My son has a 2006 Escape, 4 cylinder, 5 speed manual. Intermittently and randomly, all electrical cuts out, dash lights, gauges, radio, headlights, etc, but the truck doesn't shut off.
Seems like a short or bad wire but I checked everything easily accessible and found nothing.

Lots of possibilities as this is the third engine and I have replaced the BCM once already and programmed with Forscan to the as built settings, but that was two years ago.

Forscan shows these error:



Any ideas, thoughts or assistance would be appreciated.

 

Update! Possibly solved but makes no sense to me. This Escape and my 2002 Sport Trac seem to be EXTREMELY sensitive to fluctuations in electrical voltage.

As you know, there are two wires coming off of the negative battery terminal. One grounds to the engine block and one to the inner fender. The inner fender wire had about 1/4 to 1/3 of the copper strands broken.

I replaced the factory negative battery terminal with a generic cable end. When I did, I trimmed back the fender cable to get past the broken strands. It hasn't shut off since, going on two months now.

My theory is that vibrations while driving were causing some of those broken strands to reconnect and creating a fluctuation in voltage or amps that the computer was picking up and shutting down all power as a safety precaution.

I'm open to other theories.