Masejoer

My 2011 f150 was well under $10k, with no problems. They ARE coming down in price and the market is starting to get flooded due to leases being up. The used drivetrain is worth about $4000 retail at best (with 25-30k miles - I've been monitoring prices to pick up some drivetrain parts for a project vehicle). This is why flood vehicles are often parted - parts are worth far more when parted out after a few years of age, and electrical problems are difficult to sell.

I still say replace the cheapest part only. If it doesn't work, and you don't know how to diagnose electrical problems yourself, it is likely best to leave it alone rather than pay for a shop to find and repair/replace electrical harnesses. If you need something specific, wire it up from scratch. Otherwise, treat the truck as a basic work truck.

I'm glad the vehicle was put back on the road - I have nothing against that. There's just a good chance that you will be throwing more time and money into unnecessary areas than they are worth.

If you can do some testing yourself (grab some wires and a multimeter), I'm sure many of us can help you start troubleshooting these issues. This IS a diy issue that will take time though - it only makes sense for the owner to get directly involved in the repairs. If you were local, I'd be willing to give you a couple hours of time to get you pointed in the right direction.

Your Mother

Thanks for the offer. I absolutely plan to be involved. I know the basics but I have a good buddy who is an electrician and good with cars who is willing to give it a try. I was just running it by everyone on here in the meantime just to see if there was any ideas before we really got into it. The dealership was a last resort just to see it it was a programming/proprietary Ford issue. As far as your truck for well under 10k that's cool. I'm betting it's not an fx4, 4x4, crew cab, low mileage, leather, reverse camera, heated memory seats, etc. If you found anything near those specs like mine with a good title for under 10k that truck was stolen! Lol

Masejoer

With cars, there is very little overlap between AC in-wall and DC chassis-wiring systems, other than they are both electricity, and your alternator generates AC current. I hope he is good with the electronics portion of cars. A person can build a transmission from memory without needing to reference exploded diagrams, but electronics is something completely different. The issue you're experiencing will need at minimum a multimeter, which is the first go-to basic electronics testing tool. A test light can also be sufficient for testing if you have power, but you will need to have some wiring diagrams available, or spend extra time probing every wire hoping to find a positive or negative connection.

I hope resolving your issue is quick, as non-obvious problems really are time dumps. 2 hours here, 4 hours there adds up (not uncommon if you get into oscilloscope level testing) when you have multiple problems all compounding on one another.

Everything not working "could" be all going through a single connector that is heavily corroded. Thankfully, vehicles today use (networked) addressing throughout the body, rather than running pairs of wires to each individual component. Wiring harnesses are quite easy to find and disconnect on vehicles newer than ~2000.