Mines and earlier 2021 build. Wonder what makes them differ

 

Yours is a job 2 truck. It was built with the software that job 1 trucks were missing when they left the factory. Your truck isn't affected by these issues.

 

What is the actual issue with Job 1 trucks that makes them not update? Software? Hardware?

 

Software. Ford didn't want to push back the release of the new F150's, so they shipped them to dealers with the promise that the missing features would work once they got the updates over the air. The problem is, their OTA process was new and untested, and as it turns out, it sucks and it sucks hard. So one early update in particular, 1.7.1, was causing trucks to get stuck and not receive any more updates. To this day, Ford still hasn't sent out a fix for these trucks. The only way to get the truck past that update is to update manually using FDRS. Due to how new they were and lack of knowledge and training from the factory to the techs that work in dealers, most dealers didn't know how to fix the issue. After you try to update the APIM a few times and the update fails, it locks you out of it for 20 days (I think it's 20) before you can even attempt to update it again. That's if you were even able to convince the dealer to try and update your truck, because Ford doesn't pay dealers labor hours to update modules unless very specific conditions are met, so owners are just getting the run around and BS excuses from their dealers.

Now, months and months after the fact, it is more common knowledge and dealers have gotten better at getting these trucks out of OTA purgatory. The thing is, by the time Ford and dealers figured out what was going down, the online community had already figured out the problem and how to fix it. The problem is, the tool you need to update your truck is not cheap, and on top of that, you need to pay Ford for access to their software to be able to use the tool and update it yourself. So basically, you have to reward Ford for their ineptitude by giving them money in order to fix the truck they should be fixing themselves. Here we are with people taking delivery of their 2023 trucks, a refresh coming for 2024, and people like you still don't have the truck they paid for. It's ridiculous, and Ford ought to be damn ashamed of themselves.

 

That is a perfect answer to explain it thank you! I might ask my dealer what they know about it, they're pretty good there. Last time I was down they mentioned that they've found issues themselves and have been reaching out to Ford about them.

 

This is the 2nd or 3rd OTA update I've received since manually updating my 2021 Job1 truck 100% (3.5.4) last month:

 

Mine was built end of April 2021 and has never had issues getting OTA updates, I think it's important to understand the actual cause and not paint with too broad of a brush. I have never once used FDRS on my truck to manually push updates, even BlueCruise came OTA, although later than it should have.

Not excusing Ford on their communication or pretty poor implementation of OTA in general, but not every 2021 is stuck.

 

I bought my 2021 XLT 2.7L 302a in September 2021, it was built in January 2021. All OTA updates have completed without issue, other than the extended time frame. I am on 3.5.4 with full screen AA and Alexa working.

 

My build is July of 2021 and have had nothing but problems with ota, currently I on 1.6.0,woth not much help from dealership.

 

Mine was built in April 2021 and I bought in Sept 2021 also. All OTAs came through fine until 3.5.3 Got stuck halfway through and now won't complete....guess I'll have to wait until Ford resends since I'm unwilling to spring for a Mongoose. Why should we have to manage this ourselves and reward Ford for sloppy maintenance procedures? Maybe they're staffed with ex Gov't employees.