itsjustme

Hi to all! I'm new here – I joined after finding this forum when googling about the power steering assist fault. So, before I ask a question I’d like to provide a bit of background so hopefully anyone who may have answers for me will have all the info they may require. I purchased my 2010 FFH in early November last year through CarMax. It had an absolutely clean title and was in pristine condition with only 72.5K miles. Really loved the car – it drove/rode great, has all the bells and whistles, and was just overall totally clean. Just one month later, sitting at a red light waiting to turn right, I was rear-ended with a fair amount of impact by an older Jeep Cherokee (FFH: $5K; Jeep Cherokee: $0; uninsured motorist coverage: priceless). Forty-five days later I had my car back looking good, but the cross traffic sensors and rear parking aide were throwing faults. The Ford dealer that the body shop took it to said that the sensor faults were not impact related, but they worked fine before the accident, but immediately after the accident I had to turn off the parking aide so it wouldn’t scream incessantly. Then in early March, again sitting still at a red light (this time to turn left) I was hit by a man in a big ½ ton pickup who was later determined to be drunk-driving when he cut the turn too hard taking out the front end of my car and the sign post in the meridian next to me. Three weeks later I have my car back again. Everything seems fine until the weather began to change and I began using the air conditioner more. This is when I first noticed that the EV battery was not maintaining a charge as well and that my gas mileage, which had been averaging about 35, was now tanking at around 24.7 (yes, I have a lead foot). After this, I started to get the occasional “power steering assist fault” on start up, but if I turned the car off, let it sit for 15-30 seconds then restarted, the fault would go away. I would also occasionally get a warning that the Advance Trac needed service. Once I even had a brake failure at start up. I had to actually turn the car off and then on again 2 times before that cleared. Skip forward to 4 days ago. When working about 60 miles away from home, the power steering assist fault came on again, but would not go off, no matter how many times I tried restarting or how long I let it sit in between. And I now have no power steering. It was an interesting drive home mostly on the freeway with lots of big trucks and me worrying the whole time that my brakes would do the same thing as the power steering. Currently the red “Power Steering Assist Fault” and the yellow “Service Advance Trac” warnings show constantly while driving, first one then the other, then back, and on and on… When the EV battery first started showing signs of a problem, I started doing some research on how much replacing it would cost. That’s when I ran across a Technical Service Bulletin from Ford dated April of 2020 that addressed the issue of Reduced Electric Vehicle Operation (Technical Service Bulletin 20-2142, 24 April, 2020). This TSB is for FFH (and a couple of other vehicles) model years 2010-2012 details the procedure for vehicles with reduced electric vehicle operation and/or increased gasoline engine operations. The issue, it explains, is that “some Fusion hybrid electric vehicles may experience reduced electric vehicle operation and increased gasoline engine operation around 10 years of vehicle age and beyond. This may be due to software in the battery energy control module (BECM) and the powertrain control module (PCM). To correct the condition, follow the service procedure to reprogram the BECM and PCM.” In searching for more information about the power steering assist fault, I remember reading in one post that the state of the battery is critical for proper vehicle and systems operations. Finally, now the question(s): Could this be the cause of the rear parking aide, cross traffic, power steering, Advance Trac and brake faults? Meaning that in fact those systems are fine, its just the battery is not programmed right? Or is it more likely that the accidents caused a problem with the wiring, maybe jiggled something loose? Or, is it that the vehicle is 10 years old and these kinds of things just start to fail about now? I called the Ford dealer closest to me yesterday, and when I explained the issues and mentioned the TSB, the first thing he did is say that I should probably have them replace the rack. Wow, really?! When I told him that I wasn’t going there first, lets start small with the cheap easy fixes and see where we are, he suddenly had no open appointments for 2 weeks (currently no power steering: a little worrisome, but good for building upper body strength; chance that the brakes could go the same way: very scary; knowing that I have excellent auto insurance coverage: priceless). For the following, I really don’t know if it is pertinent, but I’ll go ahead and throw it out there: the car has developed a vibration that is severe enough that the rear-view mirror on the windshield is vibrating so hard that objects are not clearly defined. It does not seem to effect the external rear-view mirrors. Any idea on why this could be happening would be appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read this unfortunately long post, and thank you in advance to anyone taking the time to reply.