Got Stuck in Desert for Hours Because Bronco 4x4 System got Temporarily Disabled for no Obvious Reason

[Headsong]

Great to know that if you get stuck, you'll remain stuck. Nice. Puts another whole spin on "4 wheel drive just gets you stuck further away..."

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[lwilliams34]

are there other things that could be tried like locking the rear diff while still in 2 wd?
Sorry, just wondering if other options were possible in that situation.

 

[Black Bronk]

This has happened to me before and quite a few people in our Local Bronco Club..

It tends to happen when we get stuck in soft sand and are pushing too hard to get out.. Not sure why exactly, but this just triggers the car to disable GOAT modes, however I have not had the 4x4 system itself fail.. And as you said above, after like 15 mins on the road everything goes back to normal.

What we are doing now is that we just pull the no.29 fuse on the fuse box and disable all the nannys.. They you can use the car to the full potential, only disadvantage is that GOAT modes will be disabled and you need to use the car in Manual mode for best results..

If stuck and pushing too hard it sounds reasonable to guess it might be overheat and the system turns off to prevent you from burning stuff. In that case it would be great if the error let you know that. That way you can turn it off and wait for things to cool down

@Hashlak Thanks if this happens again I'll try this. If this is enough to get the 4x4 working without the GOAT modes I can live with that.

 

[MayhemMike]

Curious to know if you had placed the vehicle in Sand mode or just 4H? The first time I drove my BL on a beach ( deep loose sand) I opted for Sand mode. I did not like the rpm the motor was running at in that mode. Next time I just used 4H and was satisfied with the performance and required rpm.

 

[Solfive]

If you can't "trust" it anymore....better trade 'er in.

I don’t necessarily blame him for not trusting it. Mine stranded me on the way to a job interview because of a “brake system fault”. It’s difficult to have confidence in something so seemingly random, unprovoked, and oftentimes blown off by dealers when they can’t reproduce the problem.

 

[MayhemMike]

All Broncos so far are made in same plant - MAP.
Should be same fuse config everywhere so far
Wanna bet ?

UAE @Hashlak is not OP

True, but then again MAP has been known to install seats that don’t match so missing a fuse or two seems easily accomplished. Lol

 

[Hashlak]

I don't think it's to do with overheat because it happens really quickly and I've put the car through alot of heat trust me

I would assume it's more to do with wheel speed sensor as mentioned above.

I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure the fuse box is the same for all our cars. The ABS pump fuse disables all the advancetrac nannies.. you will get a bunch of errors on the dash but it allows you to get most of the powertrain by removing all interferences.

There is a thread on this:

https://www.bronco6g.com/forum/thre...ac-permemnantly-fusebox-solution.61654/page-4

 

[Black Bronk]

are there other things that could be tried like locking the rear diff while still in 2 wd?
Sorry, just wondering if other options were possible in that situation.

Fair question. I couldn't lock the front diff which makes sense if 4x4 is off and no power was going there. The hero switch indicated i could lock the rear diff but it wasn't actually doing that because when one of my rear wheels would get lifted it was spinning though the light on the hero switch showed it was locked. if the rear diff was actually locked that shouldn't happen

 

[Black Bronk]

If you can't "trust" it anymore....better trade 'er in.

Actually looking at that. Trying to know if I just got a bad one in which case I'll buy another Bronco but if its common then I'll have to look at another brand

 

[PWillette]

UAE @Hashlak is not OP

EDIT...my bad, I meant OP of the #29 fuse comment

 

[Black Bronk]

All Broncos so far are made in same plant - MAP.
Should be same fuse config everywhere so far
Wanna bet ?

UAE @Hashlak is not OP





OP @Black Bronk which 4WD were using ?
4H, 4L, 4A ?

Any GOAT Mode selected ?

@Art Bell When driving in I was on 4H, no lockers and no GOAT mode. For no more than 2 minutes I was on 4L when i reached the short rocky section.

On my return I switched to baja mode and maintained the defaults that come with it. This failure happened about 20 minutes on my way back.

 

[JediMcMuffin]

@Art Bell When driving in I was on 4H, no lockers and no GOAT mode. For no more than 2 minutes I was on 4L when i reached the short rocky section.

On my return I switched to baja mode and maintained the defaults that come with it. This failure happened about 20 minutes on my way back.

Switched to Baja, but then selected 2H right? you're not highway driving in 4H are you?

 

[Black Bronk]

Curious to know if you had placed the vehicle in Sand mode or just 4H? The first time I drove my BL on a beach ( deep loose sand) I opted for Sand mode. I did not like the rpm the motor was running at in that mode. Next time I just used 4H and was satisfied with the performance and required rpm.

When driving in I was on 4H only. When driving out I was in baja mode which is more aggressive for 20 mins.

 

[Ford Motor Company]

I bought a used 2022 Bronco WildTrak with 8k miles on it. I love the exterior and interior looks of the vehicle, the comfort, etc except I just can't trust the car off-roading anymore. It just hasn't been reliable.

I went off-roading solo in one of the desert trails outside Vegas. Its an easy trail (rated 3 on ONX ), total driving time was supposed to be about 2 hrs to and fro and its mostly sand and gravel with a little rocky steep patch not longer than 10 feet and about 15 degrees incline. I drove in and it was all smooth but on my way back my Bronco suddenly reported an error, "4x4 Temporarily disabled". There was no obvious signs that could have caused this. I didn't hit/scrape any rocks and had only driven about an hour. Due to this I wasn't able to climb a small sand hill because I never had enough traction. Since the hill was small i decided to drive around it which meant going of the trail, its the desert so I wasn't blocked by any trees but the path was rocky and with 2WD it was quite the ordeal. I'd keep lifting a tire in the air, stop, then stack rocks under the tire so I could continue. This would have been super easy with 4WD but due to this my return which was to be about an hour took 3 hours.


I have tried to Google the issue, it can be caused by several factors and overheating is one of them. It was 70 degrees out and I only drove for about an hour with my max speed being 40 mph, no hitting rocks or super steep climbs. If that alone is enough to overheat the 4x4 system how can I even trust this thing to go overlonding?

If its not overheating what can cause an 8k mile bronco fail this bad at the one thing its supposed to do? Have any people dealt with this, I wonder howcommon it might be? I've seen threads in other forums about this without the driver even going off-road.

Funny thing is the 4x4 system was renabled about 15 mins after I got out of the desert and was back on the highway.

Can you please send over a message with your VIN and the name/location of your local Ford dealer? I would like to look into your 4X4 concerns on my end.

 

[jzweedyk]

If you have the Ford performance tune module you can clear the codes. It worked for me.

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