I tried to silence my chime speaker. I took off the instrument cluster and located the speaker and found out that on a '08 FX4 it is part of the circuit board. I gave a pretty good tug on the tachometer needle to see if I could remove it to get into the the front plate of the circuit board but ended up chickening out. It didn't want to come off and I didn't want to have to go buy a whole new instrument cluster from ford.

Has anyone silenced their '08 yet that can give me a tip or two?

Next I need to figure out how to keep all the lights from coming on every time I open a door.

Nothing kills a midnight coyote hunt like lighting up the whole dessert and setting off the sirens when your trying to be incognito.

 

i know you can turn the seatbelt chime off by following some procedure of clicking and unclicking the driver's seatbelt. As for silencing the system, I am unaware of anything readily available. Did you consult a ford dealer / your manual?

 

I did law enforcement outfitting for quite a few years and we just pulled the body control module out and took a pair of pliers and just about a 90 degree twist and the legs broke off and ... done deal. You do the same thing when the "dinger" is in the instrument cluster. Just more of a pain pulling the IC as opposed to the BCM. Just a twist (rotate flat with the board) and it's neutered. Doesn't affect anything else at all. I believe the interior lights operate through the BSM (Body security module) so I'm not sure how to disable those.

 

You have a instrument light dimmer switch/wheel,turn it all the way down before opening the door and the lights won't come on.

 

Thanks for the tip. I think I'm going to try to pick up an IC from a yard and attempt Operation Dingy Ditch on it first.

As for the lights, what I would like to do is install multiple kill switches for all the lights. One for the break lights so as not to attract to much attention while driving on a hill side. Another for all exterior lights when you open the door as previously stated. I think the function is convenient most of the time, so I would prefer not to disable it completely. Guess I just need to grab a wiring guide and start cutting and rerouting.

 

Be aware of one thing, when your brake lights are killed, your ABS do not function. Your ABS has to detect a draw (very minor will do) on the brake light system or it doesn't operate. It doesn't think the brakes are being applied. We would install a very small bulb in the system so that when "blackout" was switched on, the computer still recognized the brakes as being applied. It's not so much a concern for you driving under THOSE condition, as it wasn't for the officers when they had "blackout" switched on. The concern is if you (or they) FORGOT to switch it off, and at higher speed or challenging conditions had to aggressively use the brakes, you have NO ANTI- LOCK.

I think you would be amazed today that ALMOST ALL electrical is routed through a computer. Be a little bit careful about what you cut and what it affects.

 

Thanks for the feedback code58. When you say "we" who are you referring to? We as in you're comin over tomorrow to help me do this

I got a whole new other problem now. today at 4:15 traveling northbound on the I5 in Irvine on my way to Disneyland I got rear ended by some guy not paying attention to traffic. He hit me pretty hard. His car is totaled, I got to drive away. My tow hitch put a nice hole in his radiator. I shouldn't laugh but thats what he gets. I think he was on his phone. As for me, I get a healthy dose of whiplash not cool.

 

I used the "search" feature and found this post about silencing the chime, it may help.

https://www.f150online.com/forums/20...oor-chime.html

 

if you want to kill the autolamps (exterior lights) theres a thread mblouir posted in the tech articles

 

did some investigating on 2004+ instrument cluster and all the requests are delivered via a UBP communication network.

I would recommend taking the board out, heating up the soldering on the back of the board behind the speakers and pulling the speaker out. You can always put it back in, just reheat the solder and push it back in.

 

I can just slide the little switch and it disables the lights when I open the door.

 

Actually I guess you're pretty close to me. (FV) The "we" was in reference to those of us who did that work. It sounds from the links to prior threads that IF your '08 is the same as the earlier ('05) that pulling the pink/blk wire from the connector would be simpler than neutering the "dinger". I know they changed the wiring looms quite a bit around '08 so it may or may not be the same wire. The ones we did (they all got the treatment) were easy to do because the BCM was so easy to get to and remove, open and twist the dinger off. I did a few on Ford SUV's Expedition and Excursion that had to be removed from the back of the board on the instrument cluster but not enough to get too excited about.

Sorry to hear about the rear-ender. Was hit at about 35 mph while stopped on the 57 by the stadium in my '02 XLT when it was 1 1/2 years old with 13k mi. on it. All lanes were stopped and I was unfortunate enough to be the last car in my lane for about 10 seconds till a 17 year old girl (not paying attention to the fact ALL lanes were stopped and decided to "send me on my way") Good thing the '04-up are really stout, the Hyundai that hit me in the '02 was totaled and it buckled my frame and bed floor as well as 1/4 side panel and some cab damage. Don't let the ins. co. flim flam you. I had 18 trips to the chiropractor and still wasn't totally right. Frankly, hope he got ticketed for the phone thing, IF he was on it.