Melekith
Well-Known Member
- Thread starter
- #1
Hi Everyone-
A bit of a long story, my apologies, but want to share and I'm seeking some opinions on how I should handle the following situation.
Shortly after taking delivery of my vehicle (back in Dec 2014)...my air bag light illuminated on my gauge cluster. According to the manual...when this happens...the system is basically disabled and needs to be checked out. So I took the car to my local dealer and they said there was a recall for a part, which happened to be on national back order.
I waited over a year to have this fixed...with my dealer eventually calling me a few months ago to advise that they got the part in and could complete the repair. So I took the car in, and after replacing the part...the issue was not fixed, and my air bag light remained lit. They ended up having my car for another 3 business days before fixing the issue.
Now fast forward to last Friday (4/15) when I left Chicago, IL for a road trip down to Florida. My destination for that Friday was Chattanooga where I had hotel reservations for a quick recharge before getting back on the road Saturday morning to complete the trek to Tampa.
After driving about 500 miles and nearing the outskirts of Nashville, TN my parking brake light illuminated on my gauge cluster. Normally this would indicate that your parking brake is activated...but mine was not. Unfortunately with the car in motion (anything above 30mph from what I gathered) the car would just make an audible noise CONSTANTLY (similar to when you don't have your seatbelt on, but alot louder).
I moved over to the shoulder and started troubleshooting. I pulled up on the lever and released it...but still the light stayed on. I then popped the hood and double checked my brake fluid...the reservoir was filled to its normal level. I sat there for a good 30 minutes just waiting to see if I possibly had any brake line leaks...but nothing that I could see visually.
I decided that I should probably exit immediately, so I did, again listening to the loud chime the entire time. The brakes themselves felt fine and grabbed well. My parking brake was also working. I made it to a Shell station and I popped the hood again, this time thinking I could just pull the fuse responsible for the light/chime and then continue my journey to my hotel. I pulled the fuse but still the light was lit and the chime continued.
There was no way I could have even fathomed driving the car for another 1500+ miles (round trip) with that chime...so I googled the nearest Ford dealer and drove to it for inspection.
Now at this point...I wasn't even thinking about my mods or the fact that I had a tune on the car. I had my SCTX4 with me but I just totally blanked and didn't even think to quickly flash to stock before going to the dealer. The dealer took the car and was like "son do you have a program on the car" and I basically said "yes it's to allow for the high flow cats".
Anyway...they confirmed everything that I had already troubleshooted, and everything looked good. The tech popped off the console inside and found this...
This is the switch that, when the parking brake lever is pulled, tells the computer that the parking brake is activated and the light illuminates on the gauge cluster. It was broken, and clearly it had been broken before because that gray substance looks and feels alot like JB Weld. So the switch broke and was tripping the computer into thinking that the parking brake was engaged all the time.
They did not have a switch at the dealership to replace the broken one with, told me that they had to order one. So I agreed to simply leave the broken one out. They wanted to fight me on warranty because of my tune and said I'd be in for $96. I didn't really argue because I had just been on the road for about 9 hours, and I didn't want my trip to be ruined. I just wanted to get back on the road, get to my hotel, and continue to Florida for my vacation the next morning. So I paid the fee and they left the switch out.
I want to stress that the car has operated just fine since then. I made my trip safely to Florida and back with my brakes, fluid, and parking brake all working normally. The only thing is now when I use the parking brake...I no longer get the light on the dash since a new switch was not reinstalled.
So this begs the question...how and when was this part broken...and why would it be covered up with a hack solution like JB Weld. I have certainly never had my console torn apart. The only mod on my car that I didn't do myself were my headers...and I don't think the console would have been taken out for that.
So this leads me back to the issue that I had my local dealer fix for me several months back for my air bag light. Do you guys think that during this repair...they would have needed to open the center console? Could they have potentially broken this other part, not told me, tried to "glue" it back together and hope it would never break?
I'm really not sure how I should handle this, because without knowing what was involved with the air bag light repair...I can't really say if my local dealer is at fault. But this certainly concerns the hell out of me and I feel extremely cheated...by someone. Luckily this parking brake switch doesn't affect the actual mechanical operation of the car, but I really am not sure how, and how far, I should pursue this? The fact that I'm modded and tuned already has me not looking good (even though we all know that my mods and tune had NOTHING to do with the parking brake switch failure).
A bit of a long story, my apologies, but want to share and I'm seeking some opinions on how I should handle the following situation.
Shortly after taking delivery of my vehicle (back in Dec 2014)...my air bag light illuminated on my gauge cluster. According to the manual...when this happens...the system is basically disabled and needs to be checked out. So I took the car to my local dealer and they said there was a recall for a part, which happened to be on national back order.
I waited over a year to have this fixed...with my dealer eventually calling me a few months ago to advise that they got the part in and could complete the repair. So I took the car in, and after replacing the part...the issue was not fixed, and my air bag light remained lit. They ended up having my car for another 3 business days before fixing the issue.
Now fast forward to last Friday (4/15) when I left Chicago, IL for a road trip down to Florida. My destination for that Friday was Chattanooga where I had hotel reservations for a quick recharge before getting back on the road Saturday morning to complete the trek to Tampa.
After driving about 500 miles and nearing the outskirts of Nashville, TN my parking brake light illuminated on my gauge cluster. Normally this would indicate that your parking brake is activated...but mine was not. Unfortunately with the car in motion (anything above 30mph from what I gathered) the car would just make an audible noise CONSTANTLY (similar to when you don't have your seatbelt on, but alot louder).
I moved over to the shoulder and started troubleshooting. I pulled up on the lever and released it...but still the light stayed on. I then popped the hood and double checked my brake fluid...the reservoir was filled to its normal level. I sat there for a good 30 minutes just waiting to see if I possibly had any brake line leaks...but nothing that I could see visually.
I decided that I should probably exit immediately, so I did, again listening to the loud chime the entire time. The brakes themselves felt fine and grabbed well. My parking brake was also working. I made it to a Shell station and I popped the hood again, this time thinking I could just pull the fuse responsible for the light/chime and then continue my journey to my hotel. I pulled the fuse but still the light was lit and the chime continued.
There was no way I could have even fathomed driving the car for another 1500+ miles (round trip) with that chime...so I googled the nearest Ford dealer and drove to it for inspection.
Now at this point...I wasn't even thinking about my mods or the fact that I had a tune on the car. I had my SCTX4 with me but I just totally blanked and didn't even think to quickly flash to stock before going to the dealer. The dealer took the car and was like "son do you have a program on the car" and I basically said "yes it's to allow for the high flow cats".
Anyway...they confirmed everything that I had already troubleshooted, and everything looked good. The tech popped off the console inside and found this...
This is the switch that, when the parking brake lever is pulled, tells the computer that the parking brake is activated and the light illuminates on the gauge cluster. It was broken, and clearly it had been broken before because that gray substance looks and feels alot like JB Weld. So the switch broke and was tripping the computer into thinking that the parking brake was engaged all the time.
They did not have a switch at the dealership to replace the broken one with, told me that they had to order one. So I agreed to simply leave the broken one out. They wanted to fight me on warranty because of my tune and said I'd be in for $96. I didn't really argue because I had just been on the road for about 9 hours, and I didn't want my trip to be ruined. I just wanted to get back on the road, get to my hotel, and continue to Florida for my vacation the next morning. So I paid the fee and they left the switch out.
I want to stress that the car has operated just fine since then. I made my trip safely to Florida and back with my brakes, fluid, and parking brake all working normally. The only thing is now when I use the parking brake...I no longer get the light on the dash since a new switch was not reinstalled.
So this begs the question...how and when was this part broken...and why would it be covered up with a hack solution like JB Weld. I have certainly never had my console torn apart. The only mod on my car that I didn't do myself were my headers...and I don't think the console would have been taken out for that.
So this leads me back to the issue that I had my local dealer fix for me several months back for my air bag light. Do you guys think that during this repair...they would have needed to open the center console? Could they have potentially broken this other part, not told me, tried to "glue" it back together and hope it would never break?
I'm really not sure how I should handle this, because without knowing what was involved with the air bag light repair...I can't really say if my local dealer is at fault. But this certainly concerns the hell out of me and I feel extremely cheated...by someone. Luckily this parking brake switch doesn't affect the actual mechanical operation of the car, but I really am not sure how, and how far, I should pursue this? The fact that I'm modded and tuned already has me not looking good (even though we all know that my mods and tune had NOTHING to do with the parking brake switch failure).
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