Heated front screen .... GEM ....

May 26, 2009 5 Replies

Hello,



A friend of mine who is truly amazing at what he can do with cars needs to advice on his Focus windscreen.



I've known him for over 25 years during which time he will have built and rebuilt more cars than you can imagine. His Caterham 7 is truly amazing ... a few weeks ago, entirely on his own, he completed converting the manual gearbox to F1 style paddle gear switching.



As well as the Caterham (and new Porsche) he has a well used Focus ST170 that didn't come with a heated front screen.



The windscreen got a stone chip and he claimed on insurance .... and with a small adjustment he ended up having a heated one installed.



He has sorted the electrics out which sounded relatively easy. Connector waiting for it, add a relay in a space waiting for it, replace the blanking panel with the two switch unit which he got off ebay. All ready to go .... turn it on and nothing.



He now believes the problem is down to the GEM unit which needs a quick frig of some sort.



Any ideas anybody.



Phil



It may need more than a quick frig, whatever that is...

The HFS relay will only be energised by the ECU when certain conditions are met. These include the engine actually running, and the battery voltage being above a certain level.

It may be possible for the necessary reprogramming to be carried out by a dealer, but it is unlikely to be cheap.

Chris

In message , news-text.blueyonder.co.uk writes

You didn't mention him checking that the heater fuses were installed in the fusebox. From memory, there are two fuses, one for passenger side, the other for driver side. I'm sure that he will have checked that already though.

OK, tks Chris.

Hi Paul,

Yup, he's checked that and all sorted. It seems as though he's going to have to give Ford some money.

Bye for now.

Phil

For you Ford officianados out there the latest on this is that he has now sourced a cable from ebay (a vauxhall one) that will connect to the GEMS box and somebody is going to send him some software that will allow him to talk to it.

Bye for now.

Phil

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