2022 Check ELSD - Service Vehicle Soon?!

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LokiWolf

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I believe I have a similar eLSD/ABS issue, I just never got errors during driving only at startup and when it's raining, my biggest issue is that the errors disable cruise control/pcs/bsm/auto hold etc. even the seat memory is disabled...
Not quite the same. You most likely have an ABS Wheel Speed Sensor issue. That will prevent ELSD if on the rear, and affect all the systems you mentioned, because the computers don't know how fast one of the rear wheels is going. A code scanner should give you a code to tell you exactly which wheel. Or take it to the dealer.
 
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m3olsen

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Update for anyone following this topic (sorry for the long post): the day after I got my second error message (noted in post #24), my Expy was sitting in the parking lot at work when FordPass notified me that it was going into Deep Sleep mode to conserve battery. WHAT?? Long story short, Ford confirmed it was a battery and not a charging issue and put a new battery it in yesterday under warranty (at ~4 months and 3K miles in service). FWIW, your auto start stop can give you an indication of batteries going bad, as your vehicle will have to run more and more miles after a start-up before it will actually shut your engine down at a stop light. I regularly switched mine off each time I started it so missed much of this forewarning until I was looking for it. (For those curious about the battery status, on one of my 'tests', I trickle charged it overnight - charger said it was in maintenance mode so fully charged the next morning, then fired up and drove it to work immediately after charging. Let it sit parked for 6-7 hours and checked voltage across the terminals. I got 12.15V.)

To this eLSD error message chain: I haven't seen an eLSD error message since I trickle charged the battery the night after post #24. I will continue to monitor, but am wondering whether battery issues might have triggered the error. There has been discussion in many other chains about strange vehicle behaviors with bad or deteriorating batteries. I will report back here if I do get the error again.
 

TimberExpy

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Update for anyone following this topic (sorry for the long post): the day after I got my second error message (noted in post #24), my Expy was sitting in the parking lot at work when FordPass notified me that it was going into Deep Sleep mode to conserve battery. WHAT?? Long story short, Ford confirmed it was a battery and not a charging issue and put a new battery it in yesterday under warranty (at ~4 months and 3K miles in service). FWIW, your auto start stop can give you an indication of batteries going bad, as your vehicle will have to run more and more miles after a start-up before it will actually shut your engine down at a stop light. I regularly switched mine off each time I started it so missed much of this forewarning until I was looking for it. (For those curious about the battery status, on one of my 'tests', I trickle charged it overnight - charger said it was in maintenance mode so fully charged the next morning, then fired up and drove it to work immediately after charging. Let it sit parked for 6-7 hours and checked voltage across the terminals. I got 12.15V.)

To this eLSD error message chain: I haven't seen an eLSD error message since I trickle charged the battery the night after post #24. I will continue to monitor, but am wondering whether battery issues might have triggered the error. There has been discussion in many other chains about strange vehicle behaviors with bad or deteriorating batteries. I will report back here if I do get the error again.
WOW.... so I was led to this thread today because our 2022 Timberline is behaving the same way.

Our Expy JUST turned over 20k miles yesterday. While my wife was driving the truck home from work, I received a "Powertrain System Fault" notification from the Ford Pass app, as soon as the truck was in WIFI range of our home. I walked out to the garage and had her leave the engine running... sure enough, the two messages discussed here and the amber wrench icon were on. And sure enough, when we started the truck again an hour-or-so later, everything was cleared and seemed fine.

Might be worth noting that our Timberline has the auto-start/stop removed from the factory, so that's not a factor... but I have noticed that the "resting" voltage of the battery isn't this best, b/c I recently installed a two-camera dash cam setup and have it set to power down "parking mode" when the battery voltage drops below 12.4 volts. Unless the truck has been driven for a long trip, this makes the dash cam run only a couple minutes before it cuts off bc that voltage isn't maintained. During install, I noted a line voltage of 11.9 volts at times.

At any rate, before seeing this thread I contacted my local Ford service dept. in a panic to get it in.... but perhaps that is futile? Or perhaps the battery, which is certainly still under warranty, needs to be replaced.
 

Kudie

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Had to have my battery replaced about 3months ago because it kept going to sleep evan after charging. Under warranty so didn’t cost me anything but time. 2021 stealth.
 

ROBERT BONNER

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This is an interesting thread. My '20 XLT FX4 MAX has 3.5 years and 45K miles on it. During that time I have had these messages appear 3 times. The first two times, I had been in one of the 4x4 drive modes for an extended period of time/miles due to inclement weather/road conditions. At some point I assumed that the various modes set some sort of default ELSD "clutch pressure", rather than just briefly turning it on and off for yaw control or wheel slip, etc. and that long term pressure was (over) heating the ELSD hydraulic unit. After coming to this conclusion I started simply pushing the A4WD button in inclement weather while keeping the truck in "normal" drive mode. I've done that many times and never experienced the the dash alerts. This has led me to believe that while various drive modes activate the ELSD at some constant, default level, putting the transfer case into A4WD while still in "normal" drive mode does not affect the ELSD "normal" operation. Once again - I'm guessing.

The third time that I experienced the warnings was this fall during an offroad experience described on another thread disparaging the flocked fender-wells on these vehicles. At the time I had the truck in "mud and ruts" mode with the differential "lock" button engaged for a very short amount of time, say 1/4 mile at crawling speed. Note that I can only remember hitting the diff lock button a couple of times during the life of the vehicle. Due to mud build up described in the other thread, the truck was shut down for more than an hour immediately after the event. When the truck was restarted, the wrench and all warnings were gone. I was surprised at just how quickly everything heated up. The ambient temperature was close to 32 deg F at the time.

At some point, I plan to check the hydraulic (ATF) level in the ELSD hydraulic unit. Might be that the level is low, contributing to the rapid heat up.

I don't believe that any of my issues relate to low battery - not that mine doesn't experience low battery levels, it does - If I have several weeks of short duration trips, especially in the winter months when headlights, seat heaters, etc. are all on, it will take the battery down and different items will shutdown; but, when I've experienced these particular drivetrain warnings the vehicle has experienced long periods of operation and therefore had high battery levels.

That being said, another contributing factor to hydraulic system heat could be higher current draw under low voltage conditions such as others have described.

Bottom line, these hydraulic units seem to overheat under conditions that, as drivers/customers, we consider to be within the realm of normal operation - which is a problem by definition.
 

Hellwig

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This is an interesting thread. My '20 XLT FX4 MAX has 3.5 years and 45K miles on it. During that time I have had these messages appear 3 times. The first two times, I had been in one of the 4x4 drive modes for an extended period of time/miles due to inclement weather/road conditions. At some point I assumed that the various modes set some sort of default ELSD "clutch pressure", rather than just briefly turning it on and off for yaw control or wheel slip, etc. and that long term pressure was (over) heating the ELSD hydraulic unit. After coming to this conclusion I started simply pushing the A4WD button in inclement weather while keeping the truck in "normal" drive mode. I've done that many times and never experienced the the dash alerts. This has led me to believe that while various drive modes activate the ELSD at some constant, default level, putting the transfer case into A4WD while still in "normal" drive mode does not affect the ELSD "normal" operation. Once again - I'm guessing.

The third time that I experienced the warnings was this fall during an offroad experience described on another thread disparaging the flocked fender-wells on these vehicles. At the time I had the truck in "mud and ruts" mode with the differential "lock" button engaged for a very short amount of time, say 1/4 mile at crawling speed. Note that I can only remember hitting the diff lock button a couple of times during the life of the vehicle. Due to mud build up described in the other thread, the truck was shut down for more than an hour immediately after the event. When the truck was restarted, the wrench and all warnings were gone. I was surprised at just how quickly everything heated up. The ambient temperature was close to 32 deg F at the time.

At some point, I plan to check the hydraulic (ATF) level in the ELSD hydraulic unit. Might be that the level is low, contributing to the rapid heat up.

I don't believe that any of my issues relate to low battery - not that mine doesn't experience low battery levels, it does - If I have several weeks of short duration trips, especially in the winter months when headlights, seat heaters, etc. are all on, it will take the battery down and different items will shutdown; but, when I've experienced these particular drivetrain warnings the vehicle has experienced long periods of operation and therefore had high battery levels.

That being said, another contributing factor to hydraulic system heat could be higher current draw under low voltage conditions such as others have described.

Bottom line, these hydraulic units seem to overheat under conditions that, as drivers/customers, we consider to be within the realm of normal operation - which is a problem by definition.

Super informative. Thanks a bunch!
 
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m3olsen

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I'm glad this thread has been helpful. An update on my vehicle/ experience: sure enough, as the weather got colder (mine parks outside), my ASS stopped shutting down the engine - ever - indicating a need for more charging. I had an experience a week or two ago on a very cold day where a deer ran in front of me and I made an emergency stop. There it was: SAME ELSD warning message came up! And as before cleared and never came up again. My theory is that the battery was low, and I had everything running (defrosters, seat heat, steering wheel heat, etc.), and then I triggered a bunch of warning sensors when I shocked the vehicle, and that triggered a drop in whatever module gave me the ELSD warning last winter.
 

Hellwig

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I'm glad this thread has been helpful. An update on my vehicle/ experience: sure enough, as the weather got colder (mine parks outside), my ASS stopped shutting down the engine - ever - indicating a need for more charging. I had an experience a week or two ago on a very cold day where a deer ran in front of me and I made an emergency stop. There it was: SAME ELSD warning message came up! And as before cleared and never came up again. My theory is that the battery was low, and I had everything running (defrosters, seat heat, steering wheel heat, etc.), and then I triggered a bunch of warning sensors when I shocked the vehicle, and that triggered a drop in whatever module gave me the ELSD warning last winter.
makes perfect sense.
 
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