I just joined FTE forum today so I could tell this story and ask fellow Ford owners if they have ever encountered this situation.
I drive a 2012 F350 with 6.7 with 119k miles and carrying a Northern Lite 9.6 camper. It is well taken care of and serviced regularly.
Yesterday, while driving a busy highway at 65 mph everything on the dash went blank, all gauges, headlight, taillights, blinkers and brake lights quit working.
The engine, steering and brakes were still working fine, so I drove a few more miles to a gas station. Once there, I parked and went to shut off the engine but it continued to run.
I am now 40 miles from the nearest Ford dealer and 100 miles from home. I called a friend living close by for some assistance. He showed up but didn't know of any diesel mechs in the area. I called my local Ford dealer and told the service rep of my predicament. We had a good laugh because neither he nor his techs had ever heard of this happening.
With the engine still running, I decided to drive to my friends house but the transmission would not come out of Park. So we were stuck there. Trying to get a tow truck was another fiasco that I won't get into.
A few years ago, I owned a Duramax that I stored over the winter in Texas. I live in Alaska. Anyway, I had disconnected the batteries for storage of 4 or 5 months. After reconnecting the batteries and starting, I noticed some very odd things happening electrically in the truck. I called the Chev dealer service rep who told me that the OBC needed to be rebooted. He explained to me how to do it, and it fixed the problem.
So I figured a reboot might work for my situation, but first I needed to shut down the engine. We found the fuse for the fuel pump relay, pulled it and the engine shut down. The next step to reboot the computer was to disconnect both batteries, short the leads - to + for ten seconds and then reconnect. Guess what, it worked. Everything seemed back to normal so I drove 100 miles home with no problem.
All this happened on June 21, the longest daylight day, 19h 21min, of the year. I shudder to think of this happening in Dec or Jan where we have 3 or 4 hrs of daylight on dark icy Alaska roads.
Has this ever happened to anyone else? Has Ford ever addresses this issue?

 

2011-2016 model years. There is a large wire harness under the dash that is attached to the park brake mount. Said harness has a large connector near the point it attaches to the park brake. Over time, if you use the park brake a lot, said connector can get partially separated do all the pins in the connector may not be making full contact. Find said connector, pull it apart, then re-connect to make sure everything is making good contact.
Once this is done, move the harness to a different location and get it away from park brake. ALso, when releasing park brake, place foot upon pedal so as to let it release softly, if you will. This is a known issue with these model years, and reacts very similar to what you described.
Good luck.
And welcome to FTE

 

What Don said

 

Great job Don, I had a similar experience with a 2015 and this connector. Super poor design and I never used the parking brake, even once. Just came undone some.

Bruce...

 

Looks like I'm going to have to look into this as well as I do not use my parking brake. Thanks guys.

 

I thank you for your replies, but my question is why the reboot worked as I said without touching the wiring harness. I have put over 300 miles on my truck since Tuesday with no reoccurrences. I will drive this truck this summer but may have to upgrade before winter.

 

Those that have reported trouble have had mostly an intermittent glitch. One time all is OK with the truck; then out of the blue……boom…….lights flash, go out, do wonky chit like you describe.

 

do yourself a favor and check those connections when you have time.

Now before you have the issue.

 

Interesting discussion on the parking brake. My '12 truck is 10 years old now and I use my parking brake when I back my boat into the boat ramp, when I'm hooking my trailers to my truck so I'm always using my parking brake and never had a problem. I guess I need to take a look for this connector to verify it's location.

 

And I had an ‘11, a ‘15’ and a ‘16 and never had an issue. When the ‘11 thru ‘16 were the current models, it seemed to be a fairly frequent subject on this forum. Some had the issue while others never.

 

So I looked under the dash and I see the connector that has a plastic anchor that is attached to the emergency brake bracket that looks to me mounted very solid to the interior body panel. The wire harness wraps around this bracket and comes close to the emergency brake release cable, but it doesn't touch it and it has a plastic shroud around it so it looks good. So I went thru the motion of pressing down the emergency brake with my hand and releasing the brake while watching this connector and I don't see any movement of this connector so I'm not sure how the emergency brake can effect it's connection. From what I seen on my truck I don't anticipate a connection problem via the emergency brake so I don't see any further action required. At least for now.

 

What always seemed to be the main cause was not the use of the p-brake, but when one pulls the release the pedal stops with a thump. The repeated vibration over time would loosen the connector and………….the rest of the story.

 

That was the one thing I was really interested in and that connector didn't move at all when I released the brake. I would think this connector would get more shock/vibration when driving, but I could be wrong.

 

The engine in my 2015 shut off once will approaching a stop light on a highway off ramp. No idea why. It restarted immediately and it hasn't happened since and its been 3-4 years and 100k+ miles.

I wouldn't worry too much. If your truck had the issue reoccur during winter, at least you would have heat with your engine running. Also people are more inclined to stop and help during the winters in Alaska. I carry a small buddy heater, blankets, etc for emergencies during the winters up here. Thankfully the heater has never had to come out of the box.

IMO these are reliable trucks and no more likely to breakdown than any other vehicle you may own. Heck my 2021 superduty with less than 10k miles has a lot more issues than my 2015 ever has.