Laugh at my foolishness if you want, but here's my story. I bought a 2014 with 150k 6 months ago. Only problem I could detect on test drive was a groaning noise that appeared to be coming from front end. More on that later. Literally on the drive home after buying, the truck slammed into 1st gear and stayed there, limped home. Luckily, Ford fixed that for free under recall, transmission leadframe replacement.

Driving back from dealership that day, my e-brake warning chime went off in the middle of interstate. I couldn't get it to stop. Then my fuel level gauge suddenly dropped to "low on fuel" even though I had just refilled it.

Dealership wouldn't buy the truck back, but they did replace the fuel pump and SOME e-brake hardware. That solved those problems (mostly). More on that later.

I bought the truck believing that the groaning noise 20+mph was IWE related because of all I read about that. Nope. I strapped a voice recorder to multiple areas underside and confirmed the noise was coming from differential. Pinion bearing shot.

So I paid $1600 to have the differential mostly rebuilt. New bearings and seals, but same gears. The groaning noise was now gone, but the truck drove kind of strangely, like there was some extra resistance that wasn't there before. The more I drive the truck, the more I noticed it. It came and went, very intermittent. But now it's almost always there. Initially I thought that the diff job went bad. I also noticed that the driveshaft wasn't marked prior to removal.

But then on a whim I used the e-brake in a parking lot, cycled it on and off. But now I couldn't move. Kept cycling it and still couldn't move, I was stuck. Went out to the rear wheels and jiggled the cables as much as I could. I was no longer stuck, but I drove home hearing all kinds of noises on every wheel rotation. The e-brake was not disengaging properly. Apparently the dealership only replaced some of the hardware, and possibly not the cables.

But it's worse than that. I know that it can't just be the e-brake sticking, becaue the longer I drive, the more resistance I feel. Sometimes the truck will "bump" like a harsh shift when taking off from a stop. I research this on google and apparently there is a problem on these trucks where the brake calipers will stick from the front brake line hose bracket getting so rusted that it pinches the hose and prevents the flow of brake fluid.

https://www.reddit.com/r/f150/commen..._brake_issues/
https://www.f150forum.com/f12/2012-f...easing-408823/

Mine is rusted just like that. Bingo, that's our problem.

But wait, there's more. Just when I think I have diagnosed the problems and I'm ready to take it to the mechanic, I read about a problem where the driveshaft end that goes into the transfer case has no lubrication by default. Ford has a TSB to add lubrication, otherwise it starts to bind during angle changes.


So now I'm taking this POS to a mechanic to address 3 different binding design flaws that are likely happening to me simultaneously. What year is this anyway? How can Ford not know how to design this stuff after like 100 years of building cars? Sorry, just questioning my life choices at the moment. And I'm also wondering if this is why the pinion bearing got shot, and if I've damaged the new one by failing to recognize all these binding problems until just now. sigh....

Oh and one last thing. One day my fuel gauge dropped to 0 again just like before the fuel pump replacement. Only happened once, then just randomly while driving it raised back to normal. I replaced the purge valve and it hasn't happened again (yet). I suspect that the issue was not entirely the fuel pump relay, but rather something that caused it to get stuck over time. Vacuum issues inside the tank will mess with that floater on the relay. Will have to diagnose that later, but I noticed that the wire housing running to the evap canister solenoid is broken, which could be causing an intermittent short to the solenoid. That wire is not in a well designed place, stuff can hit it and damage it over time. Sigh...