This car was having a problem shutting off in traffic (idling, accelerating, or decelerating) in July of 2016. It would always restart after putting it in park until August of 2016. I then had a new fuel pump, inertia shutoff valve (2nd one) and gone over ALL the electrical connectors to the tune of $800 in order to get my car moving again. It is now starting the same thing again. . . . shutting off while driving, I believe it is in Fail Safe mode.
I purchased this vehicle with 130,000 km on it. My major beef with Ford and this 2005 Ford Freestyle SE is that while driving at any speed the vehicle will just cut off and lose power. Also during acceleration the vehicle would buck. This has happenned to me while driving on the highway at 100 km's per hour and has placed other drivers and me and my family into a dangerous situation.
Well I took it to a ford dealership in Orangeville Ontario and I told them that I had done some online research and from all of the complaints that I have read that I believed that a faulty throttle body was possibly the issue. At the dealership they kindly hooked my vehicle up to their diagnostics machine and later told me that it appears to be the throttle body and that it should be replaced. This test cost me $100.00 to basically confirm what I already knew. So how much does this part cost? Well a mere $650.00 sir plus labour. Oh well will this fix my problem? Well it may or may not sir. Okay so I have to play Russian Roulette with vehicle parts until the problem is corrected......Hmmn this doesnt seem right to me so I said...I am not playing this game today and I learned how to clean the throttle body via youtube. Anyone can do this with virtually no mechanical experience. So my vehicle drove a little better after this , however it continues to cut out. So I researched this again and found a person who had gone through the same problems with his vehicle and he had a dealership hook up a machine that he drove around with in his cvehicle until this intermittent issue arose. It was found that a split second before the vehicle shuts off it loses connection contact with the sensor in the accelerator. Unfortunately the fix was not provided however it could be the APPS -accelerator pedal position sensor or the throttle position sensor or PCM-power control module or the throttle body needs to be replaced. Based on the number of complaints on this issue I find it hard to believe that ford has not found the solution and I am sure they are aware of the faults with the parts in this vehicle but of course they wont willingly acknowledge this to the consumer because they dont want to be on the hook for the cost to repair. There is also some change been made to the new replacement PCM called BLACK OAK POWER PC that basically is suppose to fix the problem.
I realise that the parts would not be covered under warranty, however when a problem is rampant with a vehicle I think that FORD should step up to the plate and fix it as a recall so that the consumer does not get their wallets pillaged on diagnostic tests.
By the way they will ding you for code reseting as well which you can do yourself. Just found this out after I FORKED OVER $100 BUCKS.
A website www.dealextreme sells a device that plugs into your vehicle and you hook it to a laptop for $24 BUCKS. It allows you to reset codes and diagnose problems. I just ordered it today since I can see I am going to get alot of use out of it with this ford product.
I would like to hear from anyone who has experienced this problem and how it was repaired.
- David D.,
Orangeville, Ontario, Canada
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
This car was having a problem shutting off in traffic (idling, accelerating, or decelerating) in July of 2016. It would always restart after putting it in park until August of 2016. I then had a new fuel pump, inertia shutoff valve (2nd one) and gone over ALL the electrical connectors to the tune of $800 in order to get my car moving again. It is now starting the same thing again. . . . shutting off while driving, I believe it is in Fail Safe mode.
- mimcd, Middletown, US