The dealership doesn't manufacture vehicles and Ford does not repair them. The vast majority of dealerships are not owned by Ford. Your larger issue is with your dealership, not Ford Motor Company. Ford does not oversee the morons that your local dealership management chooses to hire. Find a dealership that knows WTF it is doing.

Too bad you're not in the SE area of the Mitten.

 

We have been attempting to get the dealer to "fix" the problem that the truck will not receive software updates.
When I refer to Ford, I am talking about the dealer. But when the dealer needs information on how to fix something, they don't ask Chevrolet. They ask the ones that made the vehicle, Ford.
.
roadPilot: And if I lived in your town, what could you do? Are you a software genius that knows how to fix the Sync4 problem? Something that my dumb dealer just cannot figure out.

 

He has a Mongoose and is probably willing to help you update the truck yourself like he did to his and I did to mine and many others did for themselves. If you were in the Miami area, I would update your truck for you, too.

 

(Emphasis added)

Are you referring to the dealership not being able to fix what they manufacture OR are you referring to the manufacturer not being able to fix what they manufacture?

Can't be both in that sentence.

So are you done with the DEALERSHIP or are you done with FORD?

If you're done with that dealership, why not say, "I am just about at the point where I am done with this dealership."

I would have offered to have you come over on an available weekend and we could apply any outstanding SW updates for your truck to try to address your issues, showed you how to use FDRS to do this, and maybe even applied some cool FORScan changes if you were interested. But I guess that you probably wouldn't be interested because I'm not some kind of "software genius that knows how to fix the Sync4 problem" ...

P.S. - Yes, many dealerships techs ARE dumb when it comes to SYNC. You'll soon see that there are plenty of folks on these forums who know far more about it than many techs. Beyond that, many dealerships will just blow you off and tell you "Your truck is up to date" just to get rid of you, even though you have half a dozen or more modules that HAVE outstanding SW updates available. They don't get reimbursed from Ford unless there is a claim, recall, or other authorized repair, and most people wouldn't have a clue if that is true or not.

 

The "software genius" statement was in no way a sarcastic or derogatory thought. It was praise for someone that has the knowledge to work with electronics and figure out problems.
It is not the updates that are needed, it is to fix the problem that will not allow the truck to receive them from where ever they come from. That is what my dealer was attempting to do with out much success.
I guess I will check with a big city dealer and see if they have any interest in making an attempt at a fix. I have one about 100 miles from my location.
I will make sure I keep "Ford" and "Dealership" separate from now on.

 

One thing goes hand in hand with the other. If your truck gets updated past where it is stuck (if it is stuck), you'll start getting OTAs again.

 

Well, that's not the way it was taken, so my apologies if I interpreted that incorrectly.

For many people, the updates ARE the problem. Specifically, it's an OTA update that caused a module to get "stuck", which broke the OTA process for future updates.

My 2021 Job 1 truck (built in FEB 2021) received a few OTA updates after I got it, but then appeared to stop getting them around Christmas of 2021. I didn't really notice it until MAR 2022. After a little investigation, I saw that an OTA update that the truck attempted to apply in DEC failed three times, then that locked up SYNC from getting future updates.

My truck was the first 2021 Job 1 F150 @ my dealership to be brought in for the "please manually update my modules for BlueCruise to work" and what became affectionately known here on the forums as the "stuck OTA", the "stuck "Update Now" button, and/or the "stuck APIM" issue. If you're not aware, the 2021 Job 1 trucks that were equipped with the hardware for BlueCruise did NOT have the software for it. We were told the software updates to allow us to use it would come a few months later via OTA. That "few months later" turned into close to a year, and when the first OTA updates finally came out, there were big problems with them.

My dealership spent 2 months and 4 days working on my truck. It is well documented in the 'Software Updates' thread. It wasn't the dealership's fault or the tech's fault. I know this because I was literally in contact with them nearly every single day. They would tell me what Ford Engineering told them to try. I would provide them with all kinds of information from various sources, including right here @ F150forum.com. We literally worked together figuring it out during that timeframe. I was lucky enough to be on a first name basis with the owner and his nephew, who was the Service Manager.

Long story short, the reason they could never get the APIM module to update properly was because the battery voltage was falling too low during the programming, so the process would abort. During all the fun, they did physically replace the APIM module - twice (one directly from Ford Engineering), but knowing NOW what I/we know about the battery voltage, it's likely that the replacement of the module was not required. Oh, they killed my battery, so they replaced it as well.

I'm almost 100% certain that, had they put a battery charger/maintainer (withe power supply mode, not just charging mode) on it from the beginning (like you will see everyone HERE does when they are applying updates themselves), it would have allowed the APIM to be properly updated. That would have 'opened the floodgates' for future OTA updates far sooner than the ~2 months it took us to figure it out. The TSBs and bulletins that Ford eventually sent out to all the dealers highlighted that voltage was CRITICAL for this (and other larger updates).

So while you may very well need the dealership to swap out your APIM module to unstick your OTA process, you might not HAVE to, IF you had someone local with a Mongoose-Plus (or multi-OEM J-box) and an FDRS subscription (or you just pay $50 for a 2-day subscription).

Forum members buying the Mongoose-Plus and FDRS subscription weren't as plentiful a year ago as they are now. Also, I wasn't ready to spend $560 on an OEM-specific pass-thru device. That, coupled with the fact that we had not yet assembled as much collective knowledge as we have now (a year later), is why I didn't do it SW updates with FDRS until just recently. I have used FORScan (a different but similar software) and an OBDLink MX Bluetooth adapter to make tons of changes to my trucks over the years but was just being cheap.

Good luck with your dealership trip.

P.S. - For the record, I *am* a software genius: 30+ years in IT, the first ten years or so as a programmer/developer, almost exclusively supporting automotive manufacturing.

 

Until you get to 3.5.2 ...

 

Lol not anymore. Ford is actually pushing it out again.

 

At their leisure, of course. I think they released it the hour after I bought my Mongoose-Plus and FDRS subscription ...