Hello everyone, I am new to the forum, my name is Hector Enriquez.
I own a 2001 ford f150 4.2 v6 with a 5 speed manual trans. My truck was involved in a rear end collision a few months ago where a freight truck hit me and ran me off into a light pole, the truck has alot of sentimental value to me so i am putting it back together, amazingly the truck made it out of the accident with nothing but body issues. It still drove and operated like the truck always had, even with every panel messed up. I have since bought a donor truck with perfect body and no title that runs. Well the first electrical problem arose when water seaped in through a crack in the windshield caused by the light pole falling on the roof and making a gash in the glass, it was takin to a wrecking yard while we sorted all the insurance stuff out, we got a lawer and managed to get the truck back with a 2.5k plus all the wrecker expenses.
while it was in the yard water had seaped into the dash and caused my radio to stop working. The truck still turned on and ran with no problems. So i really didnt worry about it much since i was probably going to by a new aftermarket stereo anyways.
Well i have driven the truck and started it atleast 2 or 3 times a week for the next 3 months, i went to start the truck yesterday and something strange happened, at first the truck started and ran for about 3 seconds and then shut off, i tried it again and gave it some gas so that it would not shut off and it shut off again, i tried again with no luck, i thought it might be the fuel pump so i checked the fuel pump fuse to make sure it wasnt blown. And it was not, i suspected a bad fuel pump but i doubted it becuse i replaced the fuel pump a few years ago. I sprayed some ether in the air intake and had someone crank on it and it would stay running with the starting fluid but would shut off as soon as i stopped, so it for sure was getti g spark. I already had the bed off so it made it really easy to check if the fuel pump was pumping gas by just removing the lines. What i found was that the pump would prime but when i went to try to crank it, it would not pump. I wondered if this was how it was supposed to normally operate with the fuel lines disconnected, so i went to the donor truck(also had the bed off) i had and pulled the fuel lines off the pump and it primed like normal, but when it cranked, it did actually continuously shoot out gas. So i thought maybe my fuel pump was bad, so i changed them out and my truck did the same thing(the fuel pump from the donor truck was brand new because i had changed it to see if the truck would still run, thats an entirely different story, it did run).
From there i noticed something interesting and quite strange, all the guagues in my truck were jumping up and down and my all my ligtrs were flicking on and off and it would just continue doing so and never display my mileage. The strangest thing of everything was that my stereo had actually started working, the thing had not worked since the day i got it back from the wrecking yard, and just now it started working right as my truck starts messing up, don't think that is a coincidence.
Now i believe it is an electrical problem, my first thought was maybe it was getting bad ground, but my cables were pretty tight, and i even had the truck jump it(with some 0/1 guage jumper cables, to my brothers truck, a 2008 f150 with the 5.4.) And it continued to do the same thing. So i continued searching for what else could be the problem, i thought maybe the inertia switch had a delayed reaction, so i checked the passenger kick panel and nope it was fine. So i checked all the fuses and relays under the hood and under the steering column, reading each one of them. I did find one blown fuse, wich was my horn which had been out for who knows how many years, probably before i was in highschool so i changed it and i got my horn working, yay for that. I thought maybe my pcm had gotten wet and was causing this, so i removed the relay 304 from under the hood, and fuse 2 from under the column and turned the key and i still had the lights flickering and guages going crazy in cluster. So i assume thats not the problem. I pretty much repeated this for every fuse until i found wich fuses would make the cluster do that, and i finally got the number 30 fuse under the column and it stopped the flickering in the cluster, the fuse was fine. But the truck still wouldnt prime without it, i checked the donor truck to see if the same thing happened if i pulled number 30 fuse and it didnt prime or pump gas. So that was kind of a dead end.
I am really beat on this, i love my truck and i would do anything to have it back even if it means having to take every single electric component off the donor truck and installing it on my truck. Tomorow im going to disconnect the pcm and check if the dash still flickers, if they stop flickering i will assume thats the problem and start tearing down both of the truck to swap all electrical components that the truck needs to start.
if anybody has any suggestions at all, i beg of you to respond. Thank you

 

Look for a ground connection behind the driver kick panel.
Possible power panel PCM relay seating issue.
Check the crank sensor plug seating.
No use to go to all that work hoping then have the same thing when your done.
Better to use the effort to find the cause than do all the work.
Your truck was pretty well crunched so anything could have happened.
Good luck.

 

Ditto on the crank sensor.
After the initial prime, I don't believe the PCM will engage the fuel pump until it knows you are cranking it. And the way it knows you are cranking it is it sees the crank position sensor signal.

 

Thank yall, i will for sure check that out today.

 

The gauges going crazy/wonkey might be a sign that your battery is shorting out internally. Subsequent result of the accident.

 

yes very likely the battery is crap, but i had completly disconnected the battery and jumped it from another truck, my jumper cables are made from some (0/1) guage welding wire, so it has plenty of amps that it should start, the motor cranks but still nothing.

 

I have a 1999 Ford F-150 Club cab four-door Edition Stepside 4 wheel drive the original motor locked up so I put a new motor in got everything hooked up and ready and getting I am getting power to everything through this switch the Truffle turn over but will not crank and I checked power sources with a test light in the fuse box under the hood and I am getting power to everything so I checked under the dash in the fuse box under the dash with a test light and I am getting power to most of it but I am not getting power to the fuse for the power module that also controls the fuel therefore I'm not getting power back to my fuel pump what could be my issue?

 

Did you check if you motor would run off starter fluid, did you swap the ecm or anything to do with the cluster?

 

Just to inform everyone, i found the problem, after doing yalls suggestions, and swapping ecms, i finally discovered the problem was the guage cluster. i read that the pats system was wired into the guage cluster, so i decided to simply change out the cluster. To my surprise, when i changed clusters the guages stopped going crazy, but then i had the problem of the pats system, what i ended up doing was swapping the ecm, the instrument cluster and the key cylinder, and the damn thing fired right up. although i am probably going to end up buying a new cluster and taking the truck to a ford dealer to have the pats system mated with my original key. But i am so happy to have my truck back and running, gave me so much joy firing that thing up.

 

Glad you found the problem. I was going to suggest a issue with the anti theft system as I discovered a couple years ago the pump will prime truck will start and die if antitheft is activated. In my case it turned out to be corrosion at one of the relays under the hood fuse box that runs the pats system. Had to cut the wires and wire in a external relay.