thanks for the great info. I just bought a o1 super crew last week and
was wondering why the odometer was acting funny. Now I know and also
have the fix.
I am an avid DIY man and found this site and forum last week just to see if by chance anyone else had a spotty odometer. WOW!!! I have a 2000 f-150 (83k). Took 2 hours and 13$ for a soldering iron & solder. I couldn't be happier as the problem is fixed and I didn't break or crack anything. Found the end post cracked and the next two over so I went ahead and fixed them all (as long as I had it out). Many, many thanks to Greg for a great post!!!
You guys absolutely ROCK!!! Fantastic post Greg. I have had this problem for over a year on my 99 f150. It just started getting much worse, off more than it was on. I fixed it this afternoon in under 2 hours. Thanks so much!!!
Oh, and girlwithtruck, you were right on with the headlight switch removal.
Called Ford dealer yesterday, they wanted $276 for circuit board plus labor plus sending old board to be programed.
Bought $15 soldering gun and fixed odometer in about one hour following these instructions.. Thank you.
Haha, Just wanted to thank the community again, and especially the OP (Greg). I had been having the Odo problem on my 99. I have gotten used to just tapping on the gauge cluster (kinda like in the old war movies when the guy is in the airplane and taps on the gas gauge to make sure it is reading right, hehe).
I actually took my cluster out and just cleaned the contacts on the ribbon connector with CRC cleaner, and thought I had it fixed. It worked fine for a few weeks, but then began to act up. I am going to pull 'er back out and refresh the solder connections now, and I imagine that will be the final cure.
Funny that I just did a similar operation on my kenwood stereo head unit in the truck. I was getting some popping sounds and thought I had a bad wire, but finally discovered some fractured joints on the mainboard inside the thing. I reflowed those and the thing has been fine.
So it is not just a Ford problem. I think someone in this thread hit it on the head when he said that the modern automatic soldering processes are tuned to flow a minimal amount of solder on the circuit boards. When you put that equipment into a shaky, bouncy 4x4, you will inevitably find the weakest, thinnest solder joints.
Woo hoo - thanks to Greg, I fixed this thing myself this afternoon.
Guys - assuming you're in a late 90's F-150, you can avoid any cosmetic damage to your headlight switch assembly by using the directions in the Haynes manual to remove it. It's designed to just come out without any prying.
Turn the knob to the ON position and then pull it out just a bit. Look for a hole in the bottom of the knob. Use a tiny screwdriver and push in that hole to release the knob.
After removing the knob, turn it 180 degrees from its original orientation and put it back on (in other words, put it back on backward). Turn it counter-clockwise two notches to the OFF position, and then turn it clockwise until the entire assembly releases itself from the dashboard. It took me three or four tries, but once it works it's MAGICAL.
Thanks to the poster for this solution. But I have a problem. My 99XLT4wd truck has 273,000 miles and when the odo goes out after 5 mins, sometimes it is nice to not see that big number down there, lol. But it is a problem when checking MPG on trips etc. 274k miles, all orginal, no problems, 17mpg on the hwy at 80mph, 5ft away the truck looks like 2 yrs old with 50k miles. Even the drivers seat is still in pretty good shape.
i have a 2000 f150 xl 4x4 with odometer black out problem. dealer wants $600 to fix but told me if i removed the cluster the truck may not start because of the code/chip in the key. is this true? does this have an effect on my truck or not. i see people here have done this fix themselves and own a 2000 f150. want to make sure before i get myself into a mess.
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