Truck goes in Thursday to fix a "phantom" trailer situation.

If that were the case, there would be nearly as many, if not as many miles on the default trailer as it does on the odometer, itself.

pfidahospud wrote:
Just found this on page 114 of the 2016 manual under "Information Displays":

Ford Manual wrote:
Note: Once you select a trailer, it remains active until you set it as no longer active. An active
trailer still accumulates miles even after you physically disconnect it from your vehicle.

So...I guess it's not as automatic as we think it should be.

Update on phantom trailer.

Went camping Wednesday, and got home today. Brief excursion with our granddaughter.

Anyway, I had physically put it on "no trailer" since going to the dealer. When I plugged in the trailer Wednesday, and it immediately went to "default" trailer which is where my current trailer resides. Wasn't smart enough in the beginning to give a name to my then current trailer.

After arriving at the campground, and after unplugging, I get the message "trailer disconnected" or something similar.

Plugged it in this morning, got the "default" trailer message, and after arriving home, got the message trailer disconnected.

I don't know what happened. I'll just keep observing it and note if the problems reappears.

Just found this on page 114 of the 2016 manual under "Information Displays":

Ford Manual wrote:
Note: Once you select a trailer, it remains active until you set it as no longer active. An active
trailer still accumulates miles even after you physically disconnect it from your vehicle.

So...I guess it's not as automatic as we think it should be.

Wondering if you've heard back from Ford yet?

It's not that I can't "learn" to switch off the trailer connect/disconnect.

But since it's supposed to automatically default to "no trailer" if no trailer is connected, I expect it to do that.

And since in the past, it didn't need manual intervention to switch from the trailer being pulled to no trailer after being unplugged, then it shouldn't need manual intervention now.

AJBert wrote:
I must have a very dumb TV. It doesn't have a clue whether a trailer is hitched up and plugged in or not. That decision has been left to me, the driver.

Luckily, I have been able to determine that minor inconvenience. Who'd have ever thunk it that'd I'd be smarter than a computer!

Dealer wasn't able to fix it this morning. They are waiting on a reply from Ford in Dearborn to their question.

AJBert wrote:
I must have a very dumb TV. It doesn't have a clue whether a trailer is hitched up and plugged in or not. That decision has been left to me, the driver.

Luckily, I have been able to determine that minor inconvenience. Who'd have ever thunk it that'd I'd be smarter than a computer!

:) Hi, my 2000 Lincoln Navigator is dumb too. My 2014 F-150 has a factory, built in, brake controller so it does know if my trailer is connected or not. On the other hand, My Lincoln's Tekonsha P-3 brake controller does know if my trailer is connected or not. If my trailer is connected to my Lincoln the brake controller works as designed. If I manually activate my Tekonsha P-3, without my trailer, the screen turns red and says something like" Trailer Disconnected".

I must have a very dumb TV. It doesn't have a clue whether a trailer is hitched up and plugged in or not. That decision has been left to me, the driver.

Luckily, I have been able to determine that minor inconvenience. Who'd have ever thunk it that'd I'd be smarter than a computer!

My truck always recognized there was no trailer hooked up.

Most of the time the dash display would tell me if it were disconnected.

pfidahospud wrote:
My 2016 F150 automatically recognizes when an umbilical cord is plugged in, but doesn't "unrecognize" when it's unplugged. Under the "towing" settings on the dash, I have to unselect the trailer manually. I thought this was normal - but maybe not?

Agree, and until recently, the truck did just that.

Kafn8td wrote:
The truck should unrecognize it when unplugged.