But a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum I call “work” on Friday.
OK, So it wasn’t actually funny, it was more of a “Pain in the Ass”. Late model Ford and Mazda truck owners pay attention.
As I’m in the home stretch to my appraoch to work on Friday, I notice that my headlights are flickering as though they’re only getting half or three-quarter power for a second or two, but not in correspondence with the bumps in the road. When I pull up into the parking lot and put the truck in park to get out and lock the so-called ‘security gate’, the lights just shut off. The corner/parking lights are on and the switch is in the “ON” position, but I’ve got no lights.
So I lock the gate, get back in the truck and go to my parking spot. There I test to see if I have any way to fire up these bastards so that I can drive home at 0500 or if I’m going to have to wait until daylight before going home.
The “ON” switch is on the lower left hand side of the dash panel and it has three positions “OFF”, “Running Lights On” and “ON”. Fiddling with the switch gets me nothing, so I start playing with the turn signal bar because it controls the high beams.
Normal function is to push it forward and the high beams come on or pull it backwards and they flash on. I push it forward and get nothing. I pull it backwards and finally get a dose of my very bright blue headlights reflecting of the white building.
All of this means that, you guessed it, if I want to go home when I’m done at work (usually 0500 on Fridays) instead of daybreak (approximately 0730 in Seattle these days) I have to hold my high beams on with my left hand for 30 miles. I’m sure my fellow drivers at that time of morning loved me.
I got home and popped the headlight switch out of the dash rather easily, only to find that my voltmeter is kaput. So now I wait until day break for the shop to open at 0830 and hope they can get me in before I have to go to work on Monday. The wife wants to go to Wally World after she gets home at 0800, so off we go. On the way home from WW we go to the shop and they have a wide open day and advise me to bring it in ASAP before they fill up.
$150 in parts later, I find out that my voltmeter wouldn’t have helped me much as it was the turn signal bar that went to shit and I cannot test that without going way deeper into my tilt steering column than I would have been able to do in my driveway (the truck is too large to get into the garage, time to get a bigger garage).
And that is where my range fund money went.
Here is where you late model Ford and Mazda truck owners will want to listen up, because I’m pretty sure I have diagnosed the problem:
When I worked as a map geek for the contractor who did the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), DSHS (Dept of Social and Health Services) and the W2W (Welfare to Work) transportation in King County, we used modified Ford E450 vans. At around 40,000 miles just about every one of the vans had the switch that controlled their OverDrive go bad. At first they thought it was a problem with the Ford parts subcontractor because it happened again at around 80,000 miles.
But when I bought my F150, I realized that it was an interior design flaw.
The two vehicles share a similar dash design and when the PRNDL lever, with the OD control switch on the end of it, was in “D”, it sat directly in front of the right hand, driver’s side, dashboard heat vent.
You spend 40,000 miles sitting in front of a hot air vent and then tell me you don’t feel like giving up function.
I pointed this out to the lead tech in our shop this and they glued the vents shut. Oddly enough, when 120,000 miles came around, nothing happened. The OD’s kept working and I proceeded to never open my up. If I wanted warmth from the heater, I left only the left hand driver’s side one open and the two on the passenger side, or used the window vents (aka ‘Defroster”) or the floor vents.
However, because the turn signal bar, in the center “OFF” position, did not quite stick out far enough to rest in front of the left hand driver’s side vent, I never thought to close that one.
Stupid me.
My truck is rapidly approaching 100,000 miles (99K and some change) and that vent has remained open since I bought it with 28,000 miles. The turn signal bar, along with controlling the turn signals and the high beams, also has the controls for the wipers (including 8 overly convenient intermittent speeds) and the washer fluid pump switch.
I have been noticing since Spring of this year that the washer fluid switch wasn’t working according to plan. Sometimes I would have to push it three or four times to get it to spray. I thought that there must be a hole in the tubing causing a vaccum leak (it resides in a hot engine compartment and flexes every week when the hood gets opened) and that the fluid was just running back down the tubing. But now that I look back on it, and now that the new turn signal bar’s washer fluid button works flawlessly, I see the warning sign.
Ford supposedly put $2 Billion-plus into R&D for the 1997 and later F Series trucks.
I think I found something yesterday they should have spent an extra $10KÂ testing for.
That’s funny. I’ve been in California since 1987 and I think driving down from Oregon was the last time I turned on the heater. I read your post and at first I was thinking “Phil’s misdiagnosed it. Nobody runs the heater that much!”
Now, on the other hand, I’ll run the A/C most days nine months out of the year, and even sometimes in the middle of “winter.” Part of why our gas mileage sucks, I suppose.
The problem isn’t unique to Ford or Mazda, although I have 85,000 on my Mazda and no issues yet (crosses fingers). The problem is more prevalent in Chevy trucks, and I haven’t driven a Chev that didn’t have something wrong in one of the functions of the Wonder-stalk.
Now, the auto design engineers have known about the fallibility of these multi-functional control stalks for years, and yet they haven’t designed them to be easily replaceable. Why not? To give more repair sollars to their service departments, that’s why not.
Usually, the first thing to give out is the cruise control, then the washers/wipers, and last, the turn signals.
I don’t think the problem is ralated to the repeated heating of the stalk by the vent. I think is is more likely related to dust and dirt being blown by said vent into the small crevices in the stalk, and causing poor contacts in the switches therein.
I’ve never read this anywhere, but maybe if you took some canned air and using the supplied tube, shot a whole can into all those crevices, you might just blow out the crud that is preventing good contact.
On the other hand, if the crud was something that dripped from a Jack-in-the-Box hamburger, you aren’t going to move it with canned air.
What I WOULD do, before expending money for the 5-10 hours of technical labor necessary to replace said stalk (and total replacement is probably needed, not just restoration of function), I would try to find out if the stalk can take spritzing with contact cleaner. If it will stand up to that, I would try that next.
Of course, obtaining good diagrams of how the stalk is put together before doing ANY repair is essential.
Good luck.
Keep us posted on how it turns out.
The only months you don’t need at least a little heat in the cabin are June thru September, Big D. I’ll be running my heater every day (night) from now until June.
As for letting you know how it turned out, RD, it’s done. $150 in parts, and the labor negotiable (because I know the shop) at less than an hour.
Was that for a replacement stalk installed, or just a repair-to-run?
That was all new parts: stalk and electronics into the column. I wasn’t about to fark around with this any more. I go to work around 1900 and leave around 0600 which, at this time of year, means total darkness, and in the mornings, usually light to medium fog.
Roger that…say, isn’t it time for a Blasto? If it was of the outdoor type, I’ll have my new Mini-30 in the next week or so, and I might be buying an Ishapore Enfield 2a also. Gots lots of practice LC 7.62 NATO.
Maybe you could declare a “7.62 Battle Rattle Day”. That would bring out the AKs, SKSs, Mini-30, Old Russkies and US stuff ranging from 03A3s to Garands and Springfield M1As. We might even put on a Milsurp Match like the Layabout Sailor has been to in Texas City once or twice.
Let us know.
I hate to rain on your diag parade but, Ford multifunction switchs are just junk, sorry. I have been a Ford dealer mechanic for 15 years. My opinion is that they tried to cram to much function into that type of a control. That combined with production from the lowest bidder = trouble. the new design is not much better.
I’ll take your assesment, Red, but if you’ve ever happened upon some of the Nissan and Honda elec-crap, you’d think Ford stuff was made by dieties.