nigelbb

The 20A fuse for the central locking. I have a LHD Galaxy & this fuse is found up behind the wheel above the regular fuse box. Dunno where this would be on a RHD but position should be stated in the manual as it is the single 20A fuse for the central locking

Recently the central locking on my 1998 Galaxy started playing up. You could lock the driver's door with the key or the interior door latch but after about 30 seconds it unlocked itself again. The other doors & tailgate remained locked. As an emergency repair I decided to pull out the fuse as I recalled from my experience when the fuse blew that while the tailgate could not then be unlocked at all the other doors could be operated manually. With the fuse removed & central locking disabled I was then able to lock the car. On a whim I decided to put the fuse back & see if 're-booting' the central locking had cleared the problem & indeed it had! Success! So if anyone else has any similar problem with the central locking (I did find someone else with the same problem while Googling a few weeks ago) then try removing & replacing the fuse & see if that does the trick. Cheers Nigel

I recently had exactly the same problem & the solution was to replace the fuse that had blown. As a security feature if the central locking loses power then the boot locks so that e.g. just disconnecting the battery won't let you open up any doors.

I fixed it! My wife found the manual (in a passenger seat back pocket where I hadn't seen it). This guided me back to the fusebox under the dashboard for fuse 30 a 10A one. I hadn't seen this when I looked as it is tucked up right out of the way above some relays & not in the line of 20 odd fuses that you see when you remove the fuse box cover. Replaced the fuse & all is fixed. I was pleased that the blown fuse wasn't caused by a problem with the wiring in the rubber boot in top right hand corner of the tailgate frame. I had previously found wires with broken insulation there but bodged a repair with some insulating tape which still looks OK. I shall check out the FAQ but replacing that looks either fiddly & tedious or expensive or both. Thanks for the suggestions guys. Cheers Nigel

Thanks for the quick reply. That's a good idea but I don't believe that any such safety function is present on my car. I just went out & double checked by opening various doors & still the tailgate is jammed. On reflection as the car had been laid up for some time the battery was dead when we came to restart it. So the battery had to be recharged & subsequently replaced as it wouldn't hold charge. The battery is now new, OK & fully charged but the central locking doesn't work either with the remote or by locking or unlocking the driver's door as it used to. From what I can gather the tailgate lock is electronic & as a security feature locks when power is lost e.g. if the battery is dead but also as in my case if there is no power at all to the central locking because a fuse or some other component has failed. Cheers Nigel

Our 1998 LHD Ford Galaxy was unused for a few months & has now been brought back into service but it appears that the central locking has failed which also seems to mean that the tailgate cannot be opened. I cannot see any blown fuses but cannot find the manual so may have missed a fuse box (I can only find one under the dashboard on the left). Any suggestions where to look for the cause of the problem? & a fix? Cheers Nigel

Just to add a note to this old posting. We just had a Contr

I have just removed my failed resistor pack as I the blower now only works on setting IV, previouly I, II & III all worked but have failed one by one. Unlike another photo on this forum showing a red pack my pack is green & not so obvious to spot. I did see a couple of other posts where people couldn't actually find the thing so their vehicles may have been similar to mine. I have taken some photos but bear in mind when figuring out where your pack is that mine is a LHD. The green socket on the left with metal plate above is held in with a torx screw & the actual wire wound resistors are behind that plate & visible in the photo taken after I had removed the pack from the car.

Just thought that I would provide an update on how I got on. Inside the car the job is straightforward but a bit time-consuming as you need to remove the front seats, central console & a bunch of other stuff to remove the carpet to then get at the cables where they pass through the hole in the floor towards the engine. The workshop manual details exactly what order things need to be removed & replaces. Refer to it, I tried to do it from memory a couple of times & wound up having to remove stuff before I could reassemble in the correct order. Under the bonnet I had removed more than was required in my eagerness to get at the selector assembly before I read the workshop manual or even this forum. So I had removed the big bolts holding the battery tray & then realised that they were also holding the gear box & engine to the body. I wondered why they were so big. It did make access a little easier but luckily no damage was done & I was able to get a trolly jack underneath & lift the gearbox up enough to be able to get the bolts back in & then tightened up. The new cable (pictured below the old one) is a subtly different design to the original which has much wider metalised corrugated cardboard heat protection sleeves. I had removed the old cable before I got the new one & practised replacing it & found it bloody difficult whereas the new one slipped in a treat. There is also a piece of thick rubber on the new cable where it rubs against the strut that supports the instrument cluster so presumably it has been found that the cable can rub & wear at this point. The gear change now is fine. I hadn't noticed it as being a problem beforehand so the failure came out of the blue but at least my wife is happy & I feel more confident & motivated to doing some other little jobs on the car instead of paying a fortune at the Ford garage. So all in all it was worthwhile. I only wish that I had thought of replacing the worn reversing light switch when I did have the extra access provided by removing the battery tray. While I got away with inadvertently removing the mounting bolts through ignorance I am not so keen on deliberately removing the tray to gain access rather than suffering cuts, bruises & scratches to my hand while wriggling it through the pipes & cables.

As I understand that the proposed rise in Road Tax is not coming in until 2009 at the earliest I don't see how in any way it can be described as retrospective. The bands & levels have just been changed that's all. It happens all the time with income tax & nobody screams that it's retrospective. They might complain if they are losers (like with the 10p income tax band) but losers are bound to make more noise than winners in any re-jigging of tax. BTW I don't want to be smug but the French equivalent of Road Tax (vignette) was abolished for private motorists several years ago.

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't think that PTFE tape or superglue would work as the problem is that because of wear there is now no lip to the socket to preevnt the ball falling out. I have got a cable tie on at the moment which seems to work well at least as a temporary repair. The piano wire trick is an excellent idea that hadn't occurred to me. However at the insistence of SWMBO I have agreed to perform a pukka repair & replace the cables. She didn't fancy the idea of the cable tie snapping at some future date & stranding her. I still have the car in piece so it seems daft to put it back together as is with the cable tie repair & then dismantle it all again at a later date to do the definitive repair. The local Ford parts place will have the new cable in stock in a couple of days which gives me time to remove the old cable in preparation for replacement. The price is 117 Euros (approx 93 pounds) plus VAT.

I have a 1997 Ford Galaxy. We live in the South of France so it is a LHD. Driving back from the shops the other day the gear change went 'mushy' but my wife managed to get it into 3rd & crept home slipping the clutch to keep up revs & prevent stalling. Luckily it was only a mile we had to travel. After research through the forum the finger pointed at the selector mechanism or cables. I now have removed enough stuff inside the engine compartment to see that the gear selector (blue) cable has popped off the ball socket but am not sure how to proceed. I have tried popping it back on but it comes off again straight away. The workshop manual discussion of removal/refitting just talks about unclipping the cables from the ball heads & clipping them back on. I have clipped & unclipped the good (black) cable & there is a satisfying 'click' when it goes home so I presume that the socket at the end of the blue cable has become worn & will no longer stay in place. If it is worn & needs replacement it looks like a hell of a job to fit & involves removing both front seats! If anyone has any suggestions of a fix that doesn't involve totally replacing the gear selector cables I would be very grateful. I have been contemplating gaffer tape or a large cable tie as an emergency repair. Perhaps there is some way to crimp up the socket back onto the ball joint? Any thoughts? Cheers Nigel

It sounds very much like what has just happened to our 1997 Galaxy. I have removed enough stuff inside the engine compartment to see that the gear selector (blue) cable has popped off the ball socket. The workshop manual discussion of removal/refitting makes it look like a hell of a job to fit for a start it involves removing both front seats! There are plenty of other posts on the forum discussing similar problems down to one of the two cables becoming disconnected. Try using Search.

1997 Ford Galaxy owner living in the South of France. I'm British, the car is French thus LHD. We have had it about 3 years now & spent at least the purchase price over again on getting things fixed like air conditioning (essential here in the summer, it's in the mid 30s this week). A change in circumstances i.e. redundancy/early retirement means that we can no longer just take it into the garage & say "Fix it!'. It's a few decades since I regularly did all my normal car maintenance & fixing up to & including swapping engines/gearboxes but I'm still pretty handy although these modern cars are a nightmare to access & work on compared to a Mk 1 Escort or even an original Mini. We now have a current problem with the gear selector cable that I need to fix which I will post about separately. Cheers Nigel