My wife's F-150 occasionally goes into failsafe mode while sitting in traffic. Scared the heck out of her the first time and of course, I didn't undersand what the truck was doing until it did it yesterday with me in the passenger seat. Temp and Oil pressure gauge read normal and no other problems are noted other than what the truck is supposed to do in failsafe/limp home mode. Turn the key off and restart the truck and all is fine.....until it does it again. '05 F-150 Lariat Crew w/45000 on the odometer.

Any thoughts?

 

Welcome to the site!

First thing I would recommend to save time, money and extreme levels of frustration is to get the computer codes pulled. This is my preferred approach over trial-and-error. I'm thinking there should be a fault code saved, since it went to fail-safe.

Not sure how familiar you are with vehicles, but the computer will store past faults in memory until cleared out, so it's not absolutely necessary to have the vehicle in the fail-safe mode that you're experiencing during the reading.

It's my understanding that some of the chain parts stores, like AutoZone, will read the codes for free. Otherwise, most any garage with an OBD-II scanner can do this, but there may be a fee.