I am SOOoooooo sick up and fed with new vehicles and their electronics. (my current '06 F-150 has 3x cluster issues now)
I'm looking for 70s-80s next truck. I would rather pay "classic truck" prices for something simple, than buy anything newer than my 2006. I neither want or need all the electronic CRAP the newer one have. Constant electrical gremlins and other poor build/engineering issues have me totally off the new [er] stuff.
Best and most dependable trucks I ever owned were a 1973 Chevy K-20 and a 1992 F-150 4x4. And I never worried about E-gremlins. Ever.
Auto companies just love to force feed tech crap that has little business in a "truck".

 

That's funny... Besides of the issues I've described above, I've also been chasing a constant parasite 0.3A drainage on the same 2008 F-150. It can't crank up the engine, if I leave the battery connected and don't drive the truck for more than a week or two (i.e. the battery doesn't get recharged from the generator).

So, a couple of days ago I've plugged the Ammeter between the battery negative and it's negative connector. Initially I thought that it was probably the aftermarket Kenmore head unit (incorrectly installed or whatever)... but I was wrong - disconnecting the harness made no difference. Then I opened a fuse box and started pulling fuses one-by-one, checking the readings on the Ammeter. It dropped down to zero right after I pulled the fuse 21, which protects (ta-da!) this very instrument cluster ("Cluster Keep Alive Power").

I don't know what exactly causes it yet, my best guess that one of the capacitors (or diodes) became bad. Planning to pull the IC again, put it on a workbench, connect it to the 12v power supply and see what's going on sometime in June. Will report back, if anyone is interested in the results.

 

Good luck, Vladstar!