Ford Mondeo mkII, 2.0l petrol, Ghia, R plate.

Bought used from Ford dealer when car was 1 year/10,000 miles old. After 60,000 miles in 3 years, engine died just after pulling onto a roundabout. (So this is where the problem is safety related.) Wouldn't restart. Fault traced to one of the main 80 amp fuses which had blown. Replaced fuse (only obtainable from Ford dealer) and car was OK for a while. Couple of weeks later, engine died again, this time on a open road, at about 60 mph. Same fuse again. Replaced - and all OK again.

Then one evening, with car parked on drive, I went to retreive something from the front passenger footwell and I could hear what turned out to be electrical sparking from behind the glovebox. (No key in the ignition switch so in theory everthing electrical should have been off.) Removed the glovebox and I could see the sparks - very low level though - probably wouldn't have seen them if it wasn't evening time. Source of the sparks was from a wiring loom where it passed through the bulkhead into the engine compartment. There was NO GROMMET so the loom was rubbing against the metal edge of the hole. The insulation of several wires in the loom had worn away. The loom fed the fusebox by the glovebox so I was able to remove the multiway connector, remove individual wires from the connector and insert insulating sleeving over the damaged wires. Reassembled the whole lot, added a grommet to the bulkhead whole and never had a repeat of the engine cutting out again - thank goodness!

Fortunately I am an electronics engineer so tracing and repairing the fault was something I was competent to do, as well as having the tools and parts to hand. Goodness knows if the Ford dealer would ever have been able to carry out the diagnosis and repair.

Together with a gearbox on which the third gear synchromesh failed at 50,000 and the local Ford dealer being unable to obtain the correct front shock absorbers meant that this was the last Ford either my wife or I have ever purchased. Oh, and the Ford dealer is no longer in business.

Informative topic.My big personel thanks to you.When you hire a car, you need a thorough inspection of all its details and other thingis that before you drive check your car’s directional signals, brake, head and tail lights and mirrors and with in six month check the power steering fluid levels again and refill if needed.

We had a 1983 GL5 Passat which developed an occasional intermittent 'sudden engine stop' fault which was eventually traced to a faulty hall sender in the depths of the distributor. After half an hour's 'rest' the engine would mysteriously be capable of being restarted.

But the point I really want to make is the variety of all these stories have the common dangerous effect of 'sudden unexpected loss of power on a busy road'.

Perhaps new drivers should be taught and old drivers retrained to almost instinctively know to hit the red warning triangle on the dash immediately if this happens.

I'm driving a mercedes, never had safety issues with that :) Althought I didn't have any accident as well.