Another little shred that resulted from an idea I had last night:

You know how, when you enter the car, your right foot nudges the brake pedal, which kicks off what sounds like a small pump ( I've assumed that what I was listening to was a small pump recharging a brake accumulator ).

Well I purposefully nudged that brake pedal this AM after the car sat overnight, and what I got was interesting: no pump sound, but instead a dull thumping sound at about .75 to 1 Hz. Opened up the hood and tracked the sound to the ABS module, which was undergoing some small sort of steady frequency pressure surge.

Once again, cycling the low voltage battery positive lead off and then on got rid of this pulsing and the car started fine, albeit with an ABS light that took 10 seconds or so to extinguish. ( Note: zero ABS or brake problems/warnings etc since new )

Thanks,
John Dixson

 

It's possessed!

 

did it throw any codes?

 

No codes were reported by my Scan Guage.

That brings up a question for the community: has anyone experienced any sort of unusual electronic behavior traceable to the Scan Guage connection to the OBD system?

While I have confirmed visually that the connection is free of bent pins and is clean, what I have not done is to disconnect the Scan Guage while this problem is occurring. I dropped the car off at a dealer this AM and they plan to do that, assuming the problem will appear after the vehicle sits for a number of hours.

This morning I tried nudging the brake pedal again as the first action upon entering the car ( key not inserted ), and once again triggered the ABS system trying unsuccessfully to come on. At that point I got out and measured the low voltage battery voltage ( was 12.3 V before entering the car ) and this was down to 10.0V. Got back in the seat , inserted the key and this started the relay chatter etc. Got out and now the battery voltage was 6.5V. Disconnected the positive terminal ( voltage back to normal ) waited two minutes, reconnected the positive terminal and the system, and the car, started normally.

As to the car being " possessed ", I know that the local magnetic variation is stable and other than that, as long as Tiger Woods keeps paying his $440K real estate taxes on time, we'll be OK here in Hobe Sound, Florida!

Thanks,
John Dixson

 

If you don't find any obvious faults, my suggestion is to take it to a dealer. The blinking ABS light and relays are likely intentional. Ford has always had weird behavior in the electrical systems to indicate some kind of fault or short. With the electronics on the FEH, I wouldn't take any chances.

I remember a long time ago I had a Fairmont. One day the blinker systems went strange, sort of staying on too long, and the dash lights were odd. I took it to a dealer. Turns out that one of my brake bulbs was out - Ford had programmed the strange behavior so that the owner would take it in and get the bulb replaced...

 

Its there.

Service Mgr just called up to report that 27 codes were found ( my Scan Guage showed zero codes by the way ), but all were resultants, not causes. The cause of the mess turns out to be one of the cells in the low voltage battery.

What he said. I admit to being more than a bit skeptical at the moment, and will enter a conversation with the Serv. Mgr when I go to pick the car up, as all thru this saga, the Electric Energy OK message was reported by the normal car diagnostics, and I looked over the shoulder of the two individuals who hooked the battery tester to this battery last Friday afternoon, following the second occurrence.

A bit disappointed re the absence of Scan Guage codes. Anything I might do with the programming to address this point?

Thanks,
John Dixson

 

I think the "Electric Energy" check is referring to the traction battery, not the 12v.

 

The Scan Guage will show generic DTCs although it "can" read "some" others but must be programmed to do so. You have to know memory addresses of modules and figure out how to manipulate the data too. Ford stopped putting memory adresses in the PC/ED manuals in 2006. Ford has made some changes in their PCMs also. The person that did all the work on the programming of the SG listed on the SG site was a member here(DesertDog) was ran out of town by a few KnowItAlls.

 

Bill's right about the generic codes and the SGII can be programmed to do just about anything Ford's computers and scanners can do on our hybrids. I think it was the 2009 PC/ED manuals that left out the needed information and Ford changed the type of PCM on the '09. Desertdog still lives in Phoenix AZ but he post as CarlD on http://www.cleanmpg.com/ if anyone needs to ask him a question, just join the site first. Carl has posted how to program the SGII to retrieve information from the FEH hybrid modules and here is one of his threads:
http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21291

When I went up to the 2007 MPG Challenge, Carl ask me to pass along SoC programming information to the SGII inventor who also works in Phoenix near Carl. I got them together and Carl has provided much more information about programming the SGII for our FEH than any of us ever expected. Many of Carl's programming still works fine in my '09 FEH, but Ford left out much of the newer changes starting in '09 when the engine and PCM changed. The '09 was given the first Black Box so to speak and they didn't want people like Carl playing with the recorded data I guess.

BTW, the person that ran Carl off this board is not allowed to post (banned) on Cleanmpg anymore.

GaryG

 

I have access to all manuals and it was for sure starting with the '07 PC/ED manuals where the info was left out.