First problem with FFE after 8,000 miles

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qflyer

Member
Joined
Oct 7, 2014
Messages
15
Had my first issue with my 2014 FFE the other night, and wanted to get y'alls input. My fiance uses the car as her daily driver and has put over 8,000 trouble free miles on the car since last October. She got home last Friday after work, plugged in to the Clipper Creek HCS-40, and we left for a weekend trip (in my truck, not the FFE.) Got home Monday night, and took the FFE to a friend's house. When I got in, I noticed the GOM showed over 80 miles which is unusual because it was cold and the heat was running. Typically, it's around 55-65 miles. About a mile down the road it still wasn't regenerating during deceleration. The power page still showed 100% charge.

I stopped, shut down, and restarted it, then I got a warning with a yellow wrench displayed on the dash. The car operated normally, minus regen on the 4.3 mile trip. The power page still showed 100% remaining even after the 4.3 mi trip.

After about 30 minutes with it turned off, I drove it around the parking lot. Initially, no warnings but regen still wasn't working. At the far end of the lot, I shut down and restarted and again got the warning/yellow wrench. Still 100% remaining. Parked again and went back inside. A couple hours later when we left, the car was normal. Started at 100%, but regen worked, and the % dropped as it should.

When the warning was displayed, I ran the diagnostic on SYNC, but no faults show up in the report, even though there was a warning message up in the car when I did the scan.

Attached is a picture of the MFM trip log of the charge to 100% on Friday, the abnormal trip on Monday, and the normal return trip that same night.

The car has been fine ever since.

Any ideas what happened?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/woiej4g09c4zyap/MFM Fault Trip.jpg?dl=0
 
It sounds to me like the Battery Monitoring System could have gotten stuck in rebalancing mode where it applies a 100mA balancing charge to the battery. When my battery suffered a cell failure, 48 hours on the charger resulted in the good cells charging to a higher voltage than normal- in my case I was able to drive 10 miles before the SOC dropped below 100% and regenerative braking was restored.

The good news is that you got a yellow wrench warning; I never did -so your problem may have just been with the BMS and not the battery itself.

Short of looking at the On-board-Diagnostics, re-balancing mode can be detected by looking at the power draw after the battery reaches 100%. The service manual says that re-balancing can take up to 24 hours, but if you regularly charge to 100% it should stay in that mode only a matter of minutes. Once it drops out of re-balancing the vampire draw should be about 2.5 watts (assuming that the TMS isn't running). When using Ford's "convenience cord" the status light stops blinking at this point; I'm not sure what the Clipper Creek EVSE does.

Something else to look at: At 100% charge check the Power Display on the MFM. Does it indicate "0 hrs to full charge"?
 
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