"Stop safely now", 12V battery loosing charge, and rodent damage

[njlightining]

My Lightning was the best car i've every owned and driven... until about a month ago when it suddenly stopped working. I went over some puddles (nothing too deep - all other cars were going over them without issues). An hour later, the truck wouldn't start. I kept getting the dreaded "Stop safely now" and "Full accessory power active" error messages on the screen (see attached). Got the truck towed to the dealership. After a week there, they determined i just needed a new 12V battery. Didn't really make sense, but truck was working and i took it back. Next day (another wet day), same problem - truck wouldn't start. Towed back to the dealership. Another week went by and they tell me that there is nothing wrong with my truck - they charged the battery and everything is fine and they cant find anything wrong or replicate the errors. Took it back and few days later, again the same problem. Back to the dealership and the day after i filed for the buy back with Ford - they miraculously found rodent damage to the orange wire housing and some wires inside. This wire housing is under the bed of my truck , right above the spare tire. Now they are saying it's not a warranty and want me to cover about $2k worth of repairs. Im not usually this cynical, but the whole thing smells very fishy. First, I thought the orange wire harnesses hold high voltage wire that goes to the main battery and it shouldn't have anything to do with the 12V battery (I'm not 100% on this). Second, if this was the problem from the beginning, it just doesn't make sense that it took them 22 days to find it. damage was very visible from under the truck. And last, I understand that this wire housing is made of some soy product that rodents love to chew on, but most of the wire housing under the truck is covered with protective tape. Shouldn't the rest of the housing have this protective tape as well.. Especially on a luxury car. Shouldn't this be considered a design flaw and be covered under warranty? Would love to hear if anyone else here has any similar experiences. Thank you!

 

[Maquis]

There have been several reports on here of rodent damage to wiring.
But the wiring shown in your picture is not damaged - it appears that only the outer loom was compromised.
If you do indeed have rodent damage, it should be covered by your insurance.

 

[njlightining]

the wiring itself is not damaged. just insulation. according to service, when it's wet out there is a short and it drains my 12V battery.

 

[21st Century Truck]

There have been several reports on here of rodent damage to wiring.
But the wiring shown in your picture is not damaged - it appears that only the outer loom was compromised.
If you do indeed have rodent damage, it should be covered by your insurance.

We've had rodent car damage, on a different Ford several years ago.

Rodent wiring damage looks a bit different than the provided picture: in our case on a Ford Fusion the rodents chewed the direct wire insulation off, bit by bit, then chewed through the stranded wires to get at more of the wiring insulation which they then pulled off the broken stranded wiring circuits.

I write this to say that rodent damage on stranded auto wiring ends up looking like a huge silver spaghetti ball made of unwrapped loose wire strands. No mistaking it for anything else. The silver wire spaghetti ball was about the size of an adult male clenched fist. I could also call it a "rat's nest" the way it looked.

I'm sure any Lightning member from Maine or the Canadian Maritimes would love to comment / expand the discussion

 

[Maquis]

the wiring itself is not damaged. just insulation. according to service, when it's wet out there is a short and it drains my 12V battery.

I call BS on that. The stuff in the picture that is chewed is only for physical protection, not moisture.

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