My friend has a 2004 F-150 pickup. It is auto with a V-6 he doesn't know what CID and I only know 60-70s pickups and the IDI diesels. Yesterday he was leaving the school and his truck acted like it had a dead battery. I drive a 7.3 IDI so it had no problem jumping him when the other guy couldn't. Before I got to the truck, somehow they set off the alarm on it while trying to jump it, not sure how. When we started it, would run till you put it in drive or reverse and then die- no movement, shudder, miss, like you turned the key off. We got it to move be pumping the gas while shifting into drive and he drove it around the block without stopping- ran fine. Upon returning, he tried to idle into the lot and it died when it returned to idle. I am in an auto tech program through the school but don't really grasp all of the electronics yet. I unhooked the battery and reconnected it in an attempt to redneck reset the computer and it drove fine until this morning- same problem again. Local mechanic told him that since no MILs were illuminated on the dash that we should unhook the positive battery cable only and touch it to ground and that would do a total reset on the ECM/PCM whatever Ford called it. Common scene tells me that this is a bad idea but maybe not.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

1. touching the positive and neg cables together is the poor man's way of resetting the KAM (keep alive memory). if it works then resetting the KAM will clean any learned idle and fuel map strategies.

resetting the KAM will not hurt but it likely wont do anything in this instance either.

2. sounds like an issue with the electronically controlled torque converter lockup.