I recently bought a 2010 Ford Expedition, and it’s in great shape with less than 200,000 miles. I had a mechanic do some work, and it was running perfectly fine until recently. A few days ago, I got the wrench symbol on the dash, and it refused to shift. I pulled over, checked with my code reader, but there was no code. I turned it off and on, and it was fine again. This morning, the wrench symbol came on again, along with the traction control light, and the dash said ‘service advancetrac.’ It went into limp mode and said the fuel level was low, even though it wasn’t. I drove it a little longer until I could safely pull over, turned it off, and on again, and it was fine after that. The mechanic had already replaced the ABS modulator and a transmission gasket. Any ideas on what might be going on?
The wrench light often points to an issue with the electronic throttle control system. Check the wire harness from the PCM to the throttle body. You might have some rodent damage, like chewed wires. Not all scan tools can read Ford codes, so it’s best to pull up freeze frame data and see what happened at the time of the fault. Also, it could be an issue with the accelerator position sensor (APP sensor).
What kind of tool are you using to read the codes? There might be codes beyond the basic OBD ones.
This sounds similar to what happened with my 2013 Expedition. I had a rodent chew through the wire harness, and it was causing issues with the throttle body. You should check that out.
I had something like this on my '03 around 290k miles. Basically, an exposed wire would touch metal at a stoplight and the engine would stall. I think it was the cam sensor wire. My mechanic figured it out after a day and just put some tape on the exposed wire. He didn’t even charge me for it, though I gave him $20 for his time. While your issue might be different, I’m hoping it’s something simple. The fact that it’s intermittent makes me think it’s just a random wire or grounding out somewhere.
Sounds like a throttle body issue.