I have a 2011 F50 Superduty with a stock AM/FM radio and CD player. The Radio display on the dash displays the station being played, time, etc. Sometimes the display lights up, but most of the time it is dark or very faded. Sometimes when is lights up in the faded condition, I can bang on it with my knuckles and it will light up as normal. Other times, it will light up and then just go out again. I feel confident it is simply a short in the wiring but I have no idea where to even start looking. Anyone else having this issue or a recommendation of where to start.

Please don’t tell me to get another radio, I want to keep this one.

 

Sounds to me like a cold solder joint on one of the circuit boards, there's companies out there you can send it in to for repairs. https://www.ebay.com/itm/28351604280...88c5b055eda88a

 

I have used this place with good results so far.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/37170203425...Bk9SR5bVhPSkYQ

 

Or, if you're handy, you could try to repair it yourself.

 

I did this repair for the same problem. It works even better now. The video did miss one of the crystals. It is on the bottom left corner. This is a manufacturing problem where they use a heat gun instead of a solder tip to melt the solder to secure the crystals. Get a good magnifying glass and look the board over close. You may see the loose one right off, but it could be anywhere. I hit all pins and crystals before finding the one on the corner. As soon as I touched it, it fell off. One though for you. It will take more time taking the stereo out and putting it in than it does to do the repair.

 

I also had this problem on a 2015. Followed the video above and hit all the solder joints, finding a loose one. After re-flowing these solder points, mine is just as bright as it should be.

 

Did you get your display fixed?

I have the same radio and the same problem. Once, when the display had dimmed out, I was able to get the display to light up again by lightly rubbing my fingers over the plastic display window but, later attempts to do this did not work.

Most recently, I was having the problem and turned the headlights on and off a couple of times and the display lit up again ... So far it's still working but I'd like to get to the wiring or switch where the problem is occurring and try to clean up the connections. It would be great if I could do this without having to pull the dashboard/console apart.

 

This worked out well! My base AM/FM single CD display was completely gone. I bought a cheap ceramic soldering iron & some rosin core tin/lead solder off Amazon and went through the steps demonstrated in the video. Getting the console panel off and removing the radio wasn't too hard (although undoing some of the connectors took a little time) and once I had the face panel with the display off the radio I re-did the solder points on the 4 double points at each corner of the display and the 6 flat resisters closest to the double points and that was it - I didn't go through and do all the solder points like the guy on the video did.

'Cleaned up the circuit board and all the wiring connectors (applied a little Motorcraft electrical grease before snapping the connectors back together) and reassembled everything. The display lit up clear and bright!

Thanks for sharing.

 

Question. My truck has this same radio and the display is fine but nothing else lights up. Are the presets, seek, scan, ect. supposed to?

 

All of the buttons should be back lit as well as the CD slot, I followed the repair instructions in the video posted above a little over a year ago to repair my display but the back light on the buttons always worked from what I remember. The repair of the display was very simple, just re flowed the solder joints and got to a chip that moved as soon as I touched it with heat, which was my problem. I suppose you could try reheating the solder joints on that board, maybe the backlight power feed has a broken connection. Does your heater control light up when the headlights are on?

 

Thanks for the video Aaron. It seems like the display not working is the more common problem but I could try the same procedure and see if it also works for the backlights. All of my other gauges on the dashboard work fine. The only other problem is the audio in jack doesn't work but I haven't taken the radio out to see if it's unplugged.

 

You could also try to find the wire that supplies power to the lights for the buttons in the connector at the back of the radio to make sure the power is actually reaching the radio. (Why I asked if other dash lights worked.) Could be that the jack is unplugged, mine isn't apart of the radio and is in the lower dash with a USB, I know the USB port just slides into the plastic panel that holds it. Don't remember if there's a plug there for the audio jack or not.

 

Thank you for the idea. It would certainly be helpful if this fixes the issue(s). I probably/hopefully wouldnt use the aux port much anyway because I find myself using my phone too much when I have it connected in my previous truck. A very bad thing. If I find that it's unplugged, I might leave it that way. Or maybe I'll plug it in for my kids to use. Not sure.