Ford Fiesta Automatic Transmission Malfunction

gazfocus

Looking for some advice please...

I have a 12 reg Ford Fiesta 1.4 Titanium Automatic. I purchased the car in May 2013 and it suffers from an intermittent fault with the automatic transmission.

Basically, every now and again, the car struggles and then a 'Transmission Malfunction' error appears on the screen and the car becomes erratic. I have read someone describe the fault as being like a learner driver learning to drive a manual car (jumpy/jerky). When this happens, the car feels very unsafe and it makes me nervous about doing long journeys, so much so that my wife has just purchased a new car to do all long journeys in, so mine will be purely to/from work.

The car is under warranty until June 2015 so I really need to get this fixed prior to the warranty expiring otherwise I can see it costing me a lot of money.

The car has been back to the Ford dealer previously and they have been unable to diagnose the issue, however, I have it booked back into the Ford dealer for the beginning of November and I would like advise about how to insist that they keep the car until they can guarantee that the fault is fixed.

Is there someone at Ford that I can write to? If so, can anyone point me in the right direction?

I have tried googling the problem I'm having and most of the complaints seem to be in America, but it does prove that there is an issue there.

I am really not happy as I paid almost £10,000 for this car (as a used car) and it's just not good enough. I really would like some assurance from Ford that they will fix it under warranty.

JustinR1979

I would ask on a Ford forum, someone will most likely have had this issue.
Passionford was always a very busy forum with plenty of knowledge.
Would expect a fault code on a modern auto and diagnostics to scan for issues, like they do on the engine.

gazfocus

JustinR1979 wrote: »

I would ask on a Ford forum, someone will most likely have had this issue.
Passionford was always a very busy forum with plenty of knowledge.
Would expect a fault code on a modern auto and diagnostics to scan for issues, like they do on the engine.

Thanks, I will join and post on there. Unfortunately, there isn't a fault code. Turning the engine off for 5 minutes seems to 'reset' the fault and the car then continues as normal, but obviously wipes any fault code off the system.

JustinR1979

I'm sure car will store codes until turned off by diagnostics.
But I am more used to 90's cavaliers where you turn key on and off a dozen times!