07 Hybrid broke down
Created February 14, 2007, at 12:07 pm by Gweeks
I own a new 07 Escape Hybrid. One month ago it suddenly and with no warning just cut out while I was driving on the highway. The RPMs shot up then dropped off completely. The warnings ''stop safely now'' and then ''service soon'' came on. I pulled over and had to restart as the vehicle had no acceleration power. In other words the engine was off. Radio, console lights, etc. were still on. After restarting I continued driving and it happened again after about a minute. This continued with increasing frequency until I was about four km from the garage where I could no longer get the car to start. It was towed to the garage and has been in ever since! I did get it back for one day though, but it was not fixed and had to go back. The mechanics have no idea what's wrong and are giving me the run around. Anyone experience this or know the solution?
Free Email Newsletter Sign-up
All the latest news in a free and engaging bundle. Totally free!
That's awful on a new 07 too.Did you take it to ford?
Gweeks,
The Tech that is working on your FEH has no idea what he's working on. It sounds to me he needs to contact the Ford Hotline for help. There must be a reason, (like he is not a certified Hybrid Tech) for not contacting the Ford hotline.
It sounds like you have a corrupted PCM, and it needs to be reflashed or replaced.
Copy my post and print it to a letter and give them one day to resolve it in a certified letter hand delivered ASAP. They had better be giving you a great replacement for your FEH with MPG equals, or pay you for the added expense for this delay. I had a similar problem and they fixed it the same day for reprogramming the PCM. A new PCM may take a few days at most.
Good Luck, GaryG
Sounds similar to the issue I am having with m 5 day old '07. I am looking for a Hybrid Certified Tech in my area since my dealership has no clue.
Hey GaryG. Would you happen to have that Ford Hotline # available? I googled and found nothing. Thanks!
Jerry
I have a 2006 Ford Escape Hybrid that I bought brand new in January 2006. Never a complaint until today......but today I'm pulling my hair out over the car! I get to the grocery store, shop, load the car with my groceries, then the car starts up fine and I put it in reverse and it dies giving me a message "Stop Safely Now". My radio, windows, console lights are working....just not the car! I repeatedly try to no avail to start the car. Eventually I call for a tow and hubby to get my groceries out. Hubby shows up and the car starts right up for him. It's like a sick little joke the car is playing on me making me look like the crazy woman who dreamed it all up! I cancel the tow and go home to unload my groceries that have been in the car spoiling for nearly an hour and a half. A couple of hours later, Hubby is out getting a haircut and discovers he has forgotten his wallet. I dash out to rescue him and the car again dies and the message says "Stop Safely Now". After all the other fiascos of the day have been settled.......Hubby and all the neighbors get to see my car dead in the middle of the street. It's too late to call for a tow since my Ford Dealership is closed so the neighbors helped get the vehicle into the garage for the evening. The only good news is that I no longer look like the dumb blonde crazy woman who cried wolf! However, I still have no car!
My manual says this about the warning message "STOP SAFELY NOW --- Displayed when the Master electrical hazard warning lamp is illuminated indicating a Hybrid component failure. If this warning occurs, the vehicle will soon shutdown without further warning, stop the vehicle as soon as safely possible and contact your authorized dealer as soon as possible."
Have you learned anything about what the problem with your Ford Escape Hybrid is?
I own a 2006 Ford Escape Hybrid with 45000 miles on it. I have a problem with it that started last fall. The wrench light will come on and service soon comes on in the message center. I have had the Ford garage near me put it on the computer, while the light is on, and the computer says that the car is running fine. My gas mileage has fallen off. The technician found info on the computer that says that the car will do this when ethanol mixed gas is put in the car. He told me not to put E85 in the car or the fuel will be destroyed. The only gas available to me in this area is mixed with E10 (10% ethanol). I contacted Ford Customer Service and basically the answer was we can't do anything. Has anyone else had this type of problem with the car?
I own a '06 FEH with 38K miles on it. About 5 months ago the "Service Soon" (a.k.a. the wrench light) light came on while driving the car. FYI, the "Service Soon" light is a different indicator than the "Check Engine" light. While the "Service Soon" light was on, the car did not exhibit any problems and ran normally. The light went away once the engine was turned off and the light did not turn on again after starting the car. Since then, the "Service Soon" light has intermittently turned on while driving. The light clears once the engine is turned off. The annoying problem has probably occurred about 15+ times since. :mad: I've taken it to a Ford dealer to have them diagnose the problem, but they have no clue to what's causing the "Service Soon" light to come on. They've tried connecting scanners to get read outs from the on board computer, but the the computer reports no problems. They've had to call the Ford Hotline several times and are now trying to reproduce the problem by driving the car around while it is connected to a scanner. My gripe with all this, aside from the annoyance of the light coming on intermittently, is that no one at Ford seems to know what the "Service Soon" is supposed to be reporting. Does anyone know what the "Service Soon" light is supposed to be reporting? Does the dealer need to replace the on board computer? On a prior visit to the dealer regarding this problem, they cleared the computer and supposedly loaded new software in it, but that did not fix the problem. Thanks in advance for any suggestions/help.
The problem your having is it's going away before 3 continuous cycles of restarts. If it can stay present for three continuous cycles, it takes 40 restarts to clear the code. The problem with the dealer and the Hotline team is, it will cost them many hours of test to get to the problem without a code. The computer is not the problem, it's a condition that flags a sensor.
The tech that reflashed my PCM did a check of all the oils, fluids and filters to make sure I was maintaining thing properly or things didn't get overheated. I had just changed the HV battery filter which was one of the first things he checked.
If I were you, I'd check the gas your filling up with for ethanol and other additives. Ethanol and other oxygenates can screw up readings on the heated oxygen sensors to cause a rich fuel mixture intermittently. If you exceed the rich mixture limits for just a short time, you could get a service soon light. Bad gas mileage would be another sign of ethanol BTW.
Other than that, I'm afraid your going to have the problem get worst before it gets better.
Good Luck
GaryG
Thanks GaryG for the suggestions. The hybrid is getting pretty good gas mileage, averaging around 30 mpg; mainly driven 80% on the highway during a typical work week. I would think rich fuel mixture reported from the oxygen sensor is a code that would definitely show up on a scanner though. BTW, I almost always get gas at Costco (not sure what fuel mixture they use).
I will suggest your suggestions to the Ford service adviser about checking filters and such. You are also right about the time it takes troubleshooting the problem as the hybrid has been at the shop for about a week now.
This problem I'm having with the hybrid is troubling me because my back seat passenger is my 3 year old son. When a light comes on and no diagnostics is reported, you really don't know how serious the problem might be. What's the use of the sensor when it can't even report what the problem is? It would be like going to the doctor and telling him/her "There's something wrong with me." He/she asks, "What seems to be the problem?" and you reply, "I don't know, you figure it out." :(
When my PCM went wacko, I could restart the FEH for a few seconds and it would die. During this time I was checking for codes on my Scangauge, but no codes came up. At the dealership, the hybrid tech found a O2 sensor code which cleared on its own and a ABS code which he reprogrammed.
If your getting a condition that causes a light, but the problem goes away within a second or two, the scangauge I have may not pick up the code during the scan you perform. Just because the dash light stays on till you cycle the ignition switch, the scangauge may not read the code because basicly it's not there anymore.
A sure sign of ethanol is bad mileage, so if your getting good mileage, it's not that. I was just trying to give examples of what the Ford techs are up against. The small laptop scanner the techs use should locate the problem if they can get the problem to show up while it's hooked up. If the tech or sevice advisor has never seen the "service soon" light, they are really trying to locate the problem for you. Most dealerships would just tell you they don't see a problem, and can't help you. You must have brought it in with the light still on for the service advisor to see.
GaryG
I purchased a 2008 FEH in March. When the car had 500 miles on it I took a trip on a day that was hotter than normal - low 90's. After 20 miles I got the "stop safely" message along with the exclamation mark in the triangle warning light and the car cut off. I coasted over to the shoulder, turned the car off, and then back on and it started with no warning lights. I thought this must be a fluke so I went on down the road. The same problem happened again a couple of miles later. I then decided it was best to head home. After about 10 more episodes, I did get home. I took the car in and the dealer diagnosed it as the electric water pump for the electric motor cooling system was inoperative. They replaced it. I thought it was weird to have such a failure with a new car, but it sounded plausible. No further problem for the next 1500 miles.
A couple of weeks ago I head out on another trip and again it happens to be in the low 90s. I get 60 miles from home and the same problem as above happens. This time it takes me hours to get back home. Figuring the problem was definitely heat related, we pulled over at a rest stop for an hour and sure enough I was able to go about 20 miles before the thing failed again. Needless to say I am not happy.
I took the car in to the dealer. They checked it out and tried to get it to fail for a week. They said they were consulting with Ford engineers. Finally last week they got it to fail. The diagnosis is that there is something wrong with the electric motor that is causing overheating. The fix is to replace the electric motor. To add insult to injury they say that it will take 2 weeks to get the new motor from Ford.
So here I have a brand new $30K car, getting its main hybrid drive replaced by a dealer who says they have never seen this before -- which obviously means they have no experience replacing the motor. So how confident should I be in this course of action? Suggestions?
WOW,this is extremely rare and the first failure I've heard of. My thoughts are the first overheating caused by the bad electronic coolant pump may have caused the damage to the motor or broke down (burned) the transmission fluid which caused the problem. At any rate, if anything other than reflashing the Transmission Control Module is needed to repair the eCVT, it has to be replaced.
Ford will most likely send a eCVT expert to that dealership to confirm the problem. If in fact the motor is bad, they must replace the entire ECVT. This will require removing the engine and eCvt as a unit from the vehicle to change the eCVT. Love to get a video of that work or at least watch.
Sorry for the breakdown, but Ford will take this problem very seriously and you should be in good hands for that reason.
Good Luck!
GaryG
Follow-up on the problem with my 2008 FEH that I reported above. The dealer was able to reproduce the failure. They consulted with Ford engineers and determined the transmission was overheating and needed to be replaced. It took 2 weeks to get the new transmission. After replacing the transmission the tech noticed that one of the coolant pumps was not working. Checking the power he noted it had power but a bad ground. He traced the circuit and found a wire splice that had not been crimped at all at the factory. The wire was making intermittent connection. This wiring fault was very likely the problem the whole time and not the transmission itself. I have the car back now intact and have not had further problems. I'll post again if the overheating problem returns -- but I'm hopeful that the root cause has been identified and fixed.
Thanks for the update as I was very interested in what caused the problem. I'm sure it was no walk in the park for the Ford Hybrid Tech that had to do the work, and he will be talking about that for a long time.
GaryG
Interesting information here. I just dropped my 2008 FEH at the dealership this morning for the same issue after 39,000 miles. They just called me and said they found a bad ground which they fixed and they reprogrammed the PCM. I have been getting 32-33 MPH with my 4WD version which I think is pretty good for this size vehicle. I have had no other issues and love this vehicle. It does make you wonder why they are having ground faults on these - almost sounds like a process error in the factory. I hope this fixes my issue, as you can tell by my mileage I just about live in this vehicle. I hope Ford doesn't let this get out of control. For those of us who believe in Ford quality and support them with our purchases we need to know these things will be fixed for good.
I've got the same problem. They say it is the A/C blend door motor to the HV battery not working. We'll see...
I have a 2007 FEH too and my "Service Soon" light came on last night. I called my Ford dealer and their certified technician won't be in until Thursday. Hopefully, the technician can make some sense to of this vague warning than the service person who field my phone call.
To those who had a "stop safely now" warning, any luck/follow-up? I was about to leave the shore this morning on a 2 hour ride back home. I turned on my car, I went to pull into the driveway to turn around, the "stop safely now" warning came on and the car immediately died. I tried restarting a few times to see if I could get enough to get it to the side of the road and the same thing kept happening. I had it towed to the dealership and its now sitting in their night drop location. It was early in the morning, the car ran only for about 30 seconds so I don't think it was a heat related issue.
The coolant pump on my 2005 FEH (36,500 miles) was just diagnosed as failed, and replaced. The problem presented differently. I first got an "engine overheating" warning and kept driving to the next highway exit. Then the "stop safely" warning came on but the car did not cut out. I pulled over and let the engine cool and was able to drive home slowly off-highway without any warning signals. I will update if I get further problems like yours.
I have a 07 FEH that suddenly would not start early in the week. I had driven 150 miles, no problem. Parked in a lot outside a mall for a few hours, came back and it would not start. It was hot that day, perhaps low to mid 90s. I did get the "stop safely now" warning. After 15 minutes or so, the car started-but only briefly. After another 20 minutes it started and I was able to drive the 150 miles back home with no problem. The car stayed parked for a couple of days and then I went to drive it last night and it made it 2 blocks before the "stop safely now" warning appeared and I lost all power. Filled it with new gas today and it seemed fine. I currently live in south Texas and the average temp during this time of the year is over 90. I have had the car 1 1/2 years in the same location and this is the first time this has happened. The car made it 6 miles today before the warning and loss of power-again. I've had it towed to Ford dealership where I purchased the car. They will not be able to look at it until Monday, but does this sound like it might be an easy fix (i.e., coolant pump, heat sensor malfunction)?
Will repost when I hear from service department in a few days.
Thanks in advance.
Just spoke with the service department and there seems to be a recall on the FEH. This recall has to do with an electrical issue and the battery. This issue apparently will cause the vehicle to lose power with no real pattern.
There was a recall last September 2007 for changing the wiring harness? connector? in the hybrid battery compartment. Something could corrode and Ford Motor company acted. There was also a reprogram/software update which causes the translation from gas to electric to become smoother.
Post a new comment