I bought a 2010 Ford Escape from dealer in Florida 9 months ago and the wrench light came on about 12 miles down the road. That code (Electronic Motor Overtemp) is not the one I am currently worried about so it is just history. The car was owned by Florida Light and Power and it appeared to be a service vehicle. The vehicle also has suspension issues so I didn't drive it much. Recently, I have a need to drive it and after around 2 days of driving it in a row the wrench light came on again after 70 miles. I pulled the codes and got p0562 (sys voltage low), p1a03 (Drive Motor A Shutdown), p1a04 (Generator Shutdown) and u0100 (Lost Communications Between ECM and PCM). The car also has a parasitic draw on the battery. I have tested the battery a few times and it checked good.

I searched this forum and found someone with almost all the same codes but they never got a response. Anyone have any ideas?

Thank you,

Travis

 

Apart from the codes, what are the symptoms? Eg., does ICE start? does it move? is it driveable?

 

Hippo, Thank you for the reply. There are no symptoms. The light came on about 2 miles from home so I parked it and pulled the codes. I checked voltage on the 12 volt system which looked a little low while the hybrid motor was running. I think voltage with hybrid system was running 13v. The ICE starts and I HUD says the car is ready to drive. Have not driven it because I am saving anything it has left for an emergency situation. Also, I tried doing a parasitic draw test with no luck but my multimeter is 20 years old so I ordered a new meter which should be here today.

 

These vehicles are difficult DIY vehicles due to the lack of good owner forums on the internet. First thing you might want to do is get a copy of Forscan on your phone or laptop and review all data and run all self-tests and try to make sense of it. You can publish a copy of the full Forscan info on this site and someone might be able to help you if you are lucky. Otherwise, you may want to review your situation and determine if it makes sense to take it to a specialist. I would hazard a guess that that would be a Ford dealer with a good reputation and at least one available tech well-experienced with the Escape Hybrid of your vintage. Sometimes, you can luck out and find someone that has looked after a city or utility fleet of them. Beyond two to three hours of dealer time for full diagnostics, you will need to set a stop loss amount, a dollar damage amount beyond which you will scrap, part out or "as is " the vehicle. The advantage of Ford is that dealer techs should have access to troubleshooting flowcharts and even skilled supporting electrical engineers or techs at Ford that still understand the workings of this long discontinued vehicle and can interpret the relational meaning of the set codes. The "parasitic" draw might be normal for all I know. Our Hippo ended up needing a new hybrid specific PCM, PCM's apparently are a fairly common issue with Escapes. Unless you can find the source of the parasitic draw, you might want to start with a brand new 12V Ford battery designed for the vehicle and clean both ground points under the battery tray or replace the negative cable (as S. Keith suggested to me).IMHO, the 12V battery is the first place to start with these hybrids and although mine tested fine at an auto parts store, the dealer did find it defective. That said, maybe the dealer found it defective for my own good since it was probably over two years old and it looks like Ford built the vehicle around the 12V battery so to speak.

 

Based on your codes,I would try a new battery, or at least one that you are certain is good. I had some codes thrown a couple years ago (don’t recall what they were) and took my battery in to get tested. It passed. But I bought new one anyway and the codes went away. At least the low voltage code would likely be solved by this, and the other codes may be downstream effects of that one or a bad battery. First and easiest place to start, for sure.

 

Yes! I have been keeping an eye on the battery as that is usually my first suspect. I checked it several times and it always checked good. A few days ago, after I removed it from the trickle charger, I checked it and it only had 12.4 volts. Whenever I hooked up the vehicle, I noticed a voltage drop of .2 volts aslo. I was avoiding changing the battery but like you and Hippo (in the last post) said the 12 volt battery is a good place to start so I picked up a new OEM battery yesterday. Hoping to test it out today. Thanks for all the help. I will post here again soon with or without a fix but hopefully with good news. lol

 

If you are not aware, the voltage on a newly charged battery takes an hour? or more to stabilize.

 

Yes thank you. I was referring to a stabilized battery which was disconnected from the car. As soon as I connected it to the car, it lost those .2 volts. I may do the chinese technical order method where I compare everything my troubled car is doing with my other car.

 

The battery drain which probably killed the battery and was an underlying cause or a primary cause for these codes has been found. I found the rear windshield wiper motor must have started going bad and was allowing electricity to flow when it should not. I unplugged the motor and my battery has been steady and happy since. Thank you everyone for the help.

 

Congrats. That sort of Gremlin can be incredibly hard to track down. Nice work.