EricB21

I got an appointment today to get the cluster replaced. But there was a problem. The car was imported from Canada as used and the local USA Ford dealer ordered a Canadian cluster based on the VIN number. I'm under the impression that Canadian cars are required to have the cluster replaced when they come to the USA for sale so they are mph-centric instead of km/hr-centric. So now the dealer doesn't know the validity of the manufacturer's warranty on the bad cluster since a replacement cluster may not be covered. I've also lost nearly 7,000 miles on the readout. They said they got the mileage from the powertrain. This has had me confused for several hours but I think I've got a clue. There was 18,155 miles on the old cluster and 11,168 miles on the new cluster. If I divide 18,155 km by 1.60934 km/mile = 11,281 miles. Thing is the old cluster was set to miles so why is the powertrain reducing the new cluster mileage like the old one was in kilometers? I'm asking the dealer to replace the Canadian cluster with a USA one but there was nothing they could do today due to the hour of the day. It's very iffy what has turned up. There's no mention in the Carfax of the cluster being replaced when it came into the USA and there was no mileage glitch like what I'm seeing today. I thought maybe the powertrain was taken offline and it stopped counting miles at 11,168 miles when the cluster came from Canada and was replaced. I don't know that the original Canadian cluster was ever replaced except that the dealer ordered a Canadian one based on the VIN and replaced the American one.

It looks like a "keep your hands on the steering wheel warning light." If you don't keep your hands on the steering wheel for some amount of time, say 10 seconds, a warning may pop up. If you have one hand on the wheel, it won't trigger; but with no hands on the wheel it will trigger.

I bought a used 2021 Ford Escape SEL 2.0L in late May 2023 and it had around 16K miles on it. There was a 90 day dealer warranty on it that expired and there's still a 3 year 36K mile manufacturer's warranty on it until next spring. During the first month I had a couple problems with the speedometer. I was making a longish 50 mile trip and I found myself going much slower past a roadside radar sign than my speedometer said I was going. I got out my Google Maps on my phone to check my speed and if it said I was doing 35 mph in a 45 mph zone, my speedometer said I was doing 45 mph. I wasn't using the digital speedometer at the time and hadn't switched to it, I'm talking about the needle speedometer. So there was a 10 mph discrepancy that the speedometer was reading too fast for my actual speed. On another trip, the needle speedometer was reading 30 mph over my actual speed and when I came to stop lights it was still reading 30 mph. When I shut off my car it would still stay at 30 mph. I'd leave the car to go shopping and come back and suddenly it fixed itself and said 0 mph. I took it to the dealer on another day and they didn't find anything wrong. So there wasn't any problem for a few weeks, then suddenly one morning the problems wouldn't stop. I'd get to 45 mph, slow down for a speed zone, then speed up again and the speedometer was reading 35 mph over my actual speed. I'm going down the road at 55 mph and it says I'm going 90 mph. This was still before I figured to display the digital speedometer. The speed cameras inside the car would blink the speed limit sign on the dash if I went 5 mph over the speed limit so that worked correctly. I wondered if it could be a speed sensor, but then why would the speed camera light be accurate? On another day it did some reverse malfunctions and only went to 30 mph despite my going 45 mph. It would come down when I went below 30 mph, but would continue to get stuck at 30 mph maximum. The speeds it would get stuck at would change so there's nothing absolutely special about these numbers except that without using the digital display I wouldn't know. So I made a lot of start and stop moves that day; I'd drive a quarter mile, watch it get stuck at 30 mph, then pull over the car and shut off the engine. After a few minutes, anywhere from 2-5 minutes, sometimes I have to open the car door and shut it to speed it up, but a computer-like noise would sound inside the car and the needle would drop back to 0 mph when it was stuck at 30 mph. As I did this repetitively, the malfunction would change from reading a maximum of 30 mph to reading 30 mph over what I was actually going. So I went and bought some windshield wiper fluid because I ran out and the dash said I did, and the clerk there recommended I go to the local Ford shop and tell them instead of driving 50 miles to the nearest associated with my purchase Ford dealer shop for repairs since I'm under manufacturer's warranty now. So I drove 1 mile up the road and the guy there saw the dial stuck at 40 mph while I was idling my car there. I didn't want to shut off the engine because the speedometer would reset after a few minutes, supposedly, it didn't always reset. So he set me up with an appointment for yesterday. There was nothing wrong with the car yesterday, but the day before I drove 30 miles on the interstate and it was fine until I got off the interstate and hit some traffic lights then the needle started reading 30 mph over again. Luckily it fixed itself while I was shopping in the mall and the drive home was OK. I use cruise control on the interstate, so I'll assume that's connected to the digital speedometer, but I'm not sure. So the service guy drove it from their parking lot into the service area and they found it sticking at 10 mph. The got a code of U3000 and quantified that with "miscommunication to the IPC (Instrument Panel Cluster)." They will order me a new IPC and it will arrive next week. I don't know how much these cost but it could be anywhere from $500-$1500 depending on where you look, but it's under warranty this time, whew! I asked about how they will transfer the mileage from the old cluster to the new cluster and they said the powertrain will tell it the real mileage. I hope the real mileage is under 36,000 miles. There's so much odometer fraud by dealers these days, there's no way to know. But a U3000 code is very serious but they didn't recommend I stop driving my car because I can still use the digital speedometer. There's also a semi-circular groove on the plastic housing of the speedometer between 20 to 40 mph at the edge of where the needle goes, so maybe the needle is getting hung up on the housing? I took videos and photos but the Ford shop did not want to see any of that before they ran their codes, and they never did see them. The 16 second video I have of the speedometer resetting is too large for this post. The two photos posted show the car when it is turned off. Eventually the dash lights turn off so everything looks dark.