Should Ford pay for a repair to my 15-year-old Focus?

As The Telegraph’s motoring expert, I weigh in on your car dilemmas to save you money and make your driving life easier

My daughter has a 2009 Ford Focus that recently developed an intermittent electrical fault, when it randomly goes into a low-power “limp home” mode. Our local garage diagnosed a dry joint on a circuit board behind the dashboard. An internet search reveals that this is a common fault and will cost about £450 to repair, mainly because of the labour involved in removing and replacing the parts. It is clearly a design and/or manufacturing fault. Is there any chance that Ford would pay?
– RJ
Is a failure on a 15-year-old car a design or a manufacturing fault? It could be – but then you could say that about practically any failure of any part that isn’t perishable. 
The fact is, parts on ageing cars wear and break over time, and sometimes certain parts of certain cars do so more often than is normal, creating a “common issue” of the sort we journalists like to point out in buying guides. 
It’s certainly true that failed instrument clusters and Ford Focuses go together like cheese and wine. The problem, as you have pointed out, is that the solder on the circuit board dries over time. Should it last longer? Yes, probably, but so should my favourite pair of socks, which I’ve just discovered have holes in them after only a year. 
Does that mean the manufacturer of the socks should recompense me? It would be lovely, but as we all know, the world doesn’t work that way.
In this case, I think your chances of getting money out of Ford for a failure on a car of this age are about as high as mine are of keeping my toes warm this winter. Best to forget the idea, and accept the cost of repair as part of your running costs on a car of this age. 
If the £450 bill stings, you could look at sending the cluster off to be repaired by a specialist aftermarket repair company –there are plenty around who will do it for you for as little as £70. 
Removing the cluster yourself is a doddle, too – a matter of a couple of screws and one electrical connector; there are several helpful tutorials on YouTube. Add postage and packing and you could still get the problem sorted for as little as £100, plus half an hour of your time. 
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