finally found the problems this time
Have you ever looked under your drivers seat to see what is there. If you think you have wiring under the dash, look under the seat. What a mess. Well for those that have been following my issues, here's what the outcome of my issues with fault lights, dash going out and noises etc. etc. has been.
I finally took it to my local dealer Steve Courty Ford up here in Payson, Az. small dealership and I was a little apprehensive to take it to them as they have never worked on a Raptor. I should have known better though as this is truck country and everyone has one for ranching or back country work. A lot of Fords also. I talked to the Steve the mechanic that was going to work on it. He knew the problems as he had driven with me and saw it all. He took it in and started on the electrical issue first. I had removed all the plastic around the steering column because that is were we had narrowed it down to. He had several other techs looking at it with him as they just could not narrow it down. UNTIL. He was getting frustrated with it after trying to figure it out for 2days. He leaned forward in frustration and put his head on the steering wheel and the dash went out. He leaned back in wonderment and it came back on. He leaned forward and it went out. Again he leaned back and it came back on. ??????? WTF he says. He looks under the seat. He had not adjusted the seat at all from my normal postition so he raised it. (I'm 6'3" so I have the seat down and back.) The dash stayed on. He started looking around at the mess under the seat. There are motors and sensors and heaters and wires. Lot's of wires. The main wiring loom goes through the truck under the seat. He noticed that in the lowered postion that part of that large main loom was squished pretty good so he raised it again. The loom pinched against a bar that is as sharp as a razor. The loom was sitting in a vertical position. Some how one of the wires was getting poked and causeing a short. He did not know which one because it was such a large loom of wires. He removed the seat to look at it better. He noticed the loom wear on it in the spot where the razor sharp bar was touching the loom. He removed the loom from the plastic keeper that holds it to the seat location and laid it down away from the sharp bar so it would not get pinched. Electrical problem fixed.
YEE HAA!!!!
So moral of the story is look under your seat and see if your wiring loom is rubbing on the razor sharp bar running under the seat and move it before you go nuts like I have for two and a half months chasing the electrical gremlin.
Now the noise that sounded like a catalytic convertor was also a weird fluke but is more common to 4x4 ford pickups.
The front hubs are vacumm actuated. The tubing that comes out of the hub behind the wheel is rubber. When it gets up by the UCA it turns into plastic. There is about 2 inches that is not protected and the exhaust is only about 4-6 inches behind it. The plastic gets hot and brittle and then cracks or breaks. This causes the lack of vacumm upon accelaration to cause the gears in the hub to rattle and it sounds just like a catalytic convertor core loose in the can. The mechanic has fixed this before on other ford trucks and this was the first place he looked. His fix instead of replaceing the entire plastic loom at $300 was to take a piece of heat shrink and put it over the cracked plastic then heat it up. Worked like a charm. I'm still going to cover this open plastic on each side with some heat resistent material but again this was something that I glanced right past even when I removed the wheel and hub looking for the noise. This piece is held on by a plastic tie wrap type holder but it has slipped out of that holder and moves around like crazy rubbing on the UCA. Hence the cracked tubing.
I plan on contacting ford to let them know of the seat issue as I feel this is actually a factory defect due to the running of the wire loom under the seat and how it is squished when the seat is in it's lowest position and the sharp bar cuts into it.
I hope if anyone else experiences this issue that this may help before you have to take it into the dealer.
Here are pictures of the problems.
Mil T
This is the mess under the front driver seat. You can see the main loom coming up out of the floor board. It goes up over that black box. You can see the loom above the box. This is where my loom was pinched. My seat is all the way up in this picture.
This is the seat in the lowered position. As you can see it squishes stuff down pretty good. Look at that same loom from the first picture.
This is the same loom but it has been repositioned to not be pinched between the stock position and this bar below.
You can see the sharp edge on this flat bar. It has the plastic keepers on it for other wiring above it. This is what cuts into the wiring loom when it is in the fully down and back position.
This is the picture of the vacume line to the front right hub. It's the one on the right going into that loom material but you can see where the exposed tubing is. The fix was a piece of heat shrink but that's not going to last forever, so I'll probably replace that also. You can see how close the exhaust is behind it. There is a shield there but I'm sure that does not help protect it completely. I am going to rap that open piece with some heat resistant material. I"m sure it would not hurt to wrap that ABS line next to it either. This needs to be done on both sides.
Just a P.S. to this whole thing. I don't understand how the pinching of one wire can cause such a conglomeration of all the fault lites etc. that were going off and on along with the dash, nav and everything else associatied with the dash. This electrical system is extremely sensative.
