'acquire' these for-mentioned bits of kit...