I went to lunch today with a guy and noticed that my remote wouldn't unlock the car upon returning to it. Ah well, it's been 5 years on that remote battery, probably just dead. Unfortunately, the alarm is on so I'm going to have to have my wife bring my spare keys and remote to me (30 minutes away). Just to be sure, I open the trunk with the key, no alarm, no light, nothing. So I open the door with the key, no alarm, no dome light. I've already replaced 5 batteries, but at least in the past I could tell they were going first, this just went dead. Or so I thought...just to be sure, I tried to start the car, fired right up. DTE FLI DATA ERROR displayed again (had issues with that before but very sporadic), none of the gauges worked. Ok, shut it off and restart it, happens again. This is weird, well let's at least get it to the office, I can have it towed from there if I need to.

Crank up the AC (102 today) and start motoring along. After a short while, I notice the AC is blowing out hot air. Crap. Roll down the windows? Nope. They are dead. Listen to the radio? Nope, dead too. Keep in mind, the car is DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD while this is going on. Hit the turn signal to get out onto the road, they are dead too. Get to the office, call the Ford house and get setup to bring it in. The SA feels that it's just a maxi fuse that controls a lot of the accessories, just verify the brake lights work and bring it in. Not looking forward to the 30 minute drive (without traffic) cooped up in a hot car blowing hot air out of the vents without being able to roll the windows down, but I better do it now before traffic gets heavy. Just to be safe, I have a co worker check the brake lights, dead. I look at the engine fan as the car is running, dead. Hardly any traffic at 1:30 PM, so I throw caution to the wind, and limp the car along at 60 MPH on the open road hoping to get as much air into the engine bay as possible (also have a Shaker, so I'm hoping that helped a bit as well) and using extremely long slow rolling stops, I get it there, covered in sweat.

Car is in the shop now, they are going through it to see the root cause. So I have a few questions:

1. If this is a fuse, why would it go after I parked it at lunch? I literally locked the car with the remote by hitting the button twice to get the horn to sound, just like I've done for 5 years. Worked exactly as expected.

2. If this is truly a single fuse, then why in the world would Ford have made a fuse that controls the windows, radio, engine fan AND brake lights? Clearly other electronics work (throttle, speedo, tach, and my personal favorite, the lights that say the AC is working when it's blowing out hot air because the AC isn't actually working ). If it was me and I had a new platform to design a car on, I wouldn't route things around to allow the car to actually run while disabling minor things like windows, along with major things like brake lights.

3. If all those things aren't controlled by one fuse, then how in the world could I have blown several, again just by arming the car and going in for lunch?

I'll post details from what the dealership finds as they become available. Appreciate your thoughts on any of these issues!

 

What year is the car?

 

2005 in his sig

 

Thanks. Doh!

 

I not sure what you problem is but I've had some weird , and I do mean weird , electrical problems in the past too. I had a Viper alarm installed by a certified shop and it turned out to be causing the computer to do really strange things. Because of the 5V reference system the computer in these cars are very sensitive to any change in the electrical system and if it gets a signal that it doesn't know what to do with it will do some very strange things. This can also be caused by a leak in the passenger side foot well getting the SJB wet. In my case removing the aftermarket alarm cured my problems , good luck with yours ...

 

SJB maybe?

It's the only thing I can think of that has hands in everything but engine management.

 

I thought the same thing, maybe it got wet from a car wash or rain. I don't know what amount of rain you've had in Arizona but you might want to pull the carpet back on the passenger side to see if it's wet. Then check out TSB 08-26-07 and the cabin air filter area if you have water.

 

Haha, I can almost very nearly guarantee you it's not wet.

We haven't had rain in 30+ days, it's garaged every night, and the last car wash was over 2 weeks ago. With that said though, the SJB would make sense if it touches everything but the engine, as that's basically the symptom, nothing works except the engine management stuff.

 

Just spoke to the SA, they are able to duplicate the issue (no surprise there) and then through troubleshooting started to wiggle and move the main wiring harness near the firewall, and the symptoms have cleared up. They have been unable to get the electronics to fail again since then. Kind of thinking that there is a loose power pin connection or something at the harness so they are going to remove and re-seat it and see if they can get it to trip again. Unsure if we're going to look into replacing the harness or chalk it up to a loose connection at this point. I have my wife's car as she works from home, so I'm in no hurry to make them return the car.

More to come as I hear. So far though, it looks like we're not looking at replacing either the SJB or ECM, so looks like I won't have to mortgage my house for the repair (knock wood...).

 

Just picked up the car this morning, same story. Cannot get the failure to occur again after wiggling the wiring harness as it goes into the fuse block. They re-seated the connection there and all seems fine. We'll just keep an eye on it and hope it doesn't happen again. Good news, no charge for the troubleshooting / "repair".

 

Do you know which connection they re-seated? I just had the same problem tonight after going to dinner. The car started and ran fine but all the electrical things you mentioned did not work. I also couldn't get it out of park without opening the little emergency release next to the shift lever.

I may go out and try to wiggle some wires by the fuse block and see if that helps.

 

Unfortunately I do not. They just stated they "wiggled" the main wiring harness and it reseated the connection apparently. My assumption is the main fuse block, but I honestly do not know. Apologies for the lack of help there.

Keep me posted on this, very interested to see if this is going to start happening to a lot of cars. On a side note, I've not had a single problem since the mysterious "wiggle" fix.

 

I'm wondering if there's a way for AC condensation in that area?? Something makes me think I read someone having a problem with that issue making the passenger carpet wet...

 

There were several reports of leaks and I think a TSB on the 05-07 that would result in wet passenger floorboards and the SJB malfunctioning causing strange electrical problems.

 

Hasn't rained here in days so it isn't a wet SJB.

 

I'm vaguely remembering a thread (in the last 6 mos or so) about an AC hose was pinched and moisture collecting there...

 

Hmmm, I didn't catch that thread.

So what about the car? Did reseating the connections do anything for your situation?

 

Jiggling the wires and reseating all of the relays did not work, so I disconnected the battery for about an hour and reconnected it and everything seams to be working fine. I haven't gone for a drive yet but all the electrical accessories are working now. Weird.

 

Hi, I am experiencing this exact issue. I checked the wiring harness by the fuse box but no change...thoughts?

 

Maybe try to check the condition of the Smart Junction Box as above? It's on passenger kick panel under a removable door. You'll want to pull some info on it for messing with it too much but I'd check for wetness or corrosion.