Don't leave your truck in neutral with the truck -OFF- it will drain your LVB

[mr.Magoo]

TL;DR If you leave the truck in neutral and otherwise "off" it will drain the LVB and the protective charge that normally happens at 40% SoC does not engage.

So, this behaviour was news to me.

I recently revamped my black box and I had to / wanted to do some testing yesterday, the way it works is that if the truck isn't in park, I assume you're driving and this triggers different parameters/pids to be logged, so I left the truck in the garage, in neutral (activated the 30min neutral timer) thinking that "that'll be perfect, all I need is 30 min and the truck will shut down after 30min anyway" (don't worry, the garage slants slightly forward and the truck was resting on a stop block that I use for parking, so it wasn't going anywhere).

I did my tests and everything was peachy.

Going to bed yesterday evening I checked the LVB voltage on my phone and it was 11.5V which I thought was a bit weird because all my external accessories (camera, black box and 5G modem) are now running off an external battery so there shouldn't be anything draining the LVB.
Oh well, I'll look at that in the morning.

I wake up to a notice in Ford Pass that the truck ave entered a sleep mode to protect the battery, I go outside and the thing is pretty much dead.
I catch a glimpse of "not in neutral" on the dash (the physical gear leaver is still in neutral) I turn the ignition on (christmas tree galore) and manage to get it in park before it completely dies on me. I use the emergency latch to open the frunk and hook up a power supply so I can get the thing started and now it's happily charging it again, and when I check my logs the SoC on the LVB was zero / 0%

So a few interesting things I learned from this.
Don't leave your truck in neutral. (and before the internet mob goes "well of course you moron", no kids, no pets, truck was on a stop block, it was fine /safe)
The 30min neutral timer doesn't force it into neutral once expired, it appears that it just disables the "put in neutral when the door opens" function during this time
If the truck is in neutral, the HVB >> LVB transfer that is normally supposed to happen at 40% SoC on the LVB does not for whatever reason.

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[SmoothJ]

Interesting find… be sure to record your issue with the comments app so it can goto Ford.

 

[mr.Magoo]

Interesting find… be sure to record your issue with the comments app so it can goto Ford.

Comments app ? (in the truck itself you mean, submit feedback thing ? or something else ?)

 

[The Weatherman]

The submit feedback thing in the truck. Yes.

 

[Mike G]

I'm a little unclear on something...did you just forget to go back out and put it back in Park and shut it off? Or was leaving it that way intentional after you did your testing? And what sort of testing were you doing that required leaving the truck in neutral? Dashcam stuff or?

 

[mr.Magoo]

I'm a little unclear on something...did you just forget to go back out and put it back in Park and shut it off? Or was leaving it that way intentional after you did your testing? And what sort of testing were you doing that required leaving the truck in neutral? Dashcam stuff or?

I left it in neutral as I (incorrectly) assumed it would kick itself back into park once the 30min neutral override was over / ran out. I didn't bother turning the truck off since the truck also have it's shutdown timer it will shut itself off after 30 min unless you A) override it by hitting OK when the warning comes, or, B) disable shutdown timer in the settings.

I was testing my datalogger / black box. I have made quiet a few changes in my setup and I had an instance where it didn't log a drive, so I wanted to investigate why that was.
My logger reads the PID for gear position and assumes that if you're unplugged and not in park, then you must be driving, so by putting the truck in neutral I can "trick" the logger into thinking we're driving and make sure that everything is logged as if we were (which it did, so there must have been a temporary glitch in the matrix)

 

[Grease Lightning]

I was testing my datalogger / black box.

While the not shutting down is a different subject, some of the LVB drain could be your data logger too. I have woken up to A low LVB warning a couple times because I turned Car Scanner on while it was charging and didn’t close the app or disconnect and it stayed connected and slowly drained the battery. Thankfully the protections worked for me, but seems from my experiences we need to be extra diligent on “phantom” drains from data harvesting that run when the truck is “off”.

 

[K6CCC]

some of the LVB drain could be your data logger too.

Mr.Magoo said in his original post that all his logger etc was running off an external battery:

because all my external accessories (camera, black box and 5G modem) are now running off an external battery so there shouldn't be anything draining the LVB.

I'm curious (somewhat unrelated to this thread) if the external battery is completely stand alone, or does it eventually charge from the truck when running or plugged in, or something else. Reason for the question, is that once I eventually get my Lightning, I will have an aux battery that will power primarily some two way radios. I am evaluating how I will charge that (I have several ideas).

 

[Grease Lightning]

Mr.Magoo said in his original post that all his logger etc was running off an external battery:

But the computer in the truck stays on for the connection, and that is running on the LVB.

 

[mr.Magoo]

While the not shutting down is a different subject, some of the LVB drain could be your data logger too.

But the computer in the truck stays on for the connection, and that is running on the LVB.

My logger stops logging based on a few conditions like ignition being off, if it's plugged in or not and the LVB is <12V, so at that point it's just like everyone else leaving their OBD adapters plugged in, something which I've done for the better part of two years without any issues.

I did not get any accessory drain warnings (which is normal / happens when, for example, your logger polls the OBD withthe truck being off).

Nor did the truck try to charge the LVB - also normal behaviour when the LVB reaches 40% SoC while off.

 

[TaxmanHog]

I wonder what the current draw for the parking pawl solenoid is?

Could it be high enough that it along with all the trucks control modules being active, it pulled the battery down quicker than anticipated?

 

[TaxmanHog]

Note the Temporary Neutral Mode Limitations warning

 

[mr.Magoo]

It certainly ran out of charge alright

But it didn't shift into park after 30min, nor when the charge was low.

I think science calls for another test, but the wife is a bit jealous of all the attention the truck is getting lately so I can't do it today.

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