Ford Focus ST headlight issue

[FordFocusSt2018]

I have Ford Focus ST 2015 model, recently has been coming up with fault on the dash saying ‘ headlight malfunction service required’ it has been to ford garage and they have quoted £1000 to solve the issue as a new headlight is needed, has anyone else had this issue? And if so is this the normal cost of a headlight for this kind of car? 😑

[RichardDastardly]

eBay prices look to be around £600 for a set of both front lights, so presumably the Ford garage is quoting you the (top) price to replace both.
Are your lights working fine, and the only issue is the warning light?

[Smiljan]

There's mention on the thread below that Ford have a known issue with wiring faults causing these problems. Sadly there's also someone mentioning they needed a new headlamp.

https://mk3focusrs.club/forum/topic/headlamp-malfu...

What Model year is your car?

[FordFocusSt2018]

It works when driving but when you’re stationary keeps moving around untill it levels itself out so it’s driveable but will come up on the dash that there is a malfunction

[FordFocusSt2018]

Smiljan said:

There's mention on the thread below that Ford have a known issue with wiring faults causing these problems. Sadly there's also someone mentioning they needed a new headlamp.

https://mk3focusrs.club/forum/topic/headlamp-malfu...

What Model year is your car?

car model is 2015 , yeah that’s what ford told me that it needs new headlight but quoted £1000 for one to be fitted

[StevenB]

The joys of a modern car, fine until they go wrong.10 years old it will be scraped for a fault like this

[Lemming Train]

According to numerous online discussions about it, it's either an earthing issue somewhere or it's cured with a reflash of the ECU. The later is from the American Focus forums and the issue was an official Ford recall over there. Based on that I'd say a new headlight is unlikely to cure the issue. You can find the discussions by putting your fault error into search engines in quote marks and adding the word Focus before them.

[M_I_G]

I fixed this on our 2016 Focus with factory xenons.

Description of fault: error message “Headlamp malfunction service required”. Offside dip beam continually moved erratically, left then right every few seconds. Beam direction would not stabilise at all.

Cause of fault: inside the lamp unit is a mini connector with three wires. It’s visible after removing one of the circular covers. On our car two of the three wires had broken off completely where they met the connector plug (before it meets the circuit board connector socket). They’re not the high voltage braided xenon wires, but very thin black / low voltage ones. These wires carry control signals for the adaptive beam function. My feeling is that some heatshrink around the three wires was positioned too close to the connector plug, causing stress on wires resulting in their failure (had cut the heatshrink away before taking the photo)

Edited by M_I_G on Sunday 10th January 16:50

Solution: looking carefully at the two broken wires before doing anything else it was possible to see which wires used to go to which ports on the plug. Note: the plug actually has four ports, one is unused. It’s also pretty small. I used a pick tool carefully to unplug the connector from the board socket, and pull it out of the lamp housing. At this point I marked the wires and plug, to ensure correct reconnection. If you’re better at electrics than me you might be able to remove the plug pins and remake them (would be hard to do!). I never found out the name of the plug type but did come across a guy on ebay selling a replacement one with three wires preinstalled. With this in hand it was just a case of remaking the three connections to the factory wires and putting it all back together. The ebay seller sends crimp connectors out with his repair kit but the wires are so fine I felt heatshrink self solders were better. The error message self cleared and it’s worked perfectly ever since.

Conclusion: I did enquire with the fault at Ford, they would not even diagnose it beyond “new headlamp unit mate”. At time of writing the cost was £950 inc. VAT plus installation. Once I’d understood the problem by taking the lamp out and looking at it I learnt I couldn’t even buy a new mini loom inside the lamp from them either.

Summary: a pretty inexpensive easy fix to what must be a common fault.

Edited by M_I_G on Sunday 10th January 17:41

Edited by M_I_G on Sunday 10th January 17:44

Edited by M_I_G on Sunday 10th January 18:43

[MarkwG]

StevenB said:

The joys of a modern car, fine until they go wrong.10 years old it will be scraped for a fault like this

Popular myth, but unlikely - scrap yards will be full of them anyway, for other reasons & the price for secondhand parts will have settled accordingly.