Electrical issue with dash indicators and shifting?

[WECole]

I was driving to work today in my 1998 Expedition and had a problem. All of the indicator lights in the lower right half of my dash (4WD, 2WD, Low Fluid, Engine Light, etc) came on, I could hear what sounded like a relay click at the same time and the truck stopped shifting gears. The lights went out after a second, I heard a relay click at the same time, and the transmission shifted gears (seems to be a reaction to the relay/lights). I'd drive for a bit and the lights/relay would click on/off intermittently a few times. The truck shifted gears properly when the lights were dark but if they came on, the transmission wouldn't shift gears, regardless of the rpms, until the lights went out - and each time I heard a relay. The relay seemed to be under the dash somewhere around the lower left corner of the steering column. Another item to note - I could very faintly hear a noise coming from the center console - low and up near the front. The noise sounded a little like static or water flying on a hot griddle. It's rained all week, including today and the truck's driven fine until today. I looked for signs of a water leak and don't see anything, but since I'm at work I haven't gotten the opportunity to tear into the dash or center console...

Anyone want to hazard some guesses on what the issue might be?

 

[WECole]

Update

Ok, a quick update -
Went out to the truck to drive home for lunch and found water pouring in thru my driver side powered vent window back in the cargo area (it was raining pretty hard). I opened the window a bit and found it loose enough to move up and down by hand - it was adjusted too low and wasn't making a good seal against the weather stripping so rain was getting in near the top, soaking part of my headliner and dripping on to the cargo area side panel. I adjusted the window and closed it tight, making sure I got a good seal - tomorrow I'll see why it became so lose, but at least no more leaks for now.

Not really sure if this had anything to do with the strange dash lights and gear shifting issue, but those problems went away after I fixed the leak in the window and dried up most of the free standing water in the cargo area. Strange thing is, I didn't see water leaking in earlier in the day when I had the other problems.

 

[sgtowing]

You may have just missed it not expecting to see it. Our minds can play mean tricks on is.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

 

[Thermo]

WECole, what you are seeing is the power being cycled the Tranny computer. This is causing the system to go through a reboot to estabilish a baseline of where it needs to be. When I had this problem, it would occur every time I would shift the truck into Reverse. In my case, it turned out the tranny position sensor was grounding out (granted, this seemed to happen right after driving my truck through 4 feet of water, so, I can't imagine why that sensor would get full of water and ground out. LMAO), leading to the computer being reset. Based on your situation, I would be checking the fuses to the computer and then doing a hand over hand of the power wires going to the computer.

 

[WECole]

Thanks Thermo - I guess I know what I'll be doing on my day off tomorrow.