1997 Ford Expedition 5.4L electrical problem HELP!!!!

[Chrisr3d1992]

Please if you have any thoughts or ideas on what this could be PLEASE let me know. Because I am absolutely dumbfounded.

I have a 1997 Ford Expedition 5.4l Eddie Bower. I've had it for 4 years now and just within the last 2 months all kinds of strange electrical problems have been happening.

This being the latest.....
I'm super frustrated & I have done just about every test I know of. I have 12 Years of automotive experience & I have seen and fixed just about every problem there is.


To start, the problems are always intermittent & symptoms never stay long. I woke up one morning and started my Expedition and nothing seemed to work... The wipers, windows, 4x4 switch toggle knob, and interior lights via dome / ceiling lights. After the car warmed up the relay on the fuse box clicked everytime I turned my headlight module knob & somehow turned everything that was problematic back to working. If I turn off the headlights everything would go back to being not functional what so ever.

After driving for about a day using my headlight "fix" all of a sudden everything refused to work leaving my windows stuck down with no way to get them up (32°-40° outside). Now I'm totally clueless of what to do next.. I checked and replaced ALL fuses (all were fine) and replaced ALL the relays. (When I used to turn my headlight switch, you could hear relays "clicking" under the dash turning the stuff on and the same when it I turned it off relay clicked "off". Now no relay clicks AT ALL and it seems like my interior fuse box is just caput, dead. No clicking or anything no matter what I do. Also when I hit my high beam switch forwards my 4x4 and low range would flash on my dash cluster until I flipped it back to off (normal lowbeam headlights). Also my headlights had been flickering the night prior to everything just not working. And while my ignition is turned to off and the key not even in if you hit the blinker switch they actual start blinking(the light on the dash and the actual blinkers. Lastly, and I'm not at all sure if this is connected but it would intermittently sound like a heater or a fan on a computer was running when there was nothing like that anywhere around.

I have never dealt with something like this and I'm coming up on empty on ideas. My only suggestion is wiring issue, bad instrument cluster, bad fuse box entirely, bad ecu.

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Please let me know what you think...

[shorod]

Many of the symptoms you describe scream of a grounding issue. Was any work performed recently that may have caused a ground to be disconnected or possibly torn/broken? Is there an area that's a bit rusty and maybe is no longer providing a good ground path to the rest of the chassis? How about around the battery, including under the battery tray - is there any corrosion on a wiring harness that might have made its way into a harness and damaged a wire?

I'm about 97% confident you'll ultimately find that this issue is related to a bad ground based on your description of the issue and how things work somewhat when lights are turned on (providing a path to ground through the filaments).

-Rod