Forum Discussion

Lumpty's avatar
Lumpty
Explorer
Mar 24, 2018

Interesting E450 Problem

Never heard of this occurring, but according to my dealer it is a frequent issue, that at least happened to me 20 miles from home at the end of a 2500 mile trip, because otherwise we'd have been stranded a few days.

Accelerating out of a toll booth towards an offramp, right at the 1-2 shift point, my previously anvil reliable 2010 chassis E450 V10/5R110 lost drive, or at least nothing above idle creep. Lit up the wrench light on the dash. Crawled up the flyover off-ramp, coasted in neutral down, and then limped it with flashers blinking on the shoulder 3 miles to the nearest Ford dealer.

They wanted nothing to do with it, but did call me a tow, and while the wrecker got there, confirmed that my local in town dealer would take it. Given it happened right at a shift, I was thinking transmission. After we got dropped, and I was getting things out of it and preparing to rewinterized there in the lot, a tech ran the code reader and said there was no signal from the throttle pedal. Hmmmn. Vehicles these days are all drive-by-wire, and apparently the electric rheostat in the pedal went kaplooey.

Telling the story, one of my racing friends shared he had the same thing happen in a F250, and was able to limp it to a dealer via using the cruise control buttons as a hand throttle. Wish I'd thought of that and it would have saved me $400 and a trip on the hook. The pedal assembly replacement part was $360, and two hours of labor, which along with other incidentals made for a $660 tab.

$1000+ for a relatively simple part that used to be a cable.....