Rotary Shifter randomly locked in Park

[Zig10]

New Expedition owner here with an intermittent shifter issue. We've owned our 2018 Max Limited for about 2.5 months, and twice have had the shift knob refuse to move out of park. Now, had this happened in our garage or a parking spot it would've been frustrating enough, but the occurrences have been 1. When my wife was in the car rider line picking our kids up at school, and 2. On the launch ramp at my marina with the boat on the trailer in the water.

Nothing like being the star of the show for screwing up the flow of traffic.

Each time the vehicle was not turned off, just shifted into park to load up. The first time my wife got the dial to move again by turning the car off, getting out, letting it power down, and then restarting. The second time that didn't work. We tried it 4 times, and no change, and then suddenly it released seemingly on its own. I am thinking it may be an issue with the shift interlock at the brake pedal, but that wouldn't explain the randomness of the occurrences. It's going to the dealer this week, but I am not hold out hope since it has only happened twice in 10 weeks.

For comparison, once was on perfectly flat ground with no parking brake engaged, and the other was on the ramp with the parking brake engaged, so either way there shouldn't have been any weight on the parking prawl to mess it up.

Anybody else had this experience, by chance?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Deadman]

I'll bet 95% chance the parking brake was on...
The parking brake engages anytime you park on a hill, or slam it into park before the vehicle is fully stopped. Mine did this a couple times before I realized what was keeping me in park. Its annoying, but in this day people have no brains, so the cars have to do al the thinking for them......

 

[aggiegrad05]

I'll bet 95% chance the parking brake was on...
The parking brake engages anytime you park on a hill, or slam it into park before the vehicle is fully stopped. Mine did this a couple times before I realized what was keeping me in park. Its annoying, but in this day people have no brains, so the cars have to do al the thinking for them......

But that wouldn’t prevent it from shifting out of P.

 

[ETC13]

I'll bet 95% chance the parking brake was on...
The parking brake engages anytime you park on a hill, or slam it into park before the vehicle is fully stopped. Mine did this a couple times before I realized what was keeping me in park. Its annoying, but in this day people have no brains, so the cars have to do al the thinking for them......

This make no sense. The parking brake is designed to auto release when shifted to drive and foot is placed on the accelerator. Check your owners manual as this is a feature. So it should have nothing to do with not shifting out of park.

Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk

 

[2018 EXPY]

New Expedition owner here with an intermittent shifter issue. We've owned our 2018 Max Limited for about 2.5 months, and twice have had the shift knob refuse to move out of park. Now, had this happened in our garage or a parking spot it would've been frustrating enough, but the occurrences have been 1. When my wife was in the car rider line picking our kids up at school, and 2. On the launch ramp at my marina with the boat on the trailer in the water.

Nothing like being the star of the show for screwing up the flow of traffic.

Each time the vehicle was not turned off, just shifted into park to load up. The first time my wife got the dial to move again by turning the car off, getting out, letting it power down, and then restarting. The second time that didn't work. We tried it 4 times, and no change, and then suddenly it released seemingly on its own. I am thinking it may be an issue with the shift interlock at the brake pedal, but that wouldn't explain the randomness of the occurrences. It's going to the dealer this week, but I am not hold out hope since it has only happened twice in 10 weeks.

For comparison, once was on perfectly flat ground with no parking brake engaged, and the other was on the ramp with the parking brake engaged, so either way there shouldn't have been any weight on the parking prawl to mess it up.

Anybody else had this experience, by chance?

Thanks in advance.

the new expedition have the safe lock or whatever, its idea is that it will shift into park whenever a door is open while the car is at stop. it would not allow the driver to drive the car while the doors are open.
one more thing, if the remote battery is not good, it will trick the car into thinking that the key is not in the vehicle and it will also lock the shifting to park.

 

[aggiegrad05]

the new expedition have the safe lock or whatever, its idea is that it will shift into park whenever a door is open while the car is at stop. it would not allow the driver to drive the car while the doors are open.
one more thing, if the remote battery is not good, it will trick the car into thinking that the key is not in the vehicle and it will also lock the shifting to park.

I think you're on to something. I'll bet it's something that's triggering the "holy crap I need to be in P" feature rather than a problem with the tranny.

 

[nate6966]

While moving my tractor around this past weekend, I moved the vehicle multiple times with the door opened. Here's what I experienced:
When my seatbelt was on, vehicle was in drive or reverse, and I opened the door - lights and bells started going off but it stayed in gear while at a standstill.
When the seatbelt was off, the vehicle would shift to park automatically - HOWEVER, it was extremely easy to just shift it back into gear while the door was still open. I DID have to press the brake pedal to get it to shift out of park when the door was open and seatbelt was off.
Either way, based on the flashing lights and bells, the vehicle is very concerned about safety when one tries to move the vehicle with a door open.
A curious thing to point out - my 2019 Expedition didn't do anything other than warning bell and light if one of the passengers unbuckled and opened a door while the vehicle was in gear at a standstill.

 

[Zig10]

Thanks for all of the replies. I am going to try playing with it a bit after work today to see if I can get it to replicate by getting out with the keys, opening doors, etc. I have an appointment with the dealer tomorrow, though I am not holding out much hope since it only has happened twice in 2 months.

All that said, I did finally locate the shift lock override (amazing what you can find in the manual!) in case it happens again. They did a heck of a job hiding that in the center console storage bin, I'll tell you that much.

I'll update after the dealer has a look.

 

[Uturn]

2018 EXPY has a point with the key remote. These things can be real sensitive to not only the remote battery condition, but even to the location of the remote in the vehicle. On another point, the knob does not rotate when the transmission goes into park and the limits of the knob rotation is controlled by the transmission module, otherwise the knob would rotate 360 degrees. The transmission is also drive by wire with no physical connection between the shift knob and the transmission.

 

[hosseface]

I'd recommend a scan of the Transmission for trouble codes.

I had a very random issue with the parking brake automatically coming on. After over 3 weeks and 3 tries, they finally got it fixed. I had a harness shorted out inside the transmission.