Rear hatch motion sensitivity

I have a 2020 ST that i kept having issues with the rear hatch popping open on me while connecting/disconnecting a trailer as well as while loading groceries in the back. It is easy to say that "oh, you just accidentally got your foot under the bumper" but i can demonstrate it without my foot under the bumper. I have demonstrated this to service technicians. i have demonstrated this to salesmen on other cars on their lot. My service technician was even talking to another technician while standing under the open hatch and it closed on them. Unfortunately Ford will not recognize this as a problem and so the dealership just smiles at me.

What is everyone else's experience?

Here is one example of me recreating the issue in my garage with a "fake trailer".

You are not alone with this issue... My 2021 has a similar issue if I walk by too close to the rear bumper the rear hatch opens. This creates a problem for me because my garage is very tight and if I don't leave enough clearance it'll easily scratch the tailgate as it goes up and hits the garage door. I wish there was a way to disable the motion sensor because I have no use for it. I don't mind hitting the button. Experts please chime in if there is a way to disable the motion sensor and just use the button only or the remote to open the rear hatch. The only feature I saw was to disable the button not the motion sensor. If I knew where they were I would gladly paint over them or duct tape over them so they could not sense motion.

The hatch opened on me at the coin-op carwash yesterday. Using a brush around the exhaust tips. Then there's the times I'm standing on one leg, swinging the other leg back and forth trying to get it to open. lol

I look like I'm having a seizure trying to get that damn tailgate open when I want to. I always fear some idiot YouTuber is filming me trying to get the tailgate open flailing my leg all about. LOL. I think it just hates me and it's freaking possessed. I wish I could disable it and just use the button. I know that tailgate is going to get damaged in my garage. It is only a matter of time. I had a rearrange the garage so that if it does open it will not hit anything.

My key fob stays in the truck...never had a problem.

I hate that feature and am tired of getting hit by a closing tailgate or having it open at the most inopportune times. FORD NEEDS TO PROVIDE A SOFTWARE FIX!

The darn thing opens when I walk by it in the garage and then it hits the garage door, when I wash the car it opens and water gets inside, when I try to use the hitch it opens and hits me in the chin... it operates at the absolute worst times.

It auto-closes on me while I loads tools and supplies; on several occasions it has auto-closed when I bent over to get tools out from under the rear lid and knocked me to the ground; it's auto-closed while loading long items and while I'm going to the rear side door to pull the long items forward the rear hatch smashed the long items.

You simply cannot get within a foot of the back of the vehicle without the darn hatch either auto-opening or auto-closing. And don't tell me to simply take the key fob out of my pocket before I get anywhere near the back of the vehicle; that's rarely possible.

There's always and exception, of course, and that's when your hands are full and you stand on one leg waving your foot under the rear bumper trying to get it to work; at those times it refuses to work.

I think that the users need to demand that Ford issue a software update that ALLOWS OWNERS TO TURN OFF THE HANDS-FREE FEATURE!

How about it? Maybe start a new thread demanding that?

I have not seen my key fob in months, sorry.

Being a little dramatic aren't you? With all the chiming that occurs before the door closes you know what's happening and all it takes is a little resistance to stop it. I doubt it's knocking you to the ground.

From your comments it appears that you haven't bothered to spend a minute messing around with the sensors to see how they work, if you did you would realize that you don't wave your foot under the bumper to activate the gate. Gate closed once on me so I took the time to figure out why and adjusted accordingly, hasn't happened since.

Actually, I did get knocked to the ground a couple of times. It isn't like I'm just standing their and the door knocks me down; it's that I am bent over loading or unloading stuff while the door is coming down and the force of me rising up and the door coming down knocks me down. Maybe you can hear the ding in a quiet area but in a noisy environment its hard to hear it and loading stuff in or (like loading sacks of concrete and such) you aren't paying any attention as to how your feet are moving relative to the bumper.

So, I have yet to find a single person other than you who knows how to "adjust accordingly". Since you seem to know where the sensors are and how to adjust them then why don't you explain it rather than criticize and belittle?

Here is a tip. Put a trailer hitch in the receiver and leave it there. Won't take to many whacks to the shins for your subconscious to kick in and keep your feet away from the sensor area and you won't be walking along the back of the vehicle right next to the bumper. Don't matter how heavy of stuff your loading your brain will keep your feet away after a few whacks.

There is no adjustment for the sensors you need to adjust your foot position. As for were the sensors are you can figure that out.

I suppose I don't have an issue with the sensors since I spent my life around pickups and Suburbans that always had a hitch sticking out of the receiver. Learned long ago to stay away and have been reminded why a few times over the years.

My tailgate is possessed. I need a priest. | Page 2 | Explorer ST Forum
I have been dealing with an erractic liftgate for months. I finally disconnected the "demonic sensor" after the dealer told me again there is nothing wrong.
This may help you. It take less than 20 seconds to unclip once you find it.

Unfortunately your method helps no one with an erratic sensor. There is no need to post the same workaround.
Ford needs to acknowledge that there is an issue and release a hot fix TSB. I cannot wait that long so I just eliminated the problem completely by disconnecting the motion sensor. The entire feature is non required. It takes less time to hit the button than to look like a idiot kicking your leg trying to get the thing to respond.

I am in South Florida. Leave your fob in SUV down here and you'll be working home.

So, you don't actually know where the sensor is or how to adjust it.

The good thing about your comment is that you did inspire me to search and test rather than just gripe that I should be able to turn off that useless feature.

There is a cigarette-carton-size plastic box mounted on the topside of the flimsy rear facia on the passenger side. That must be the 99-cent motion sensor. There doesn't appear to be any kind of adjustment pot on it. I'm certain that the sensitivity is adjusted via software. The box is just clipped to the top of a long, thin, plastic facia with no support for several feet. I expect something mounted to the frame, not to the top of a piece of plastic about a 1/16" thick with no support anywhere around it. One of the things that I learned long ago was motion and vibration sensors need to be mounted RIGIDLY so that there is no motion of the sensor that would be interpreted as motion of the object being sensed. Apparently Ford doesn't understand this. So, anything that causes the rear facia to quiver will cause enough movement to set off the sensor.

Then I discovered two "undocumented features" of the system:

1) Rap the rear facia anywhere and the whole thing quivers causing the motion sensor to open or close the rear hatch. The rear facia is so flimsy that if you bump it (either side of the hitch), while loading or unloading the vehicle the resultant quiver will cause the the rear hatch to open or close. Drop a bag of cement in the back and the quivering will cause the hatch to close (at least on a very hot day when the plastic is particularly soft). That's all it takes, no foot motion, no body motion, simply bump against the rear of the vehicle or drop something that causes a sharp impact and the hatch will automatically open or close.

2) Motion sensor activation DOES NOT result in a warning chime; when the motion sensor activates the rear hatch there is absolute silence. The chime DOES work if you press any of the buttons to open or close the hatch. Interesting that the chime, which one would expect would go off as a warning in unintentional activation, only goes off when you intentionally activate the rear hatch. Sounds backwards to me.

My guess is that I could go out and buy a 36" long piece of angle aluminum and rivet is to the top side of the rear facia and connect that to the frame of the vehicle to provide the needed rigidity. But why should I have to do that to a new $50,000+ vehicle? My only alternative is to take it in to FORD to have them adjust the sensitivity of the sensor via a software tweak and fix whatever is wrong in the programming that doesn't causes the chime to sound during ANY motion. But, then, why not just give me the ability to disable the maddening feature with a menu item that would set the sensitivity so high that the motion sensor won't activate?

So, is it the black box located on the top of the rear facia on the passenger's side? Knowing that everything on the car is connected via CANBUS (or whatever the system is now) I'm concerned about unplugging it and causing some kind of system error. Did you just unplug it or did you have to install a terminating resistor and if just unplugged did you then just tape off the ends? And no error codes?

Same in Los Angeles! Leave the fob in the car at the home improvement store, which has trailer-mounted camera arrays and roving security, and your car will be gone before you get out of the store.

You are reading too much into it. The hardest part is feeling around for the plug that is in picture I posted. Just unplug it. No codes, no errors. It was hard to take a better picture because of the location. I was trying to hold the plastic back so that I could zoom the camera. I did a lousy job of taking a picture. It is there and the only single wire connection on that j-box.
I taped the end and put a piece of black shrink wrap. The female on the box I did nothing with. I am never hooking it back up. It more useless to me than the "double honk" and Engine auto start/stop feature. Who thinks of these stupid features?

Thanks! I didn't go back to your original post in the other thread to see your pictures but now I did. So, the box I see is the junction/controller box and the sensor(s) plug into it. I see that in earlier Fords there were two motion sensors, looking something like two 1-foot-long flat straps, that were daisy-chained together, attached to the underside of the facia on each side of the hitch, connected by a single wire that plugged in to the box. I guess maybe now they are bars (I can see a thin bar wrapped inside the facia. So, just disconnect the single wire wire plug from the box, tape up the ends to keep them clean, and I'm good to go. Thanks, again!

Oh, and, yes, I agree that the double-honk, engine start-stop, and a host of other "nanny" features are quite annoying. It would be nice if there were a settings menu that allowed you to turn off various features if you don't want to use them.

Oh, and since this is an ST let's have an option to make SPORT mode the default on start-up.

Sport mode on startup is on the wish list of many on here. Some say it's not a hassle to hit the button three times to get there but for me it is. I'll never tow anything with the car, I live in South Florida so snow isn't on issue, the only mode I use is sport mode. Every morning or every time I start the car it is a hassle to switch that button three times. I'm sure when they refresh the ST in coming year models there will be a lot of features that can be toggled on and off due to customer demand. It is still the best performance SUV for the money on the market. I put on a tremendous amount of mileage so for me it's a no-brainer not to spend 100 Grand on a car that's going to have 100,000 miles on it in two and a half years. My Trackhawk has 70,000 miles on it and it's 2 years old. It's like throwing away $109,000.