2004 F-150, 5.4. Plugged in all night at 20 below zero. Started fine with the normal weird noises from power steering, alt, etc that went away after a few minutes. But my instrument cluster was dead for about five miles. No tach, no speedo, fuel gage or lights. Anyone experience this before? Seems to be a temperature thing but it has me wondering if something worse is waiting? It has did this twice in a week. After driving and warming the cabin up, all is fine. Any advice?

 

It's cold as ballz there! Maybe there is something in the electronics freezing up from the cold That is weird and it happened on my buddy's jeep and we drove like that for a while then it came back after the jeep had warmed up really weird but definitely due to the cold

 

we had air temp of -9 a few days ago and -7 a few weeks ago. i did not have any problems like this. drivers door was hard to close... that was about it.

boy i really like that block heater. it works well.

oaw

 

I am a few hours north of you and have never experienced this. Even in -40 my cluster fires up as soon as I start it. . .when it does start. I just keep having a dead battery when it gets that cold, I am currently on my third battery in my third year of ownership. It is currently sitting on a trickle charger and I plugged the block heater in, hopefully I can get it going in another hour or so.

 

I work at a climatic testing facility where the military and various commercial manufacturers (including Ford) come to test various planes, commercial vehicles, etc in extreme conditions. From what I've gathered from the different tests is that a LOT of electronics fail at -20. Just as extreme heat is an electronics enemy, so is extreme cold. My suggestion is to not worry about it and warm the truck up for a while before you drive it.