Electrical meltdown

[Ontopofit]

I’ve read a few posts with similar symptoms and it sounds like this could be a potential nightmare. I went to purchase a sofa yesterday, loaded the sofa in the bed and strapped it down and headed on home. A few minutes later while in traffic, the truck starts freaking out, “Service Electronic Stability Control” “service shifter” “No Bus”.. can’t hardly accelerate, truck won’t shift, power steering won’t work, windshield wipers won’t turn off, “do not turn off truck or shift out of drive”…bunch of dash lights going off. Stuck in traffic and I don’t have any options so I press on, after 5-10mins, it clears itself, briefly..maybe 30 seconds, then repeats all the same issues….I limp home and back into the driveway…turn the truck off and hurry up and unload the sofa, close the bed and try to see what the issue was…. Start the truck up everything is back to normal, but now I have a check engine light…look under the hood for looks connections or damaged wires, don’t see anything . Turn the truck off and on a handful of times and nothing changes, still check engine light. Go back inside for a couple hours and do some research…end up taking a ride to the gas station to get fuel and try to replicate the issue…get to the station, turn the truck off and fuel up…after fueling, turn the truck back on the the check engine light is off…drive home, no issues…have taken a few test drives around the neighborhood since then and can’t replicate the issue. I intended on taking it to the dealer this morning, but don’t really feel like spending all day for them to tell me they can’t replicate the issue. I have given the truck the once over, looking for any loose grounds or damaged grounds and can’t find anything.

Any thoughts, suggestions or insight? Not really excited to deal with an electrical gremlin? Kind of concerned taking my truck out to go hunting in south la or any place far away only to get stuck with a truck that won’t move. Haven’t had any issue like this ever before. It hadn’t rained or anything yesterday either.

I did have my windshield re-tinted about 3-4 weeks ago after the dealership damaged my tint after an oil change and trying to peel a sticker off….however, I was pretty insistent on the shop being careful about getting any water behind the dash, which they were aware of and the same shop I used originally and the same shop the dealership uses for work..I also stuffed a bunch of towels over the module under the dash to protect it as I did originally. But again, this was 3-4 weeks ago….not saying this is or isn’t the issue, but the only thing I can really think of.

Any ideas where to start? Thanks in advance

 

[scottmoyer]

Battery

 

[Eighty]

How old is your battery?

 

[jkm312]

How old is the battery? Is it still good. A bad cell in the battery can cause mischief.
Check to make sure all of your grounds are good. There are several along each fender in the engine bay.
Pull the top off of the fuse box. I have read of a couple posts where the main terminal connections loosened up.
Electrical gremlins can be hard to find.

 

[Ontopofit]

I replaced the battery August of last year, it’s putting out good voltage running as well as when off. I’ve been tightening every ground I come across so far and making sure every fuse is seated. Not appears to be out of sorts that I’ve found so far

 

[Cbty2050]

Are any modules not communicating on the network?

 

[GoMango16]

water from the tint ran behind the dash?

 

[kapinallinen2]

A lot of modules not communicating.
That is going to be a B I T C H to troubleshoot, it being an intermittent failure.

Solid B+ and good grounds, you already confirmed that...
Do a visual on the BCM and the RF-hub connectors for signs of water intrusion/corrosion.

 

[Ontopofit]

I took it to the dealership and as I suspected, they said they’d have to keep it clear the codes and try to replicate the issue to fix it, which I understand. The manager said they haven’t dealt with an issue like this before. They hooked up to my truck and said it had thrown 93 codes …I got all up under the dash under the steering wheel earlier and made sure everything was fully seated and saw no evidence of water….I haven’t had an issues of leaks in the rear that I’m aware of, I’ll have to try and get the rear wall panel off tomorrow and check back there. I have been trying to intentionally drive over bumps, shake everything and push every button and switch in the truck to try to get it to happen and of course the truck wants to act perfect now. I’ll have to just keep digging. I found the diagram of the vehicle grounding points from a different post and have been trying to check what I can

 

[kapinallinen2]

I took it to the dealership and as I suspected, they said they’d have to keep it clear the codes and try to replicate the issue to fix it, which I understand. The manager said they haven’t dealt with an issue like this before. They hooked up to my truck and said it had thrown 93 codes …I got all up under the dash under the steering wheel earlier and made sure everything was fully seated and saw no evidence of water….I haven’t had an issues of leaks in the rear that I’m aware of, I’ll have to try and get the rear wall panel off tomorrow and check back there. I have been trying to intentionally drive over bumps, shake everything and push every button and switch in the truck to try to get it to happen and of course the truck wants to act perfect now. I’ll have to just keep digging. I found the diagram of the vehicle grounding points from a different post and have been trying to check what I can

Alldatadiy is your friend if you decide to dig in to it.

 

[Mountain Whiskey]

 

[Fatherof3]

Was your tailgate shut or open when the sofa was in the bed ?

 

[Ontopofit]

It was open, I initially thought that might have something to do with it, I’ve been playing around with driving around with it down and opening / closing it etc

 

[barrak]

Was your tailgate shut or open when the sofa was in the bed ?

Interesting question. On two occasions my Longhorn went in limp mode where the truck wouldn't accelerate but rather would apply moderate slow-pulsating braking as I start to roll out of the parking lot. Similar to how it would behave if trying to accelerate with 4WD LO engaged. First time it happened the tailgate was down after loading a long cabinet. Second time it happened with the tailgate closed, except my boy was opening/closing multiple doors and the tailgate while preparing for a camping trip.

On both occasions, I did not attempt to lead-foot the accelerator (maybe the OP did something of the sort?) I simply turned off the engine and restarted and all went smoothly.

 

[Fatherof3]

It was open, I initially thought that might have something to do with it, I’ve been playing around with driving around with it down and opening / closing it etc

I was just thinking that maybe a wire might have got pinched or something .
I read an article about an F-150 that was having a world of problems and it turned out to be his tail light . With all the electronics in the newer trucks it can turn out to be something no one would think about .

 

[Ontopofit]

I’m starting to believe the tailgate had something to do with it. It has been storming here and I’ve been driving the truck as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Nothing seems to be getting wet. I can’t find anything that looks damaged. I may go poking around inside the tailgate when I get some more free time, but I’m hoping this was just a freak thing. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed for now. I saw a video on YouTube where the guy said it happened to his truck once and never again, nor did he ever find or fix anything. I’m not usually a lucky person, but hopefully I am this time.

 

[mikeru82]

I don't see you posted which year and trim level you have. Probably not relevant but it's always a good idea to include that in a thread when you're asking for help. Or just add that info to your sig like a lot of us have done.

Driving with the tailgate down definitely isn't normally an issue. We've done it several times if we needed to pick up materials for a home improvement project. If that caused the issue you might want to take a look at the tailgate wiring harness. One other thing you might check is where the wiring harness is attached to the frame near the left tail light. I found that the harness was not installed properly on a 2020 Laramie, and the wires were close to being cut by a sharp section of the frame. I found it by coincidence when I was installing bed lights and removed the left rear wheelhouse liner to route the wires for the bed lights. Wish I would have taken a pic but I didn't think of it at the time.

 

[6of36]

Ground! Loose ground can cause intermittent problems, and I have seen many posts on here about loose grounds. There are 33 of them.

 

[bigdodge]

I replaced the battery August of last year, it’s putting out good voltage running as well as when off. I’ve been tightening every ground I come across so far and making sure every fuse is seated. Not appears to be out of sorts that I’ve found so far

august of 2022?

then it can/might be battery.

 

[Ellisstrong]

All the electrical issues I had seemed to be fixed by just pulling and reseating a fuse on the interior fuse panel for me. Fuse 53 if I remember right