Electrical gremlin 2013

[Docdy64]

One owner of a 2013 with the PP, 99% bone stock and 92,*** miles

Driving home yesterday, all was fine, running great, cold air and stopped for something to eat.
Get back in car an hour later and it starts up fine, kind of.

Both of the displays on the sides of the speedometer are blank, the center console display with all the controls is blank.
AC/heat apparently defaults to a medium high fan speed at max temperature, just great on a 90F Alabama afternoon.
Turn signals don't work or do anything.

Drive it 10 miles home and pull in the drive way, as I put it in reverse to back into parking spot, ****, everything comes back on, all 3 displays light up and AC starts blowing cold, what the heck.............

Start it up this morning, all 3 displays are blank again........so I drove another vehicle today.

Anyone seen this or have any advice?
I haven't heard or read anything about this.

 

[Majestic]

Check your battery. These cars eat them.

 

[Bronco2fan]

I've not heard of that problem yet. But if you haven't yet, I'd start with the battery. These things eat them up. Check the positive cable for corrosion under the red cover. Check fuses and relays too.

 

[SHOdded]

may need to update IPC programming

"Complete" List of TSB's for your 2013+ SHO - Page 3

"Complete" List of TSB's for your 2013+ SHO - Page 3

www.ecoboostperformanceforum.com

 

[Joshw0000]

As others have mentioned, check battery voltage. If it's slightly low it'll do weird things.

Sent from my Pixel 8 Pro using Tapatalk

 

[Junkyard_Mad-Scientist]

I voting battery as well, had a 13 explorer (basically the same thing) lost function of left steering buttons, radio would do weird stuff,, shifted weird, and I think the blower fan was acting up like yours. Replaced the battery everything was fixed. As voltage drops the car decides what it will power and what it can do without.

 

[Docdy64]

So the saga continues with some twists and turns.
Inspected battery for age and corrosion, one year old battery, nothing on negative and slight corrosion on positive post and hold down bracket.
Disconnected both posts and hold down bracket and cleaned all with baking soda, water and tooth brush, reassembled nice and clean.
No issues for a week, then same/similar condition starts repeating again but this time I also get a message in the center display saying "Power Saver - System Off" with a status bar like a program down load visual.
Then 5 miles later everything powers up fine. Performance of engine is not impacted in the least.
Battery checks out good and alternator charges at 13.8 volts.

This is leading me to the accessory tie ins to the positive terminal post, there is one multi pin connector and at least one other feed off of the terminal post adapter thingie. Has anyone seen these fail intermittently?

My next step is going to be to pull out that multi pin connector and any of the other one or two connections to look for any corrosion that may have gotten that far away from the post. This one is getting a little frustrating, appreciate the comments and feedback.

Forgot to mention, tried to pull codes and there were none active or in memory.

Or at this point just go ahead and replace the "battery cable terminal end" pictured below?

 

[Bronco2fan]

That's the same message mine gave when the battery was going out. Sometimes you can have bad cells and it'll read fine. Did you have it tested at an auto parts store? If not, you should. They actually put a load on the battery.

 

[Junkyard_Mad-Scientist]

I second @Bronco2fan Batteries can be shifty and hard to diag. as for the connector, I havent seen it fail per say but the same explorer as previously mentioned corroded so bad that it ate the positive post off of the battery. literally, the post came out of the battery with the terminal with a little straw looking thing under it. There was corrosion throughout the terminal so I replaced it when i replaced the battery, greased it inside out with this per fords recommendation Motorcraft Silicone Grease and not a single problem until the battery died again 2 years later. Its worth doing (dont forget the grease) to at least have a starting point, I recommend trying Ford for a battery since theyre all expensive but Fords warranty is just as good and my dealer has been priced similarly to Napa's Legend series but my experience has been Ford asks less questions (they replaced my 2 year old SHO battery without a receipt 3 months after I bought the car). 3 year warranty on a car that eats them every 2 years on average = solid investment.

 

[Docdy64]

Thanks everyone for their input, I did have that same connector issue on my 2017 Explorer Sport and Ford told me I had to buy the who harness part for $300. I bought a $10 part from the parts house and redid the connection myself and that has worked for the last 3 years.

Truth be told, battery currently installed is the recommended Ford Motorcraft Max specified with 36 Month warranty, installed last year for free because the previous 36 month Motorcraft failed after 2 years as well. Don't recall having this many battery problems when car was new, but I too am getting old.

I will report back my findings to hopefully help someone else down the road.

 

[Docdy64]

Well, after several cleanings of all my connections and a premature battery replacement I was still having intermittent issues.

The good news is that now it is broke broke.
Car will start and run just fine, but no power to any of the driver instrument panels or the radio or the climate control.
Ran a Forescan and the only code that came up was for the climate control loss of communication with the BCM module.

Never had one of these modules go bad before, anyone else have an issue of the BCM faltering and ultimately failing?

 

[Bluezone]

Well, after several cleanings of all my connections and a premature battery replacement I was still having intermittent issues.

The good news is that now it is broke broke.
Car will start and run just fine, but no power to any of the driver instrument panels or the radio or the climate control.
Ran a Forescan and the only code that came up was for the climate control loss of communication with the BCM module.

Never had one of these modules go bad before, anyone else have an issue of the BCM faltering and ultimately failing?

That's kind of strange. By the way the instrument panel cluster is the bridge between the medium and high speed bus Networks.