Threefingered

Hi everyone! Bought a beautiful 2013 F-150 Platinum last month with 75K miles. Everything worked and checked out. The truck lives in Southern California and was garaged and well maintained. You could eat off the undercarriage.
Fast forward 30 days and I suddenly the passenger power running board went wonky. Here's the symptoms:
Open door, running board comes down halfway.
Close ford, running board goes back up.
If I open and close the door quickly and repeatedly I can make it go all the way down; repeat and I can make it go all the way up (doing this is a major pain, as the board really wants to reverse direction with every latch action)
After reading other posts I tried everything suggested. No change so far.
*Disconnected motor to allow running board to move freely. Nothing hung movement at all but I lubricated all points anyway.
*At connectorc sprayed connector with electrical connector cleaner.
*Removed motor and disassembled. Stator spins freely. Gears spin freely. Brushes look good, sprayed electrical with cleaner and used Molly grease on gears. Reassembled everything, no change.
Lubricated door latches front and back. No change.
I'm at a dead end.
The only other observation is that the driver's side running board seems to come down at a nice rate, but the passenger side, the one coming down halfway, seems to be moving faster.
Any ideas before I buy a motor I might not need?
*

5.0nly

Threefingered

Yes, that was the first thing I tried. I removed the motor and lubricated all points on the hinges. Everything moved freely before and after.

willgatlin25

Not sure if this is your issue but I ended up needing the PRB module replaced by Ford (luckily under warranty). I started having issues after replacing my battery about a year ago. For whatever dumb dumb reason I left the drivers door open when I was replacing the battery so of course disconnecting and arcing the power caused the running board to extend and retract very quickly as it was detecting the door being open for those milliseconds. As a result it fried my PRB module and caused the running board on the drivers side not to retract back up under the truck until about 30 seconds after the door was closed.
This is assuming you have the Ford retractable running boards and not a different aftermarket manufacturer.

Threefingered

Yes, these are factory running boards. The battery thing you mentioned is interesting, because I had an inverter installed by a local auto electric shop and the problem started immediately after. If course they said it was a coincidence and they never opened the doors (the inverter was installed in the bed).
Any idea where the PRB module is located?
Thanks!

willgatlin25

The PRB and rear window motor control unit are located behind the rear seats on the back wall of the truck cab. You could try disconnecting the negative terminal from the battery and using a wire jumper connect the negative terminal to the positive terminal that is still connected to the battery. DO NOT LET THE NEGATIVE BATTERY CABLE TOUCH THE NEGATIVE BATTERY TERMINAL DURING THIS PROCESS. This will hard reset all of the computers and capacitors in the truck and may reset the PRB module if that has been affected. Keep in mind if you do this reset process your truck will have to relearn its idle trim values, shift points, etc. If this doesn't fix the issue then it's more than likely a damaged PRB module which like I said can be caused by messing with the battery while one of the doors is not closed all the way which trips the PRB module into an open / close loop and ultimately damages it. I had to learn this the hard way and fortunately for me my truck was still under warranty and the module was covered. Had it not been under warranty the part runs about $800 bucks from Ford..... Stupid expensive for basically a timed switch.

Taylor Wood

Did you figure it out? My 2015 just started doing the same thing. Open the door and the running board goes halfway down and then retracts immediately.

grahamlite

My powerboards do this when ever a small pebble or dried hardened road mud gets between the hinges. When mine start doing this a get out the hose and brush and clean them up and re-lube if needed and problem goes away.

16IngotFX4

Search the YouTube Channel - Fordtechmakuloco. He posted a cleaning video within the last 2 months for the power running boards.
Clean and lube and you'll probably be good.

jdunk54nl

Here it is: