Question about “programming “

[F150 newbie]

first time owner of Ford, 23 Lariat Powerboost. Noticed that neither rain-sensing nor courtesy wipe was working after enabling in settings. Had one instance of no start no crank with red warning “Stp Safely Now” in cluster and red battery and truck symbols. Dealer determined programming was necessary. After 4 hours that said that programs were going into wrong module and had to be redone. I arranged a ride home and when leaving asked how long this usually takes. Was told that they’ve had units take several days to program.

I have experience with PLC and have never heard of anything like this. Can anyone help me understand what is happening here other than sheer incompetence? I’m losing faith and just want to get my truck back and find another dealer for future repairs who, apparently, will be required.

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[Micho523]

It's probably a few things happening here. Usually the service writers are one step above clueless themselves, so their explanation of what is going on is usually pretty poor. Failed updates are usually because of battery issues. If they aren't using a quality power supply when updating, it has a high probability of failing.

That being said, module updates can indeed take a LONG time to do, especially if there are many that need to be done. Most of our updates need to be applied sequentially, meaning every update from where you are now to current needs to be applied one after the other. That is not necessarily true for all modules though.

For what its worth, the last time I did updates/programming myself it took about 8 hours to get through half of the list of available updates. That is with not having even done the notoriously slow updates for the IPC and APIM.

Finding a good dealer is really a challenge anymore. I've got I think 6 in my general area, only one of which I trust to do anything to my truck. That is a big part of the reason I invested in the equipment necessary to do module updates/programming myself.

 

[F150 newbie]

Thanks for the reply. That makes a lot more sense. I didn’t know about the sequential requirement for updating the truck. I’ve got a lot of learning to do.

 

[Ajzride]

I do PLC and DCS for a living and can tell you we would go broke if we had to deal with Ford’s system for updating modules on the truck. It’s mind blowing how inefficient and non-sensical it is. I’ve done DCS firmware upgrades on 12,0000 IO systems (server OS, DCS software, controller and IO) in 72 hours before. It took me 16 hours this weekend to upgrade my truck from Bluecruise 1.0 to Bluecruise 1.4.


That being said, “going into the wrong module” is not possible, this is just a service manager talking above his level of technical grasp.

 

[F150 newbie]

 

[fordtruckman2003]

Post in the VIN lookup thread if you want insight into what is really going on with truck.

 

[powerboatr]

I do PLC and DCS for a living and can tell you we would go broke if we had to deal with Ford’s system for updating modules on the truck. It’s mind blowing how inefficient and non-sensical it is. I’ve done DCS firmware upgrades on 12,0000 IO systems (server OS, DCS software, controller and IO) in 72 hours before. It took me 16 hours this weekend to upgrade my truck from Bluecruise 1.0 to Bluecruise 1.4.


That being said, “going into the wrong module” is not possible, this is just a service manager talking above his level of technical grasp.

BINGO the talking above his or her level

 

[F150 newbie]

Thanks all.

 

[red5_0]

Did this get fixed? what turned out to be the issue? I just swapped to a heated steering wheel and lost my rain sensing and courtesy wipe

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