Ford C Max 2.L Petrol Zetc - Automatic gear box problems?

[frenchie TVR]

Hi guys,

Early ish next year I will become a daddy and therefore we are selling my girlfriend Nissan Figaro and will be buying a family car (I am keeping the TVR as a weekend toy).

The family car needs to be an Automatic as the Mrs will use it a lot in London and the Figaro is an auto and she has decided that this is what she wants to drive.

Last night we test drove my sister in Law’s Ford C Max 2L petrol (Zetec) automatic and we quite liked it… (engine is good, the car accelerates quite well, light to drive, quite a lot off room, etc… ).

I have just spoken with someone (who was in the motor trade) who told me that there is a problem on the Automatic gear box fitted to the Ford M max.

I looked at the internet and it seems that there are plenty of post of people telling that they had automatic gearbox failures even will little mileage: 20,000 – 40,000 … but it seems that it is mostly on the Diesel engine…

Could you please comment: is there a known problem on this automatic gear box; is it on the diesel only or on the petrol too…?

Please help as I would like to avoid spending £ 5K on a car and having an up to £ 4K bill for a gear box…. As the sensible family car would become not that sensible and more expensive that the TVR to look after…

Thanks in advance for any input.

Frenchie

[neiljohnson]

There was a problem with the metal coating on the torque converters on some (not many) gearboxes that caused failure at low miles most should have been done by now but afaik there is no way of telling if it is one of the gearboxes affected, probably best to avoid ones with super low miles just in case.

[ChimpofDarkness]

The internet seems to be full of tales of C-Max CVT failures.

Can anyone confirm or deny the CVT box is as unreliable as the inteweb suggests?

Any Ford techies out there that know the CVT truth?