Minnesota Focus Owners Club

Then try this for scary. All a person really needs to do is change the cluster. That's pretty easy. There wouldn't even be a paper trail from doing that. The junk yards probably sell a cluster for less than reprogramming and shipping.

Just think about how easy this would be to do. Buy a focus with say 50,000 miles on it, drive it to the cities from up north every day for 2 years with a junk yard cluster, then pop the 50,000 mile one back in when you re-sell it. Who would know? If I can think of it, you someone is actually doing it.

Doc wrote:Then try this for scary. All a person really needs to do is change the cluster. That's pretty easy. There wouldn't even be a paper trail from doing that. The junk yards probably sell a cluster for less than reprogramming and shipping.

Just think about how easy this would be to do. Buy a focus with say 50,000 miles on it, drive it to the cities from up north every day for 2 years with a junk yard cluster, then pop the 50,000 mile one back in when you re-sell it. Who would know? If I can think of it, you someone is actually doing it.

No one is saying the system is/was fool proof, swapping clusters isn't quite as easy or as cheap as you might think either as most of them now have to be flashed when installed or you'll end up with PATS issues, airbag and ABS issues, all sorts of problems.

I know for a fact that up to 07 anyway it is as easy and cheap as I may "think" to swap clusters. Beyond that you may be very well be right, I've never had to work on one yet.

The Focus clusters changed in 2005, from 2000-2004 they're plug and play, 2005 and up it's just dumb luck if it works without being flashed.

Ford didn't make a sweeping change on clusters, the cluster in the Windstar back as far as 2000 required a reflash in order to work right unless as previously mentioned you get lucky and it just works.

There's no reason to argue about this, it's not just my opinion, it's a fact. I've been in Ford dealerships for 20+ years and have learned a thing or two in that time.


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FORDSVTPARTS wrote:

Doc wrote:What's scary about it?

Scary because it means it's very easy to falsify mileage, I thought that was quite obvious.

Rolling back odometers used to be quite common but with the advent of electronics it was much more difficult, last thing we need is to make it easy again.

Its always been easy. For all fords from 2000 till 10' s id say. Just get the pcm and the guage cluster. Boom changed mileage.