Ford Recall Troubles

[Bob Rosadini]

So on Seeking Alpha yesterday a report from "The Street" pops up highlighting Fords ongoing recall issues.  In reading it and these issues are five in number covering 11,910 vehicles, ranging from 2 vehicles to 10, 627.

All are system issues related to software.  Not good, but nothing to do with a mechanical defect. But it makes good press.

 

Good news as I see it, when Mr Farley tries to get recall issues under control this should draw his attention to one unit in his organization or so it seems.

 

Which brings me to my '23 F-150.  Love the truck, but since it was new, I'm always confronted with some surprise.  Example without me touching anything, at times when I shut it off Ill get a message saying "shutting down to save battery" and everything goes blank.  Then when I get in truck, no interior lights or dash lights until I turn key.   Other times, I'll open door and I have those lights.  Then i'll be parked and as I approach it recognizes i'm close and lights come on.  But not always.  This an STX XL..plain Jane with a key.

 

Do I take it to dealer?  I guess I should before it leaves me stranded.  And I never leave the key fob in it  unless I'm at home with a spare fob close by as I fear one of these times it will lock doors on its own.

 

In any case, back to my Seeking Alpha post, how many people see the "Ford has more recalls" without opening article to get the facts???

[Texasota]

It would be interesting to see what percentage of the recalls are due to software. 
 

Having worked as a software engineer for 31 years at IBM, I can tell you that bugs get through no matter how much testing you do. Very often it is a timing issue where the stars line up perfectly to cause a problem that even excellent engineers would not have anticipated. It is challenging work.

[tbone]

51 minutes ago, Bob Rosadini said:

So on Seeking Alpha yesterday a report from "The Street" pops up highlighting Fords ongoing recall issues.  In reading it and these issues are five in number covering 11,910 vehicles, ranging from 2 vehicles to 10, 627.

All are system issues related to software.  Not good, but nothing to do with a mechanical defect. But it makes good press.

 

Good news as I see it, when Mr Farley tries to get recall issues under control this should draw his attention to one unit in his organization or so it seems.

 

Which brings me to my '23 F-150.  Love the truck, but since it was new, I'm always confronted with some surprise.  Example without me touching anything, at times when I shut it off Ill get a message saying "shutting down to save battery" and everything goes blank.  Then when I get in truck, no interior lights or dash lights until I turn key.   Other times, I'll open door and I have those lights.  Then i'll be parked and as I approach it recognizes i'm close and lights come on.  But not always.  This an STX XL..plain Jane with a key.

 

Do I take it to dealer?  I guess I should before it leaves me stranded.  And I never leave the key fob in it  unless I'm at home with a spare fob close by as I fear one of these times it will lock doors on its own.

 

In any case, back to my Seeking Alpha post, how many people see the "Ford has more recalls" without opening article to get the facts???

When I had this issue, there was a bad sensor in my shifter, which was causing the slow drain of the battery. It’s likely there’s something that’s draining your battery.

[akirby]

1 hour ago, Texasota said:

It would be interesting to see what percentage of the recalls are due to software. 
 

Having worked as a software engineer for 31 years at IBM, I can tell you that bugs get through no matter how much testing you do. Very often it is a timing issue where the stars line up perfectly to cause a problem that even excellent engineers would not have anticipated. It is challenging work.

It’s even worse with Ford having 15 or 20 modules from different mfrs that have to communicate.  This is why they’re going to software defined vehicles with fewer similar modules.  I think this is why they’re delayed the next F150.  Potential for big improvements.

[akirby]

1 hour ago, Bob Rosadini said:

So on Seeking Alpha yesterday a report from "The Street" pops up highlighting Fords ongoing recall issues.  In reading it and these issues are five in number covering 11,910 vehicles, ranging from 2 vehicles to 10, 627.

All are system issues related to software.  Not good, but nothing to do with a mechanical defect. But it makes good press.

 

Good news as I see it, when Mr Farley tries to get recall issues under control this should draw his attention to one unit in his organization or so it seems.

 

Which brings me to my '23 F-150.  Love the truck, but since it was new, I'm always confronted with some surprise.  Example without me touching anything, at times when I shut it off Ill get a message saying "shutting down to save battery" and everything goes blank.  Then when I get in truck, no interior lights or dash lights until I turn key.   Other times, I'll open door and I have those lights.  Then i'll be parked and as I approach it recognizes i'm close and lights come on.  But not always.  This an STX XL..plain Jane with a key.

 

Do I take it to dealer?  I guess I should before it leaves me stranded.  And I never leave the key fob in it  unless I'm at home with a spare fob close by as I fear one of these times it will lock doors on its own.

 

In any case, back to my Seeking Alpha post, how many people see the "Ford has more recalls" without opening article to get the facts???

Weak battery.  Might be going bad or it might just not charge enough while driving.  It doesn’t hurt to throw it on a charger once a month th or so.

[blazerdude20]

3 hours ago, tbone said:

When I had this issue, there was a bad sensor in my shifter, which was causing the slow drain of the battery. It’s likely there’s something that’s draining your battery.

 

Agreed its a battery drain issue... We had this on a 22 Transit Connect. Replaced the battery and no longer get the weekly notifications from the Ford app that its shutting down functions when parked. 

[Joe771476]

Too much gadgetry for one thing. Cars shouldn't need heated seats (get real) , backup cameras, taillights with weight sensors, parallel parking assist and other nonsense. I was just looking at lawn tractors at Home Depot just for laughs. I've had my Craftsman/Sears tractor for 15 years that I paid $999 for and which I plan on keeping for another 15!  So one of the Ryobi electric tractors had a shiny metal button on the dash. Upon closer inspection it was for.......wait for it.........cruise control!!!!

[SoonerLS]

23 hours ago, akirby said:

might just not charge enough while driving

The solution for this on the 12th Gen F-150 was to unplug the Battery Monitoring System sensor on one of the leads to the battery (I think it’s on the negative lead, but it has been a long time since I yanked it). The BMS is supposed to make charging more efficient, but all it seemed to do was cause it to charge insufficiently. 

[Rick73]

3 hours ago, Joe771476 said:

Too much gadgetry for one thing. Cars shouldn't need heated seats (get real) , backup cameras, taillights with weight sensors, parallel parking assist and other nonsense. I was just looking at lawn tractors at Home Depot just for laughs. I've had my Craftsman/Sears tractor for 15 years that I paid $999 for and which I plan on keeping for another 15!  So one of the Ryobi electric tractors had a shiny metal button on the dash. Upon closer inspection it was for.......wait for it.........cruise control!!!!

Cruise control on an electric tractor adds very little cost since motor speed has to be controlled anyway, which is probably why they add it.  Makes sense from business standpoint.  On the other hand it still adds an additional item that can fail, no matter how unlikely.  What I find a pain is that when things go wrong, it’s one more thing to troubleshoot.  One or two items isn’t a big deal, but 100s can be.

 

I get your point that vehicles have gotten more complicated than some owners need or want.  Unfortunately, so much of costs are in research, development, engineering, testing, certification, etc. that by the time a new option is production ready, it costs manufacturers very little more to add to all vehicles.  Variable costs are sometimes so low that it soon makes more sense to make it standard rather than an option.  Remember the Chrysler minivan when driver-side sliding door became standard because it cost more than leaving it off?  Not exactly the same but similar.

 

In a way I miss the ultra simplicity of my first two cars, purchased used while I was in high school, which had no power anything, but there’s no going back.  I suppose if a car was made light enough I could get away without power steering and brakes again, but I’d want air conditioning at the very least.  And a few others niceties. 😀

[SoonerLS]

3 hours ago, Joe771476 said:

So one of the Ryobi electric tractors had a shiny metal button on the dash. Upon closer inspection it was for.......wait for it.........cruise control!!!!

I haven’t spent much time on hydrostats, but every geared tractor I’ve ever driven has had “cruise control”—it’s called a hand throttle and a governor. 

[akirby]

19 hours ago, SoonerLS said:

The solution for this on the 12th Gen F-150 was to unplug the Battery Monitoring System sensor on one of the leads to the battery (I think it’s on the negative lead, but it has been a long time since I yanked it). The BMS is supposed to make charging more efficient, but all it seemed to do was cause it to charge insufficiently. 

It’s on the positive lead.  Did it charge better or just get rid of the error message? 

[Bob Rosadini]

Well Sooner I hear you on BMS..I had that problem on my Lincoln.  I'll try it.

But for kicks I just went out to start it.  When i pulled into garage last night and shut it off, no battery message. And interior lights and dash lights on when i got out of truck.

Just now open door , no interior lights or dash lights start, then I shut off-get "battery shutting down" message. Open door, dash dead and no interior lights.

stay tuned.

[SoonerLS]

1 hour ago, akirby said:

It’s on the positive lead.  Did it charge better or just get rid of the error message? 

It’s not so much an error message as a status notification.  Disconnecting the sensor caused the system to stop the “optimized” charging and just go back to charging all the time, which caused the  cutoff to stop happening so quickly after killing the ignition. It still happens, but only after 20 minutes or so. 

 

I was concerned that it might shorten the battery life, but considering that my truck is coming up on 12 years old and is on its second battery, it would appear that the short cutoff was the only “casualty.”

[Bob Rosadini]

1 hour ago, SoonerLS said:

It’s not so much an error message as a status notification.  Disconnecting the sensor caused the system to stop the “optimized” charging and just go back to charging all the time, which caused the  cutoff to stop happening so quickly after killing the ignition. It still happens, but only after 20 minutes or so. 

 

I was concerned that it might shorten the battery life, but considering that my truck is coming up on 12 years old and is on its second battery, it would appear that the short cutoff was the only “casualty.”

Mine is on negative.  I disconnected BMS from the lead-so it is disconnected from battery that is still connected and no change.

[SoonerLS]

6 hours ago, Bob Rosadini said:

Mine is on negative.  I disconnected BMS from the lead-so it is disconnected from battery that is still connected and no change.

I don’t know if it’ll work on your generation of truck, but it’ll take a little while if it does. The problem on the 12th Gen trucks was that the BMS wasn’t allowing the charging system to sufficiently charge the battery (maybe because of short trips, I don’t remember), so it was legitimately turning the system off to save battery. After disconnecting the BMS, it took a few trips for the charging system to get the battery back up to full capacity, and that’s when the truck stopped turning everything off right after killing the ignition. 
 

Also, on the 12th Gen trucks, there were sensors on both power leads from the battery. One was the BMS that was safe to unplug, but the other one had to stay connected. I’ve long forgotten what the “other one” was, if I ever knew at all. 

[Bob Rosadini]

Made appt at dealer.  stay tuned

[SoonerLS]

9 hours ago, Bob Rosadini said:

Made appt at dealer.  stay tuned

Hopefully they’ll get it squared away. 

[Bob Rosadini]

Update

I did disconnect BMS and next morning I had interior and dash lights but short lived- doing it again. 

Made an appointment for Monday, but just had to cancel.  But interesting, truck went into service 9/23, currently has 12,500 miles.  When I called to make appointment, "service person" says, " I'll have to check if it's covered by warranty" at which point I said "are you kidding?  with all the publicity Ford gets on software issues and you are telling me you have to check on warranty  for a vehicle with 12,000 miles and 16 mos in service?" She confirmed it was.  this morning when i got in it, no lights.  Drove it about 8-10 miles today and went out to confirm mileage..lights worked🤔

[MKX1960]

I had this issue constantly on the 23 Nautilus Black Label I just traded. The welcome sequence and interior lights only worked for a day or 2 after driving it. I'd then get the remote features turned off message. In my case, I don't drive much. U brought it to the dealer for it's first service and battery test showed 100%. While I was there, I decided to trade for a 25 Aviator. Haven't had it long enough to see if it will do the same thing.

[Joe771476]

Recalls are nothing new to Ford. If Ford doesn't get their act together soon, recalls alone will bankrupt it!  Check this out. I remember that it just didn't feel like it was all the way in PARK. I never knew about the decal though. Don't be confused about the term "Dodge" in the link/title. Here it means "avoid."

 

How Ford 'Fixed' A Deadly Problem With A Sticker To Dodge The Biggest Recall In History - The Autopian

[akirby]

5 hours ago, Joe771476 said:

Recalls are nothing new to Ford. If Ford doesn't get their act together soon, recalls alone will bankrupt it!  Check this out. I remember that it just didn't feel like it was all the way in PARK. I never knew about the decal though. Don't be confused about the term "Dodge" in the link/title. Here it means "avoid."

 

How Ford 'Fixed' A Deadly Problem With A Sticker To Dodge The Biggest Recall In History - The Autopian

Still user error - not putting it into Park.

[7Mary3]

On 3/8/2025 at 10:01 AM, akirby said:

It’s even worse with Ford having 15 or 20 modules from different mfrs that have to communicate.  This is why they’re going to software defined vehicles with fewer similar modules.  I think this is why they’re delayed the next F150.  Potential for big improvements.

 

This.  Other manufacturers saw this coming some time ago, don't know what took Ford so long to address the issue.  Ford needs to adopt a system like GM's Global B.  Global B did have some issues in the beginning with OTA updates killing batteries but they have that situation well in hand now, and within the next couple of years Global B will be rolled out across all vehicle lines. 

[7Mary3]

2 hours ago, akirby said:

Still user error - not putting it into Park.

 

I was around for that one, and that was not always case.  Ford had a notoriosly junky and wear-prone steering column shifter, sloppy linkage, and a weak detent spring in the transmission.  They could fall out of 'park' from vibration with the engine idling, but true you shouldn't leave a vehicle idling unattended with the parking brake not set.  

[7Mary3]

5 hours ago, 7Mary3 said:

 

 

Edited March 23 by 7Mary3

[akirby]

13 hours ago, 7Mary3 said:

 

This.  Other manufacturers saw this coming some time ago, don't know what took Ford so long to address the issue. 

Cost and resources to change over.  Huge impact on supply chain contracts old and new.  I think the EV skunkworks project really demonstrated how much this was needed.