Top 5 Problems Ford Focus Hatchback 1st Gen 1998-2007

Hey, friends. It's Len here from 1A Auto. Today, we've got a Gen 1 Ford Focus in here and we wanted to go over some of the top problems that we've found with it. Let's get started.

So you know me, one of the first things that I always like to talk about in these videos is a safety issue. For me, safety takes a top priority over everything. So with that said, I'm gonna start with the fuel pump issue on this. Sometimes what happens is, is the fuel pump will actually cut out or it'll kind of diminish the amount of pressure that goes up to the engine to run it. What you might notice is when you're driving down the road, the vehicle starts to kind of sputter a little bit, seems to lose power, that could happen, or you're driving down the road, you're just cruising along and the engine cuts right out. You gotta try to get off the side of the road nice and safely, that can be very scary. Maybe you stop at a stoplight or a stop sign, you go to accelerate and this kind of seems hesitant and kind of bucks a little and then maybe stops or it maybe goes, you just don't know. That's very unsafe because if you need to get out into traffic you need to know when you press that accelerator pedal it's gonna start going.

Generally speaking when this happens you're gonna see a check engine light on your dash that's gonna let you know that something's going on besides just the physical attributes of the fact that well you don't have very much power or your car is just stalling out on you. Generally speaking, this issue happens more when the weather is actually warm rather than cold. Some of the causes for this it is actually because the fuel pump inside the fuel tank there has an issue where it actually either restricts or it cuts out the pressure completely that's supposed to lead up to the engine. If you don't have any fuel pressure that leads up to your engine, the engine is not gonna run, period. Generally speaking on this vehicle, the fuel pump is actually the top fixed part to fix this issue.There are other things that I would like to check. You want to check that fuel pump driver module, make sure that that's sending out the power that it's supposed to be sending out, that's gonna tell the fuel pump it's time to go or it's not time to go.

Another thing that you'd want to check, the connector that actually connects in to where the fuel pump is, where it's supposed to get its electrical current, a lot of times that'll actually go bad. If you were to pull it apart and take a peek inside you would see where the connector is, it either looks burnt or maybe even corroded but generally speaking it's gonna look burnt, it's gonna look black and maybe even the plastic's gonna look a little funky. If that's an issue, of course, more than likely you're gonna have to replace the fuel pump because if that connector is no good it probably messed up the connector on the fuel pump as well and you would have to rewire in a new harness that goes to the pump. So like I said, the most common fix for this issue is actually replacing the fuel pump and you can find that at 1aauto.com.

The next thing that I want to talk to you about is located right under the hood over here. If you look right down along the side you can see a motor mount, there's gonna be multiple on this vehicle. Generally speaking for some reason on these vehicles they like to go bad very often. When they do go bad what you're gonna notice is a lot of vibration inside the cabin of the vehicle, especially at higher RPMs. You might also notice a banging feeling, maybe when you shift from park to reverse, you're still on the brake you feel a boom, right? When it kicks in. Maybe when you go from reverse to drive and you go to step on that gas you feel a boom. Well what's that boom? It's gonna be the engine shifting back and forth just rocking around however it wants to because the rubber part of these mounts dries out, it gets cracked and brittle. Once it gets cracked, of course, it gets weak and it can kind of flex around. I mean obviously you wouldn't be able to do with your hands but with the power of the engines on these, it gets a little bit of flex. The more flex it gets the more the engine moves around, the more vibration and noise you're gonna get.

So generally speaking to test these motor mounts, it's technically a two-person job, you can do it with one person but if you have an extra person that's great. You're gonna do it with two people. You're gonna have one person inside of the vehicle right here and they're gonna be the brake and gas guy. The other person outside of the vehicle is gonna be looking at that engine to see how much it rocks and which direction it rocks. If it rocks a lot forward, if it rocks a lot backwards you're gonna want to check that. Make sure that they're paying attention to just how much it rocks. If it moves a little bit, it's bound to happen, the engine is rubber-mounted. If it moves a lot of it, that is no good. The way we're gonna test it is just like this, I've got one foot on the brake and it's gonna have one foot on the gas. I'm gonna do brake right now, start the vehicle. I'm gonna go ahead and put it in reverse. My foot is still on the brake as hard as I can, I'm gonna try to rev it up a little bit. We're gonna watch that engine, see if it rocks around too much. If it doesn't I'm gonna keep continuing holding the brake. I'm gonna put it in drive. Rev it up again. I'm gonna see how much that engine moves. If it moves too much we know we need to replace those mounts. Let's give it a try. Foot on the brake, nothing on the accelerator, start the car, put it in reverse, give it a couple revs. Okay, let's go drive. All right. Let's turn it off and assess the situation. So as you saw these motor mounts are actually in great condition, I'm not worried about them. If you did need them, we sell them and we have an instructional video on how to install them.

The next thing I want to talk to you about on these vehicles is the window regulator, they're known to go bad and it happens many, many times. Lucky for us we've got the coupe version here so we've only got two windows that we have to worry about, if we had four, well, we'd have multiple issues. But to get to the point, generally speaking what happens is these window regulators will bind up inside. It's gonna have two channels that go up like this and those channels are also gonna have little spots that mount to the glass. On those channels with the spot that mounts to the glass, it's also gonna have little cables that come around and they lead to your motor assembly. What can happen is, is those cables can get crimped or bind a little bit on the inside of the cable housing, if that happens your window's gonna kind of obviously have issues kind of like this one. Another thing to think about is you have window channels, the area where the window goes up and down inside the door panel, it's not just here, it's actually behind this panel as well. If that's kinked or it's misaligned, the window is gonna have a hard time going up. Obviously it'll be a little bit easier coming down because well gravity works.

Now the fixes for this, pretty basic, you'd go ahead and take off this door panel right here, you can take a peek inside and look at that window regulator. If you see any of the cables look like they're bent or they're crimped, maybe they got pinched somehow during installation or maybe somebody removed the door panel for another, obviously you're gonna have to replace the whole window regulator. If you find that these channels are clogged up, well you could probably try to clean them, you could also check the channels on the window regulator where the cables and the little doohickeys that hold the window run. If those are gunked-up with debris or anything like that that could cause binding. If all those look good, you don't see any physical issues, you test the motor, the motor works fine but for some reason the window still just doesn't want to go up and down, I would just go ahead and replace that window regulator which is available at 1aauto.com.

The next thing I want to talk about with these cars is the ignition. A lot of times what you'll find is that the key just gets jammed up and either it doesn't go in or it won't come out or it won't turn once it does one of those things. What happens is inside the ignition cylinder right here you have these little tumblers, they kind of just move up and down. And when you put your key in it's gonna have the little grooves that line up with those tumblers and they say yeah this is the right key or no they're not. Well what happens is those tumblers one day they just decide that they want to fall. So then you try to put the key in, you're bonking up against that first tumbler, maybe it moves out of the way but the second one could be damaged as well, the next thing you know you can't get the key out, right? You're jammed in between the two or even you made it all the way in, you started the car, you went to get it back out and the tumblers are just stuck inside those grooves on the key. Show you what I'm talking about.

The two fixes for the ignition cylinder, the permanent ones at least would be of course to replace the ignition cylinder, and why I said two would be because you can either replace the ignition cylinder with one that has keys specifically made for it or generally speaking you can also find ignition cylinders that you can have set to match up with your existing keys. Of course, if you use the original keys you won't have too much of an issue getting into those door locks. If you were to get an ignition with a different key, you're gonna have to carry around multiple keys now and have one separate for your doors and one for your ignition.

The next problem I want to talk about with these vehicles is the charging system issue. You might find yourself having a check engine light come on and you're gonna find a code that says P1246. Basically it's gonna come down to the fact that you have a problem with your alternator. Let's get into it. So some of the overall symptoms that you're gonna find when you have this issue is you may or may not even see a check engine light on but what you will probably notice is your car probably stalls out while you're driving. You go to step on the gas or even come to a stop and the vehicle just dies out, yeah your battery could be dead but there's probably a reason why the battery is dead.

There are other symptoms that you may find. If you try to jumpstart that vehicle after said stall out, it might start up while the jumper cables are on there but as soon as you take them off, the vehicle is gonna die right out again, that's telling you that the alternator is not working the way that it should. So some of the common causes for this that we found was just a plain old defective alternator. Sometimes you get those alternators and you try to turn the pulley and just doesn't want to turn. You might even find that the case is cracked to the point that it's moved and it's pressing up against the innards of that alternator and it's making it so it doesn't want to turn. Of course if that's happening you're not gonna get great charging coming from it. There are other issues, maybe it could come down to wiring, maybe you have a bad fuse someplace, maybe you have a mouse in the house and it decided that wanted to eat through a wire somewhere. There's a lot of places you're gonna have to look. One of the first things that I would want to do though is test that alternator. If it tests no good I would want to make sure that I come up with a brand new known good alternator. Test that alternator and see if it's working, if it still isn't working at that point you'd have to move along to making sure that you don't have an issue with that wiring harness.

So the most common fixes for this would be of course for me I would go to 1aauto.com and I would buy myself a new alternator. Other issues that you could find is like I said you might have a blown fuse or even some bad wiring from having a mouse in the house.

Okay. So that was just some of the top problems that we found with this vehicle, there are of course a lot of great things about the vehicle, it's not a bad vehicle at all. If you liked the video make sure you get down there and you click that like button. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe and ring that bell that way there you can be kept up with all of our latest content. While I still got you, why don't you leave me a comment and just let me know how you thought about this video, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks for watching. Visit 1aauto.com for quality auto parts shipped to your door. The place for DIY auto repair. And if you enjoyed this video please click the subscribe button.