Snow vs. nannies...nannies freak out and shutdown. Help!

Alright fellas, put your thinking caps on.

Anchorage just got about 6-8in of snow yesterday. What a perfect opportunity to go find a parking lot and see how the truck handles and what all these nanny systems do, right?

So, for about 10-15 minutes I ran through some low speed (easily <10mph and <2000rpm, but not really looking at these) donuts and figure 8s going through these settings:
- 4x4, Selectrac On
- 4x2, Selectrac On
- 4x2, Selectrac Off (single push)
- 4x2, Selectrac Off (single push), Rear diff locked
- 4x2, Selectrac Off (long push), Rear diff locked
- 4x2, Selectrac Off (long push), Rear diff open

Needless to say it was a lot of fun and very educational and the rear end got much more "free" as I went down the list. But, that is not the issue....

As I was finishing up, I noticed a bit of odor. Just the kind of stuff you get when you're breaking in any new vehicle or part. Nothing real caustic or strong, just a faint "burning off" aroma. My truck only has 600 miles on it so I've been getting whiffs of that kind of stuff for a while now. When I got done, I re-selected 4x4 and drove out of the lot. I hadn't driven 100 ft when all hell started breaking loose. My truck started giving me all kinds of red and orange error codes such as:

Get Selectrac Serviced
Hill Descent Control Error
Get brakes serviced
Anti-lock brake error

These are paraphrased a bit, but I think you get the gist.

So, I stopped the truck right where I was (luckily the brakes still worked and there was no traffic). I turned her off, waited a few seconds then turned her back on. Everything cleared out. I clicked through the menu to find the system check and that didn't report anything either. So, I gingerly drove the 1/4mile back to the hotel and parked her.

Obviously, I took as good a look around the truck I could in the pre-dawn light. I remembered reading somewhere that folks had been getting snow up under the hood so I decided to check that first. Nothing significant. There was some snow on the lower parts, but it wasn't like the engine bay was an igloo. Looking around the wheels and suspension, no surprise, there was snow on everything and snow packed in the wheel spokes. Nothing out of the ordinary that I could see at the time. The sun is up now, so I'm going to go check stuff again.

The only other notable thing was when I restarted the truck after the errors, the trans temp was showing cold. I found that odd since the truck had been running for at least a half an hour. As I drove it to the hotel that short distance, the trans temp came up fairly quickly. I don't suspect its related, but its another data point nonetheless.

Soooo...FRF-powers activate!

Check the third brake light for moisture...

I think everyone needs to play with their truck like this. You learn so much and understand the diffenert modes and the truck reacts..

-Greg

Ahhhh, forgot about that issue. Are those the kinds of errors that people were seeing? I'll have to go reread that stuff because I just skimmed it before.

f16YODA said:

Ahhhh, forgot about that issue. Are those the kinds of errors that people were seeing? I'll have to go reread that stuff because I just skimmed it before.

Click to expand...

On my 2011 I got all the errors except selectrac error..

-Greg

Good call on the 3rd light.

Another thought: I had the exact same problem, but for very different reasons and it didn't clear after a restart. Here's the details on all that. http://www.fordraptorforum.com/f5/freak-accident-weakness-found-wheel-speed-sensor-7345/

Could snow or ice have packed in there just enough to confuse it for a second? Given the amount of tossing around and weird angles snow was flyin, it wouldn't surprise me. Maybe.

Just spitballin here. Wish I could be more help.

Awesome words, GJ. I just looked through those old threads/posts and saw similar info.

I have plenty of snow on my roof that could easily be melting down there. Very strange fault and odd that they didn't fix it for the '12s.

---------- Post added at 10:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:32 AM ----------

BigJ, that's kinda what I was thinking at first. Maybe not something broken, but just loose or snowpacked. Unfortunately I couldn't see anything in the dark and everything was covered in snow anyway. I'll look for that in particular when I go back out. Thanks!

Glad you could get out and play with it Yoda!

Mine's a 2010 and I've never had issues with wiring due to the third brake light even after 30k miles. Nor have I done any waterproofing on it which is sad, since I am in the business.

I have had the ABS error show up a few times, but that was during mud activity, and once or twice in snow wheeling. BigJ may be onto something with the snow and ice packing around something to cause a sensor to freak out.

And for some reason, my nannie stuff doesn't always kick in - especially on dusty (salt residue) pavement. I can often light up the tires at 40 or 50mph in a straight line with no TCS kicking in - always during an up-hill ascent.

If you can find an abandoned parking lot that's big enough, I'd recommend some higher speed playing - I've had some fun figuring out the nannies limits when in extended fishtails or drifting. Just hitting the button once makes a huge difference on that type of activity.

And last, my Traction button had to be replaced after about 3 months of owning the truck. It stopped working (although I had mashed it pretty hard once or twice!) and the dealer replaced under warranty.

Latest report.

I went and looked at those two sensors. They are both still in place but well packed with snow. I looked at the 3rd brake light and didn't notice any major moisture, but the problem there is everything is frozen so that's hard to tell. I still got the "burning in" odor whenever I was stopped at a light. So, something is cooking (hopefully just dirty snow) and the smell is seeping up when there is no airflow pulling it away. I did notice there was a good bit of snow packed up in the skidplate back by the tranny when I did my walk around.

Overall though, I drove the truck around town a bunch in the afternoon and evening and had no problems at all. I'll keep an eye on it.

probably just breaking in still.

if im diriving something and i notice a bad smell, ill drive it slow and see if anything seems affected, then just let it sit and drive it around an hour later. if smell is gone, i dont worry about it..


however if its things like a big bang from bottoming out your parents minivan take a look underneath to make sure nothings broken... woops