I have a 2015 King Ranch, both IWEs were replaced at 20,000 miles in March of 2016. Everything was fine until November of 2016 when the familiar grinding started again. Now (of course) the dealer is unable to recreate the sound. The sound comes and goes, some days 50% of the time, some days 10%, some days not at all. I dealt with this from Nov of 2015 until March of 2016. Now again since Nov of 2016. Frustrating to say the least. Considering the volume of reports of this issue, Ford should fast track repairs rather than make me deal with it for months, again. Considering what the truck cost, this is unacceptable. Terrible customer service! Bad enough to have such a poor design for so many years, then to scratch their heads and say they have to hear it before they can fix it...give me a break.

 

before going nuts, check and make sure the vacuum hose to the wheel is not rubbing the wheel rim on the inside. My '06 did that a few times. It sounds like a vacuum problem that could be a check valve or the IWE module. If you look under the front edge on the very front crossmember near the underside of the radiator, the cross over vacuum line is exposed there to anything you may encounter. Not a good place for a line like that. May check there also. A temporary work around us to just pull the vacuum hoses from the wheel ends and let them stay engaged. It won't hurt anything but mileage. I went a whole summer like that on my '06 without any ill effects.

 

Kevin, thanks for the input. Not really going nuts, just not happy to have a $65k truck that continues to have issues Ford should have engineered out. I can put the truck into full time 4WD and it stops, no need to pull vac lines. Any idea if repeated partial IWE engagement does damage to the hubs? Since I'm on my 2nd IWE failure I'm thinking I should be pushing Ford for hub replacement too.

 

I have experienced Repeated IWE issues as well on my truck within 5000kms of being repaired they replaced a whole bunch of components again!

I love my truck it performs well and looks great but have had way way too many issues I'm currently waiting on a phone call from the dealership owner in regards to my truck being in the shop 14 times in 14 months.