Help me save a fortune? all suggestions welcome!

2008 ford focus 1.8 tdci

Ever since I bought it (just over a year ago) the central locking has been a bit "sticky", found had to press the buttons a few times to lock / unlock and the range was fairly crap. have had loads of fords and never had that problem.

About 2 months ago stopped working completely, took key to locas spares shop, new battery in, worked fine for couple of days.

Then stops again. Takes fob back to spares place, they test key and say must be receiver in car or key needs re-coding.

Tottles off down to local auto-electric place.....

He recodes key, works fine for about a week....

stops working completely, have to use key blade to open and lock car.

Back down to auto-electric place, he tests fob, his machine says it's working, takes key apart, cleans with contact cleaner, works fine.

Repeat the above process (back down auto - electric place, clean key etc) twice in 2 weeks.

Then stops again, completely!

Fed up with auto-electric place now, so asks my local garage to take a look whilst doing MOT, local garage are good lads, used them for years. They test key, coding, diagnostics etc, advise to take to auto-elec place again! I say no way, thy can't fix, off to main dealers is there advice now.

Any ideas of problem / cause / fix?

For info - when it was "sticky" indicators would come on when trying to lock / unlock and you would hear the locking mechanisms / motors, even if it didn't lock or unlock.

Now,it's just dead. No lights, no noise.

Just a potential large bill looming

cheers

Paul

 

your faults are a bit of a mixed bag, as hearing motors going but not locking doors is normally a sticky door solonoid as one can cause all doors not to work, but weird how one min key was working and next not as my gut feeling was it was working all along and now either the door solonoid has packed up or its goosed the fuse/relay or central locking control box

 

Thanks for reply, that has been mentioned at the auto-elec shop but I suspect he couldn't be arsed to investigate further.....happier fitting Parrots all day long.
I might just bite the bullet and get a main dealer quote.
It's a proper baffler and a right pain in the arse too!!