Considering purchasing a 2012 Ford Fiesta Powershift (the automatic one). Its a bit of a long distance purchase; its going to be my runabout in Thailand. Only I don’t know much about the Fiesta. I read of all kinds of issues with the Powershift transmission, but I don’t know if these are problems that happen early in a car’s life due to manufacturing defect etc, and therefore not really a concern on a 10 year old car.
I think it probably needs a set of discs, pads and shoes; the Ford dealer charges about £70 for a full set of brakes fitted (labour is about £12 an hour), so a backstreet garage will do it for £40 or so. I get to see it in January. A local mechanic has checked it over, and pronounced it fit. There is an annual inspection, but its fairly rudimentary (check the tyres, brakes, lights, horn and look for exhaust smoke).
When I’m not there, and if the wife isn’t using it, it pays for itself as I’ll rent it out for £200 a month.
Where did that interval come from? Ford Thailand give the transmission oil change as once in 240k kms or 144 months. I see the 60k km change often reported on forums, but without source, so assume its come from somewhere like Ford US, where they do change auto transmission oil a lot. Wonder why Ford Thailand do it differently. Thai small ads are full of cars, including Fords, with mega miles on them (ie 300-400k kms is not unusual).
My understanding is that the failure experiences are either in the TCM, which might be fixed by cleaning up some earths, but a more serious issue is in the dry dual clutch packs used, which fail irrespective of the condition of the transmission oil (ie they are dry).
But maybe the choice is made for me. The wife couldn’t drive a week ago, has now passed her driving test with flying colours, and is now driving around the island. As the Thais say, 555.
I just verieid; there are 2 Powershift branded transmissions. One is a dry clutch and the other a wet clutch. The wet clutch version was never fitted to the Fiesta. As I thought, lack of transmission oil changes has nothing to do with the Fiesta transmission issues, which are a mixture of electrical issues (poor earthing, failing battery) or defective dual clutch.
