If your 2024 or 2025 Ranger or Ranger Raptor has ever shifted drive modes by itself, post here.

[Bushmechanic]

Yesterday mine encountered another issue.

It very quickly flashed the off-road screen on the infotainment system. I then heard the engagement chime, but no settings had been changed, thankfully.

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[TKAllan]

This is happening more and more frequently on my 2024 RR with only 1500 miles - switching into Baja mode and 4L while driving at highway speeds. It happened again the past 20 minutes. I just have the dealer installed Ford Performance Tune. I have also had the R button stopped working. The fix for that is to unhook your negative battery cable for 30 seconds and then fixes it.
Staying tuned in…

 

[Balahormiga]

I have a 2025 Ranger rAptor. It has the performance programming upgrade. It has shifted modes on its own 3 times now. Once while in a parking lot looking for a space it shifted into Rock Crawl mode 4H. I manually put it back into normal mode 4A.

The next time it began flipping back and forth between baja and normal on its own while driving. The truck acted like it was having transmission problems. Again, I manually put it in Normal Mode again. Then today while driving it shifted into Rock Crawl mode for no reason. I put it back in Normal!!

 

[Bushmechanic]

Keep them coming, folks.

Even if Ford won't take the time to figure it out, we may find some commonality to feed them.

 

[DNelson]

Same thing here. 24 RR with approximately 14k miles. Never happened the first full year of ownership. Over the last 3ish months it’s happened 3 times. Always to the right into rock crawl or Baja. Two while driving and once in a parking lot. No tune or mods.

 

[josefmd]

8 months of ownership and almost 9k miles it has not happened to me... Yet LoL!

 

[purdyd]

there is a lot going on with that switch.

it appears to me to have haptic feedback

my guess is that is an intelligent switch and sends a network message that could be 'captured'

and if so we might be able to capture the event

I would be curious if the rotary switch is on off or a variable potentiometer type device

one possibility would be electromagnetic interference so we might have issues if for instance, a phone is nearby or other devices that emits

hopefully you guys can get to the heart of this matter

if used to work on things like this an intermittent failures are really tough to troubleshoot

if someone can get one that fails consistently, that would really help out Ford, I would guess

 

[Rare Raptor]

Same thing here. 24 RR with approximately 14k miles. Never happened the first full year of ownership. Over the last 3ish months it’s happened 3 times. Always to the right into rock crawl or Baja. Two while driving and once in a parking lot. No tune or mods.

Mine is at Dealer now for this problem will report back on THIS thread post appt

there is a lot going on with that switch.

it appears to me to have haptic feedback

my guess is that is an intelligent switch and sends a network message that could be 'captured'

and if so we might be able to capture the event

I would be curious if the rotary switch is on off or a variable potentiometer type device

one possibility would be electromagnetic interference so we might have issues if for instance, a phone is nearby or other devices that emits

hopefully you guys can get to the heart of this matter

if used to work on things like this an intermittent failures are really tough to troubleshoot

if someone can get one that fails consistently, that would really help out Ford, I would guess

Update / Fix?
Just picked my RR up from dealer they found that the ABS module needed to be recalculated (DTC p05d3) and strongly feel that the erratic behavior may have sent signals to the Drive Mode System.
We will see if this fixes the phantom switching of drive modes.

 

[telenerd]

Ranger is plagued with computer problems. When I was at the Raptor Assault School 5 of the trucks threw check engine lights! Instructor said yeah pretty common.

 

[jazpdx]

24 RR bone stock 1200 miles. Mine has been at the dealer for a week. It shifted at a stop sign into rock crawl then the front camera came the the back. There has been alot of problems. Starting with a bed reinforcement for a latter rack. The dealer wants to see FU themselves. Too bad nice truck but I have lost cnfidence in ford. Looks like I am going to have to dump this or buy back. I know if this happened to my wife, she'd drive it home in rock crawl. Also there is no record of this FU in the computer. Ford always left things like this to their customers. DONT BUY FORD STOCK. They are dying

 

[Hoss]

24 RR bone stock 1200 miles. Mine has been at the dealer for a week. It shifted at a stop sign into rock crawl then the front camera came the the back. There has been alot of problems. Starting with a bed reinforcement for a latter rack. The dealer wants to see FU themselves. Too bad nice truck but I have lost cnfidence in ford. Looks like I am going to have to dump this or buy back. I know if this happened to my wife, she'd drive it home in rock crawl. Also there is no record of this FU in the computer. Ford always left things like this to their customers. DONT BUY FORD STOCK. They are dying

What did he say?

 

[jazpdx]

STILL THERE, I'll know more today

 

[MasterCylinder]

A few isolated threads exist, but I think it's important to bring this information together.​

That being the case, if your Ranger Raptor (or Ranger) has ever shifted drive modes and/or transfer case configurations by itself, please post here.

Include:

1: Any modifications
2: Any Forscan alterations
3: Tune status, if any
4: Any further pertinent information of which you are aware; such as the drive mode you were in, if you were on the highway, in a parking lot, under braking, etc ...

My personal answers:

1: No modifications
2: No Forscan alterations
3: No tune
4: The issue has happened at 50mph, 45mph, in a parking lot while parked, and when pulling into my driveway. So far as the knob goes, I put the vehicle into sport a single time, didn't like it, and put it back into normal. The only other time I've touched it has been to get it back out of Baja mode. I do occasionally access sport suspension mode via the steering wheel, but that is the extent of my interaction with the system.

What's happened to me:

A: It shifted into Baja mode at 45mph under no special conditions.
B: Baja mode was again selected on my way back home, just before pulling into my driveway. At that point, it locked me into 4WD high and disabled traction control entirely.
C: I was idling in a parking lot, and looked up to find it had shifted itself into rock crawl mode.
D: At around 50mph, it shifted modes, and then attempted to shift into low range. Eventually it quit trying.

Ford doesn't seem to think this is an issue. It's about time a singular resource existed to fill with data. I know it's happening on many vehicles. I strongly advise you to bring your Ranger to a dealership but, if you're not going to do that, please post your experience here. This is a critical vehicle system, and dealerships can't fix it.

The only solution is a recall or a massive update, which is NOT going to happen without more input.​

This is disturbing to say the least, so far mines doing fine. Since I have repaired so many of these electronic gremlins in autos over the years I will make one single point! GROUNDS, Grounds, and Grounds. The last vehicle I chased gremlins in I had to completely remake 21 grounds to fix the problems he was having and no shop or dealer was any help because of time constraints for one. Most peoples understanding of electrical flow is completely backwards of real life. Today's and even yesteryear models with ECU's, sensors and now many multiple modules can be a nightmare to trouble shoot. Understand this one thing, a bad or improper Ground(some are reporting just such a thing for other problems) they can and do cause disruptions in feedback and signal processing of all modules talking to each other with data, which are eventually tied back to the main ECU. CAN systems basically is the individual modules communicating with each other sometimes this can be thousands (up to 10K)of inputs per second from sensors and modules. I do not have any electrical information or wiring diagrams on these and I doubt most dealerships do either (or anyone that could decipher the info) which is a must have for these types of problems. This is going to be and interesting development to follow. Thanks for bringing it up! Man I hope Ford is listening to these reports as this could be a major safety issue. Have you reported this to NHTSA? If not everyone with any similar issue should ASAP!

 

[purdyd]

As some one who designed and built a CAN bus vehicle system, albeit on a less complex scale.

you need a common ground system for CAN bus to work, but if there are errors in the CAN bus data transmission, you know right away.

Cars have multiple CAN busses these days and LIN to take care of things like door locks.

IF you have the right tools (can bus monitor) you can easily track down a fault to a module as you can see the offending data message.

the fact an error code is not popping up is a real problem as those are logged and Ford can track those remotely.

intermittent faults are extremely difficult to cure as it could take days or months to see the fault.

if we can find someone who has this fault all the time, it could probably be isolated relatively quickly

I’ve tracked down things like this and it took me 6 months once before some brought me a module that failed every time and I solved the issue in 15 minutes

 

[jazpdx]

Well mine is still in the shop. They quit trying to duplicate it. I didnt figure that would work cause if did on the road theyd have to reset on the road and there would no idoit light and faults. I was told they have contacted ford and will get back to me in a couple days. We will see. All us folks need to contact NTSB. Enough calls and they will force a recall. PLEASE FILE A COMPLAINT. So ford quits pussy footing around. I do love this truck.

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