December/January 2022

I n this article I am going to go over a recent job I had which initially looked to be much more complicated than it turned out to be. Fortunately, not jumping in with both feet, starting the diagnosis from the beginning regardless of what had been done before and planning my attack meant I got a first-time fix. Second opinion The car in question was a 2017 Ford Kuga. The customer’s complaint was that the speedometer didn’t work and the mileage and trip counters were blank (see Fig.1). The vehicle also had an ABS and traction control warning light illuminated and a hill descent fault. The customer then explained that they had received a letter through the post stating that their vehicle had a recall from Ford for a PCM update for oil dilution problems. As a result, the vehicle was booked into the local Ford dealer for this to be done. While the vehicle was there, the customer decided that the dealership could take a look at the aforementioned faults. The update was carried out along with a BCM update 36 AFTERMARKET DECEMBER/JANUARY 2022 TECHNICAL www.aftermarketonline.net Getting a first-time fix is a matter of keeping your head says Neil, no matter how complex the problem ARE YOU EXPERIENCED? which was recommended for the faults. The customer was then phoned and told it was ready to be collected. However, upon pulling away from the dealership, the car had the exact same problems as it did when it arrived. The customer then returned to the dealership, and was told it was more than likely a faulty module causing the issues and would cost in excess of £1,000 to fix. It was at this point the customer decided to get a second opinion. The vehicle was then booked in with me to take a look and see if we could get to the bottom of the problem. Confirming the complaint As always, I started by confirming the complaint, and the faults matched what the customer had said (see Fig.2). I then connected a scan tool to do global fault code read to see what faults were stored and take it from there. Once the scan had completed and saved, I was surprised to find I didn’t actually have many faults stored and the main code that kept popping up was C0031; Left front wheel speed sensor. I also had faults in other modules saying to either check the ABS system for faults, or invalid data had BY Neil Currie