2013 f150, 110k miles, 5.0 liter engine.
About a year ago I started the truck one morning and the radio did not come on. The info screen in the center of the instrument panel also went off. Speedometer and tach still worked but had no back light. Then things worked for a bit, then went off.
Did it again about a week later. Then was fine until March of this year. All the same problems plus the cabin fan would be on hi speed blowing hot air regardless of the switch position. Again intermittent. Sometimes the radio would work with info center off and vice versa
Took to the dealer and the looked it over for a day and a half. Couldn’t figure it out so the contacted Ford. They said they were told to “reprogram and update the software”. They didn’t charge me anything.It fixed it until today. Same problems as before.
When I picked it up, the shop said if the updates didn’t work the next step was tearing into the dash.
Sorry for the long description, but has anyone on here seen this before? Not looking forward to the dash having to come out.
Tester
Another thing I forgot to mention is the headlights and turn signals work, but you don’t get the click click sound of the turn signals working.
I never seem to have normal problems.
Body control module problem seems pretty good guess, at least for part of these symptoms. Before that however, ask you shop to verify the alternator and battery are working correctly, standard battery/alternator test. Part of that should be to first clean any oxidation from both battery posts and connectors. Disconnecting, then reconnecting BCM connectors worth a shot too.
Mine is a 2001, but when the GEM (Body control module) got wet from a leaky windshield gasket, it did a lot of weird things.
I may have found the source of the trouble. The truck sits in the garage most of the time. I keep a float charger on it, but my son borrowed it for his car. So far a few weeks it’s had no charger. It started fine but it had the dash issues. So I got the charger back on it and after a couple of days the dash issues weren’t there. Battery connections are clean. Battery is a few years old. I’m wondering if it’s because the battery is a little low.
Could well be the cause. Next time at the shop ask them to do the standard battery/alternator test. If you know how to work a volt meter, the diy’er version is to measure the battery voltage before first start of the day. Should be about 12.6 volts; then immediately after starting engine, 13.5 to 15.5 volts.
Well, the low battery theory is out the window. Been on the float charger for a week, and today the problem came back. It’s going to the shop tomorrow for transmission service. Gonna see what they say.
Well the truck spent 3 days at the dealer shop. They were able to see it happen once in a test drive. But no real fix was done. It had “multiple codes for low voltage at the IPC, and lost communication to the IPC.”
However they said they were afraid replacing the instrument panel wouldn’t solve the problem and I’d be out $1400 or so.
They suggested driving it until it got a lot worse.
Best part is they didn’t charge anything for looking at it.
Presuming your shop measured both battery and alternator voltage & both within spec at time they noticed problem occur. Battery voltage good while IPC voltage no good suggests either electrical connection between battery & IPC faulty, or IPC has internal fault. Possible other module faults involved as well, modules often interconnected via in-car communication channel (which could also be faulty). Shop recommendation to keep an eye on the situation until it gets worse seems reasonable as long as that doesn’t make driving the truck unsafe.
Vehicles these days are sort of rolling computers, so similar to diagnosing when computer isn’t able to print a document. Is it computer? Is it printer? Is it cable in between? Or is it something entirely different? With your computer system, you’d figure this out by disconnecting and replacing stuff until you figured out what the problem was. Not as easy to do with automobiles.
I knew going in this wouldn’t be an easy diagnosis/fix since it was so intermittent.
It seems like the more it gets driven the less it happens. I’m gonna drive it to work for awhile to see how it does.