Sorry if this gets long, trying to be descriptive. 2013 f150 5.0. 117000 miles. Over the last 3 years or so, the info screen behind the steering wheel and the radio info screen will go off. Or not come on at start up. The buttons to change stations WILL light up. When this happens the cabin fan will blow full speed, blowing out hot air regardless of what the settings are.
Dealer has had it in twice, first time it didnt act up. Second time it did and they kept it a few days but couldnt find a problem. Said it might need a whole new panel. But since its about 1200 bucks and they couldnt guarantee it would fix it they didnt want to do it. They didnt charge anything either time.
On advice from an f150 forum i replaced the ignition switch. There was no chime when the key was in and the door was open, it did fix that. Mechanic at work suggested clock spring.
Any one seen something similar?
Also when it acts up, headlights, blinkers, horn,etc all work.
Thanks for the good description.
When the dealer had it, did it throw any error codes? Check engine light or…other codes in the various computers that control this truck? Like the BCIM?
Ignore the clockspring, that would not cause this, it would just cause your steering wheel controls not to work.
Not sure where the BCIM lives in this truck but it may be in that $1200 “panel”… We all love this stuff when it works…but not so much when it breaks!
No mention of any codes. Not to say they didnt see some. Ive never seen the check engine light come on other than at startup.
The strangest common denominator is that it happens most often in August. First time was a few years ago the morning we were leaving on vacation. Did it for awhile then cleared up. It was almost exactly a year ago that it was in the shop. It was fine until last week. It acts up at other times, but mostly in august. Its always been garaged and rarely seen salty roads. I would hope they checked all the grounds. They seem to be a good shop.
I could live with it if it werent for the heater blowing full speed
Heat. High environmental temps will bring out the weakness in electronics. The fact that two independent displays are affected means whatever supplies them is likely to be the root issue. A vehicle schematic is key to tracing it down. When it happens, the first thing I would check for is the common supply voltage that feeds both of these display systems. Electrolytic caps, electrical connections, power electronics are where I would concentrate initial investigation. What could help is a source of heat to simulate and exacerbate the thermal conditions. Expose the BCM if that feeds both and hit it with a 1500W hairdryer on high if no access to a heat gun. See if the problem can be replicated that way…
Unfortunately, electronics and i dont understand each other. Im capable of nuts and bolts but as i age, that skill is going out the window. Of course you cant talk to the tech who actually does the work. I only got the info relayed to me by the service writer. So i really dont know what they checked. Perfect truck other than this glitch
That’s OK, there isn’t really much serviceable inside those electronics. They become a replacement item.
I agree with @TwinTurbo , this sounds like a heat issue. Truck gets hot, circuit boards and their components expand a bit a glitches occur until it cools off.
See if you can scan the interior modules with something like FORScan. You might need a USB OBDII adapter for it that can connect to the MS CAN bus if the F150 is like the Ford cars that have two digital busses. By default it connects to HS can which is ECU / Cluster / ABS / airbag only. The interior modules are on the other MS CAN bus.
On a 2010-2012 Ford Focus turning on the AC makes the climate control module send a signal to the cluster on the MS CAN bus. The cluster relays the signal on the HS CAN bus to the ECU which then turns on the AC compressor. The ECU probably monitors the refigerant pressure too to keep it in the safe range. Just saying how complicated modern vehicles typically are.
If you can connect to modules like the cluster, climate control, or radio, and then one these modules stop responding, that indicates that that particular module has locked up. You have to do this when the problem is happening. That should be a good starting point.
Often a bad connection in a circuit board can cause a module to malfuction or stop responding. It can be temperature dependent. It’s difficult to find these issues and a service manual is usually required and service manuals for car modules are not available. So you just replace the module.
You might be surprised how little professional automotive repair shops know about servicing electronics. There are fewer and fewer electronics repair shops around to repair TVs and audio equipment, and the skills these shops have are required to diagnose automotive electronics. Unfortunately being a mechanic is considered a lesser profession than going to college to be something like an electrical engineer, so the result is there is nobody who has these kind of skills at all the automotive repair shops across a whole city.
You don’t have to determine which board or component is the problem, just duplicate the problem. If troubleshooting with a hair dryer or other heat gun causes the problem, then you know that replacing the offending component should work.
You might search Ebay or Car-parts.com for a used info screen. It will be a bit of a risk and it needs to be “married” to the rest of the car with a scanner but it will be less than $1200.
But, sadly, $1200 isn’t a big cost for car repair anymore.
To be clear regarding the heat. This doesnt jusy happen after the truck is driven in high temps and parked. It was 9am in a garage. Granted theres no ac but its maybe 80 degrees in there in the afternoon.
Not discounting it being heat related, just putting it out there.
And i would probably pay 1200 to fix it, but they werent confident that it would. They ended up saying maybe it willhappen more often and then they find the cause.
There’s a lot of possible causes. Heat related failures for circuit boards is a pretty common thing. The bench-test solution is to spray the suspect components with a freeze-spray product (e.g. CRC Freeze Spray). The circuit will usually start working when the affected component is sprayed, then that part is replaced. But that technique isn’t easy to do on cars with the circuit board still installed.
hmmm … If I had that problem myself, and there were no diagnostic codes, current, history, or pending, in any of the pertinent modules for a clue, I’d be hoping the electronics were all good, and the problem was a faulty electrical connector. Pretty common thing. My diy’er first step would be to inspect the underside of the dash area using a bright flashlights, mirrors etc, looking for a broken or cracked electrical connector. If I didn’t find anything, next I disconnect, inspect, then re-connect all the pertinent electrical connectors that were possible to easily access. Sometimes that will correct a connector problem. I’d freeze spray the connectors as experiments too, and probably heat them up as well, hoping one of the connectors will show itself as the culprit.
Still a no-go? Then I’d be thinking whatever the problem is, it probably just one thing is causing all the symptoms. I’d focus on solving just one of the symptoms, the one that looked like it would be the easiest to solve. . I’d use the car’s wiring diagrams to slowly trace through the circuits in an attempt to discover why that particular function isn’t working. These sorts of problems are often caused by a problem with the power supply lines, so I’d pay particular attention to those, making sure the voltages are correct. It’s pretty likely once I discovered the cause of that problem, the fix would solve the others.
Note: This sort of problem might not be solvable with the above approach. It may require a series of parts replacement experiments. Replace this module, see what happens. Replace tht module, see what happens. For that method, unless you have access to a variety of known good modules, best to hire a shop (probably a dealership) to do it for you.
Folks who work with circuit boards will be able to offer all sorts of horror stories … lol … here’s three for me: on one occasion a whole batch of circuit boards failed to pass their acceptance testing, hundreds of boards. Turned out the flux used to solder them was contaminated. Another time a circuit board wouldn’t work correctly b/c the wiring harness to it had been tie-wrapped very tightly (in attempt to make it look “neatly done”), and this squeezed the wires too close together creating cross-talk. Yet another time, the artwork for the circuit board was accidentally scratched, and caused one of the integrated circuit pins to have an “iffy” connection to ground. This problem was discovered using the freeze spray technique.