RESOLVED: No crank, no start, check brake system, service advancetrac, no DTCs

[eddytheexpy]

Well, got myself a real head scratcher on my 2011 Limited EL 4x4. I think the post's title says it all but I'll re-state the issues below:

No crank, no start, and I get a "check brake system" message with the associated dummy lights. When I push "reset" to clear the message it flashes "Service AdvanceTrac" with a tone every few seconds. I also pulled DTCs and got nothing. Up until this point, my vehicle was tip-top and had no symptoms of any sort.

The only other notable detail is that after I pushed reset to clear the "check brake system" message, I noticed that my trip mileage was zeroed out. So I'm going to yank the battery, clean up the terminals/leads and also take it to auto zone to get tested even though about a month ago they told me it was in good shape (btw, I didn't have it tested because of anything going on with the vehicle, it's just summer out here in Phoenix and a bunch of people I know had their batteries die within a week of each other because the heat just sucks the life out of them)..

So I'm going to see if the battery clean-up/testing helps at all but I have low hopes and want to start exploring what else might be on the table for me to do this weekend.

Thanks for the help!

 

[eddytheexpy]

Welp… I guess all the system warning lights got me overthinking things…

Battery was cooked. Not sure how it went from healthy to worthless over the course of a month but that was the cause. I’ve never seen a dead battery wig out a vehicle so bad. Hope this thread helps keep someone else avoid getting freaked out in the future!

 

[GlennSullivan]

As someone else on here said, modern batteries have become a regular maintenance item. My 2017 has gone through 3 so far.

 

[DieselMonk]

Welp… I guess all the system warning lights got me overthinking things…

Battery was cooked. Not sure how it went from healthy to worthless over the course of a month but that was the cause. I’ve never seen a dead battery wig out a vehicle so bad. Hope this thread helps keep someone else avoid getting freaked out in the future!

Happens to other car brands as well. Been there and done that twice. At the end it was the battery.

 

[GlennSullivan]

Happens to other car brands as well. Been there and done that twice. At the end it was the battery.

Sounds crazy to say this, but with current vehicle designs, battery should probably be swapped before digging too deep. The transformation from mostly mechanical devices to mostly electronic devices is def a work in progress. Ford has freely admitted they are woefully short on good software engineers. They are also now needing to pivot to a plan where they produce mostly ICE vehicles for a lot longer than they were thinking.

 

[eddytheexpy]

I guess I've just never been exposed to this before for some reason... between 2 cars I used to have (2003 & 2007 Ford Tauruses), my current daily driver (2019 Chevy Impala) and my fiancé's car (2019 Buick Encore) none of them have had a total freakout with a dead/dying battery. my Expy is 2011 so I've dealt with vehicles on both sides of this one's age and never saw this. Plus, I'm a little confused how the battery health dumped from 80% to ~0% within a month. It may have just been time for it to crap out plus that 1 month was July in Phoenix so literally the worst time/place for a battery.

At least now I know to not get all worked up until I rule out the simple stuff. Granted, I did start troubleshooting with the easy stuff but this was definitely weighing on me for a few days until I had the time to get into the beans.