Hello
I have a 2014 automatic power shift ford Mondeo. I bought it from a used car dealership. It worked perfectly for about a month then on longer journeys (around the 2 hour mark) the car jerks and a message comes on the dashboard saying limited transmission or transmission malfunction. After the car has been turned off it seems to work fine again.
I have taken it too a garage and they said the clutch is slipping (but it doesn't feel like it when driving) and there is a coolant leak but there is no sign of a leak anywhere
It would be greatly appreciated if someone could help me solve this please
Thank you
Hi,
Posted by: @chucktobias
Powershift (...) fundamentally flawed and unfixable (...), and were the target of a class action lawsuit
The powershift you're looking at is not the same one as the Ford Focus (DPS6 "Dry"), it's the MPS6 ("Wet") - perhaps even the MPS6i (“improved”)
The wet is the same transmission as the Mitsubishi Lancer EVO race car, Volvos, and is closely related to the transmissions inside of race cars (7DCI600 for BMW M series, 7DCL750 and 8DCL900 on Mercedes AMG/Ferrari) - so the Ford 6DCT450 is a real performance dual clutch.
But it does have a serious flaw,
The Wet Powershift achieves more favorable driving characteristics by suspending the clutch packs in transmission fluid and by having a very sophisticated hydraulic control mechanism,
the issue with that approach is that as the clutch wears down, literal chunks of very abrasive clutch material gets mixed into the fluid and it wrecks absolute havoc on this transmission's very delicate hydraulic control circuits.
Also, the transmission relays on a damper to smoothen out shifts - but it's not a real dual mass, it's just some springs in the clutch pack and they have a tendency to snap.
And the clutch is not easy to replace and does eventually wear down (usually in the 60k-90k mile range) and a clutch replacement is easily $2k+
Also I do not like the fact that addressing anything in the transmission (other than the valve body) requires replacing a huge expensive seal - which is also prone to leaking, the price of the oem fluid is ridiculous, the are two filters in there one is accessible and the other gets clogged, etc.
I've owned a car (from Volvo) with that gearbox and really was not happy with it, it was not horrible but it was tedious to operate.
There are no words to describe how tedious and unpredictable it is compared to what I have now, a conventional torque converted auto (A6F17 aka A6GF1)
Also being a former proud owner of a 3rd generation Focus, I actually think that the Focus' dry powershift was better - it was very predictable and actually kind of fun to drive - also on the Focus I didn't have to spend over ungodly amounts out of pocket fixing leaks, doing maintenance, and repairing faults (as everything about the dry powershift was cheap)
Being honest my personal favorite automated manual was the Toyota MMT, it's considered to be the worst "automatic" transmission anyone ever installed in a car but it had a lot of charm to it - yeah when owning that car I blew through two clutches in about 50k miles but they were super cheap to replace (just like a manual)
It would be greatly appreciated if someone could help me solve this please
Connect an all systems scan tool and seeing what's the TCM fault code.
The fault code will tell us a lot about what actually happened.
To me it sounds like it has overheated, when these get hot they shift rough on purpose in "hot mode" - which is not normal, so read the fault codes, unlike most gearboxes, these are pretty good at giving you exact pinpoint information on what's wrong.
In the U.S. those Ford Powershift transmissions are known to be fundamentally flawed and unfixable (no solution available), and were the target of a class action lawsuit. However the situation might be different in overseas markets - @dan may have details.
