2015 Focus Battery Placement

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Jan 9, 2010
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Location
Los Gatos, CA
My friend's son called me early afternoon with a dead battery. I'm sure it is the original.
Dang battery is half way under the cowl! What were those Bozos thinking?
Got the car started with the Audex battery pack; had to let it sit for a few minutes but it started.
Drove to my house where I could work on it...
Thanks to Youtube pulling the heavily corroded battery was not a big deal. Had 9+ volts under load.
Costco tomorrow morning...

This is a chump change design. Hard to get the plastic battery box and terminal clean. Sheesh; it's a dang car battery!
I guess if this is the biggest problem in my life I am living a pretty charmed life... Ha!
 
Those slide in and out, right?
You hafta take out the air box for that, which I didn't know. I've never seen the Focus engine bay. However the battery box front can be unhooked and pulled forward enough to tilt the battery out.
It ain't that bad if you watch Youtube but if you are not familiar with the process it seems pretty lame.
Side of the road replacement should be evident and easy. That's my opinion.

The battery placement makes cleaning the negative terminal impossible without a bunch of extra work. And this one was a mess.
 
Strike 2. The 96R is apparantly not a common size; my closest Costco does not stock it. Luckily one not to far away had a few.
So $99, $112 with the governor's tax, and the little Focus SE is back in business. The battery and battery tray were a mess.

I don't know anything about a scanner or BMS. Is this a problem?
 
I just replaced the OE battery in my 2014 Focus and it appeared to be a difficult task until I searched Youtube and found that it's really not difficult at all...just disconnect the terminals and pull the battery forward after pulling the forward battery insulator away...
 
I just replaced the OE battery in my 2014 Focus and it appeared to be a difficult task until I searched Youtube and found that it's really not difficult at all...just disconnect the terminals and pull the battery forward after pulling the forward battery insulator away...
Yep. Youtube to the rescue. But a battery swap should not need to be Youtubed; it should be a no brainer.
Where did you get your battery? How much?
 
Strike 2. The 96R is apparantly not a common size; my closest Costco does not stock it.

Last car I had that used a 96R, I used a group 47/H5 battery in it. I think they're the same size, the difference is that the 47/H5 has provisions for remote venting that the 96R does not, and the 47/H5 has a flange/foot (for mounting/hold down clamps) on each end which the 96R does not.

And the 96R might be a little cheaper than the 47/H5 battery.

I think the 96R battery was a Ford creation to make a cheaper 47/H5 size battery and save a few bucks, and only used in the USA/Canada.
 
Yep. Youtube to the rescue. But a battery swap should not need to be Youtubed; it should be a no brainer.
Where did you get your battery? How much?
I ended up getting it at Walmart for $99 because Costco was out of the 96R. Costco had the Interstate 96R for $99 but it went up to $109 and then went out of stock. I would have preferred the Interstate but I have had good luck with Wallyworld batteries.

PS: I have a 2016 Escape that also takes a 96R and it's also harder than necessary to replace but once again I learned from YT that taking off the wipers and removing the cowl is easier than removing the airbox etc....about 20 o 30 minutes total to replace.
 
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Motorcraft batteries went up $10 on the 1st. Also our bulk oil went up 18% which hurts. The 2M5Z-9155-CA fuel filter which replaced the F89Z-9155-A went from $19.64 to $42.55 overnight.
 
My 16 Escape battery was annoying as well.

Had to pull both wipers, wiper cowel, drop the brake fluid resevoir, replace battery.

Relearn wiper programming with scan tool.

Reset BCM timer with scan tool.

You can use a laptop and forscan with a ten dollar OBD2 adapter from amazon.

Dealer wanted $425 to replace the battery. I put a $89 Walmart battery in there, and saved the labor.
 
Give this a shot. Should be the same for SE and ST.
Screenshot_20220706-190355.jpg
 
While the newer Focus and Escape's are annoying, they're hardly awful. Any YT video that says pulling the front of the battery box is easier than pulling the cowl is lying. I've tried, and there's no way that the air box/front panel trick is faster than the cowl method if you know what you're doing.

As far as the wiper relearn and BMS reset, I've never found either to be necessary. Mark the wiper blade location on the W/S before removal, and go from there.
 
Does anyone else think the engineers are just snickering at us with procedures for BMS or seat belt chimes that seemingly require a monkey-in-a-lab procedure to supposedly do something....and even then it only works 20% of the time?

"Check this out, let's make them buckle and unbuckle the seat belt 55.32 times while simultaneously flashing the brights 4 times and opening the trunk lid 15 times! All in under 28 seconds. And even if they do it right program it to fail on the first two attempts so we can see if they're dumb enough to try a THIRD time!"

edit: I also use Forscan for BMS but some of the seat belt chime disable procedures drive me nuts
 
Does anyone else think the engineers are just snickering at us with procedures for BMS or seat belt chimes that seemingly require a monkey-in-a-lab procedure to supposedly do something....and even then it only works 20% of the time?

"Check this out, let's make them buckle and unbuckle the seat belt 55.32 times while simultaneously flashing the brights 4 times and opening the trunk lid 15 times! All in under 28 seconds. And even if they do it right program it to fail on the first two attempts so we can see if they're dumb enough to try a THIRD time!"

edit: I also use Forscan for BMS but some of the seat belt chime disable procedures drive me nuts
They are a bunch of Bozos. All you need is a menu item choice under "Maintenance" for all this stuff. Trouble codes and whatever. It ain't that hard!
Heck Tesla allows you to do a lotta things with voice commands and updates are generally done via OTA functionality.

I wanted to be impressed with this little Focus SE, but so far so bad...
 
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