I usually drive my Au v8 Fairmont or XR8, but the other day I decided it might be nice use the 6 as a daily driver for a while.

I have had this car sitting for months as I'm waiting for parts to do it up a bit, but it ran fine before hand.

Now after taking it for a few drives around town, not long after reaching operating temp, it jumps into LHM. Don't know if it's coincidence or not but I've had economy mode off every time its happened, and I haven't had a chance to see if it will happen while in economy, but either way its an annoying problem I want to fix.

After leaving it overnight it drives normally until it warms up around half way of the temp gauge, then back into LHM.

I'm guessing it is a faulty sensor that has improper resistance when warm, sending into LHM, problem is how do I pinpoint which one?

Is there any simple, common things I can do do to trouble shoot before taking it to a specialist?

How much does it usually cost to take it to ford and have them scan the ecu for faults? It might be easier to have them find what the problem is, but I don't have a whole lot of money for that right now.

Just took her for another little spin.

Here's what I'v done so far today:
Swapped the battery out for a 550cca, up from 500
topped up the coolant to the max possible
Reset the ecu
Put in 91 instead of usual 95 octane

Hasn't helped at all.

after the drive I've just done, In economy the whole time, I found it was driving fine for about 10-15 minutes at operating temp until I turned the heater/demister off.

I figured the heater was keeping it from getting to the temp where it decides it doesn't want to play any more so I wanted to see if it would enter lhm if I turned the heater off. Which it did in no time, especially as I was giving it a booting after resetting the ecu.

So here's what happened. Everything is going fine, turned heater off, gave it some s**t, pulled up to lights. Gave it a little gas in drive to see if it was still going alright, it was so I brake to stop. In the exact same set of lights about 1-2 minutes later, go to take of thinking everything is hunky dory when it has changed into LHM just sitting at the lights.

Now, here is another observation I have made. more than one occasion it has engaged LHM after a vigorous drive then wait at lights. What else I noticed was that, no sooner had LHM engaged, I see the temp start slowly sinking to about the bottom of minimum operating temp bar, obviously the cooling fans have engaged at this point, and I'm guessing they have excessive current draw while operating, sending the ecu into LHM from lack of current.

anyone got any suggestions on where I may start to find out if I am correct or not?

I also think that maybe having no battery shroud is making to much resistance in the battery for the trans to run properly. I don't have that problem in my shroud less Fairmont though '__'

Because it entered LHM after I gave it some beans, I need to rule out if that was the cause so tomorrow, I'm going to just cruise around with the heater going to see how long the car can last without engaging LHM. If I can go about an hour with no problem when driving normally then I'll be a bit less p****d lol

Cheers

I've had a few with trans solenoid problems that will do that.
The solenoid works fine until it all gets hot then stop working and it will go in to limp mode.

The solenoids will test fine with a multi meter.

Yea I've been reading a few suggestions for that.

It's worth a look but I not long ago had a refurbished transmission installed so I doubt it would be that. Never know though, Its good to cover your bases.

I'm going to try and run an extra ground from the battery terminal before I take it for a spin to try and deal with any low power.

I keep reading about an "auto tx fuse" having something to do with LHM, apparently it does something about the fans and mine goes limp as the fans seems to work so it could have to do with that.

It seems like there are so many things it could be its mind boggling.

I've also read about bad connections on the outside of the trans. I'll give that a check over and maybe even replace the ecu to see if that works.

Not all reco trans will have new solenoids fitted.

Yea I was thinking that too. it seems the solenoids would be the most logical place to start.

I just remembered that the guy who did the work had a 12 month warranty for any trans problems so I'll get in touch with him and see what he has to say about fixing it.

That would be my first phone call. But I would run the car until it enters limp mode and then run KOEO and KOER self diag tests to see what codes it gives, before calling.