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Metallic pinging/grinding sound intermittently, AWD fault light + tons of other error faults showing up on dash

Messages
1
Reactions
0
Points
1
Location
Indiana
Vehicle
2020 Ford Explorer ST
#1
Hi everyone!

I'm at a whopping 133k miles with my 2020k ST and I've ran into my first major issue. A week or so ago my dash lit up with a myriad of errors and faults. Wrench icon (AWD fault), hill start assist, you name it. It went away after I restarted the vehicle. The faults and errors started becoming more frequent over the last few days, yet they would always disappear on restart. In many cases, the faults wouldn't appear for an extended duration but inevitably they'd pop up at some point during the drive. The car was basically a RWD race car, zero AWD function and it felt like there was zero traction control. In the last day or two, I've begun hearing a feint metallic chirping/pinging sound accompanied by the AWD fault coming up on the dash. It'd be noisy for a few seconds and then vanish, along with the AWD fault. Then it'd come back up on short notice and the sound would continue, rinse and repeat. The "AWD Menu Display" on the dash would still show the AWD functioning as usual when the fault as inactive though.

Another symptom that started up was the car would "bind up" when I cut the wheel all the way either direction, and slowly release. Fast forward to today, I took the car into the dealership to try and get to the bottom of what was going on. They're saying I need a whole new front differential assembly. I was quoted out $4,200 to get the job done. I'm far from mechanically inclined so I just wanted to put my feelers out there and see if anyone has had a similar issue and perhaps it was something different than what the dealership is suggesting.

Thank you all!
 

Messages
1,273
Reactions
608
Points
162
Location
Nevada
Vehicle
'20 Raptor, '22 Explorer ST, '14 GT500, '03 F150
#2
Hi everyone!

I'm at a whopping 133k miles with my 2020k ST and I've ran into my first major issue. A week or so ago my dash lit up with a myriad of errors and faults. Wrench icon (AWD fault), hill start assist, you name it. It went away after I restarted the vehicle. The faults and errors started becoming more frequent over the last few days, yet they would always disappear on restart. In many cases, the faults wouldn't appear for an extended duration but inevitably they'd pop up at some point during the drive. The car was basically a RWD race car, zero AWD function and it felt like there was zero traction control. In the last day or two, I've begun hearing a feint metallic chirping/pinging sound accompanied by the AWD fault coming up on the dash. It'd be noisy for a few seconds and then vanish, along with the AWD fault. Then it'd come back up on short notice and the sound would continue, rinse and repeat. The "AWD Menu Display" on the dash would still show the AWD functioning as usual when the fault as inactive though.

Another symptom that started up was the car would "bind up" when I cut the wheel all the way either direction, and slowly release. Fast forward to today, I took the car into the dealership to try and get to the bottom of what was going on. They're saying I need a whole new front differential assembly. I was quoted out $4,200 to get the job done. I'm far from mechanically inclined so I just wanted to put my feelers out there and see if anyone has had a similar issue and perhaps it was something different than what the dealership is suggesting.

Thank you all!
The first conditions you described sound like the AWD module is bad. 4200 seems a little high, ask them to give you an exact breakdown of what they want to do.
 



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