So.... anybody ready to start talking about alternative gauges for the FGT?

[hollywoodstunts]

I understand, and you make a valid point. It is a 5 year old, out of warranty, limited production car.
People love to compare our cars to F cars when discussing repair costs. I've never owned an F car and don't claim to know much about them. But based on what I've heard is they have very expensive, and labor intensive periodic maintenance repairs. Something our somewhat less exotic, based-on-a-F-150-power-plant, American made cars don't have-another reason I bought into the GT owners club.
What I didn't plan on is membership in the ticking-time-bomb-gauge club.
I love my GT. I don't want to sell because of a relatively small problem. I simply want a fix. But driving an awesome car around with what may become a dash filled with dead gauges slightly takes away from the enjoyment.
If Ford doesn't want to fix it, or investigate it, let us deal direct with Autometer.
I just want to know, like a good friend says, WHAT THE PROBLEM IS!?

 

[dbk]

Maybe I've been unclear somehow, but in my perpetually futile attempts to acquire bad gauges, the few I did were sent to Autometer by Ford. Suppliers are generally not in a big hurry, and by 'not a big hurry' I mean 'have zero interest in' paying for any out of warranty OE diagnoses/replacements, etc. As far as "let us deal direct with Autometer", there is nothing I'm aware of preventing anyone from doing so as is. I can't imagine any requests from consumers would produce a different result than a company they have millions of dollars worth of business leaning on them would though.

 

[Joehand1]

Throughout the winter storage months I have my car hooked up to the OEM trickle charger and i make it a point of starting my car every month and let it run for 30 minutes or so to charge up the battery , i also drive it up and down the driveway to keep all the brakes and such moving and to try and avoid square tires

Every time I start the car after a month , most of the guages dont work , I then let then car run for 30 minutes and then shut it down and immediately restart it , the guages have all come back to life each time , I hope this statement doesnt jink the situation , but it seems to me that the problem might have something to do with the OEM trickle charger and they way it provides the charge to the battery , I also know you guys have discussed this to death on the forum and if FORD has a hard time figuring it out I know I am in way over my head and I just pray that my guages just keep coming back to life

This happens to me if I let the car sit more than a week, but I've never hooked up the trickle charger so that CANNOT be the problem.

My gauges start out dead and come to life if I start the car, let it run for 10 seconds, stop the engine, remove the key, then reinsert and start....Should I go ahead and replace the battery Shelby and DBK?????????

 

[hollywoodstunts]

Maybe I've been unclear somehow, but in my perpetually futile attempts to acquire bad gauges, the few I did were sent to Autometer by Ford. Suppliers are generally not in a big hurry, and by 'not a big hurry' I mean 'have zero interest in' paying for any out of warranty OE diagnoses/replacements, etc. As far as "let us deal direct with Autometer", there is nothing I'm aware of preventing anyone from doing so as is. I can't imagine any requests from consumers would produce a different result than a company they have millions of dollars worth of business leaning on them would though.

Rumors that there's a gauge fix lurking around the corner are keeping me from sending in my formerly $500, that became $3,000, and now $1500 tach. I've also heard they wind up in a pile. Based on your scenario, and from your "Zero interest" description, why would anyone be inclined to send their gauges to meet that less than glamourous fate?
I would love to deal with Autometer. Unfortunately, they are contractually prohibited from repairing the gauges they produced because then Autometer would be in competition with Ford.
HELP!:frown

 

[andymlow]

DBK,
What about running another poll on the failures from scratch. Everybody chimes in on what gauge failed and can vote as many times as they had failures. We could then get a real sense of the frequency of the problem. I don't think they need a lot of gauges with similar failures to know where the problem is. Once they come up with a possible remedy I'm sure they will get a flood of returned gauges that they can analyze and refurbish.

Just to throw in my 2 cents... the battery ideas make no sense. I think they are akin to greek mythology ... man trying to explain the things that happens to him with insufficient knowledge leads to myth. I am not aware of a "god of gauges" but I there is one he does not reside in the battery.

Again, thanks for your efforts to help.

 

[mardyn]

. As far as "let us deal direct with Autometer", there is nothing I'm aware of preventing anyone from doing so as is.

I tried to contact Autometer direct regarding our FGT gauge problem several months back.... got ZERO response, not even the courtesy of an automated
email saying "we received your request".

I'm still dead in the water over here with my GT... it remains quite frustrating.

mardyn

 

[dbk]

What about running another poll on the failures from scratch. Everybody chimes in on what gauge failed and can vote as many times as they had failures. We could then get a real sense of the frequency of the problem.

The polls are unfortunately useless. The website gets 2 million page views per month and we can't even get 100 people to vote, and it's nowhere near statistically accurate because people are way more apt to chime in if they've got a bad gauge.

 

[dbk]

Rumors that there's a gauge fix lurking around the corner are keeping me from sending in my formerly $500, that became $3,000, and now $1500 tach. I've also heard they wind up in a pile. Based on your scenario, and from your "Zero interest" description, why would anyone be inclined to send their gauges to meet that less than glamourous fate?
I would love to deal with Autometer. Unfortunately, they are contractually prohibited from repairing the gauges they produced because then Autometer would be in competition with Ford.
HELP!:frown

I don't get it. Do you have a bad gauge that has been replaced? If you have replaced one, why not send the old one in?

You said you want to deal with Autometer. My point is that Ford is trying to get Autometer to help figure it out. Have you tried contacting Autometer? What did they have to say?

 

[DanQ]

How about another tack? Do any other FORDs use similar ECU control of the gauges? Maybe we just need the guts out of an F150 TACH, VOLT, AMP, or Speedo gauge? In my naive way of thinking, these should be pretty stupid digital gauges, the ECU gets all of the inputs and does the processing... (knock on wood, my guages are still working, but I feel like I'm a voltage spike away from being in the same boat.)

Does anyone have service manuals for other FORD models that could look at the schematics?

 

[hollywoodstunts]

I don't get it. Do you have a bad gauge that has been replaced? If you have replaced one, why not send the old one in?

You said you want to deal with Autometer. My point is that Ford is trying to get Autometer to help figure it out. Have you tried contacting Autometer? What did they have to say?

I don't want to send in the old one for two reasons: 1.) There might be a fix, and if there is, I'm out a tach. 2.) From your description of what's going on, nothing is being done to research the problem.
Autometer will not work on failed gauges. They suggest speaking with Ford.

Last night, after a fourteen hour workday, I was exhausted and didn't complete my thought about F cars. They're exotic. Way more exotic that our F-150 based GT's. So do they have problems with their gauges at the frequency we do? I know nothing about Ferrari's, but I'd guess they don't. But if they do, is a Ferrari tach $3,000 like ours were?

 

[dbk]

Man, under no circumstances ever buy any other exotic car if this situation is souring you on your GT, especially a Ferrari....

 

[cobra498]

I don't want to send in the old one for two reasons: 1.) There might be a fix, and if there is, I'm out a tach. 2.) From your description of what's going on, nothing is being done to research the problem.
Autometer will not work on failed gauges. They suggest speaking with Ford.

Last night, after a fourteen hour workday, I was exhausted and didn't complete my thought about F cars. They're exotic. Way more exotic that our F-150 based GT's. So do they have problems with their gauges at the frequency we do? I know nothing about Ferrari's, but I'd guess they don't. But if they do, is a Ferrari tach $3,000 like ours were?

The GT was designed on a budget because of the low volume, many items were outsourced with great results, some not so great I.E. gauges.
Ford has superb engineering and testing abilities with many hours of verification and years of engineering experience that are applied to in house designs. Outside suppliers have fewer resources, both financially and from an engineering standpoint, this sometimes results in a design or manufacturing problem that would not occur with an in house part. I am not saying the GT did not successfully pass all the company durability testing just that the suppliers design verification was insufficient and that the problem did not show up in validation testing. This problem may not even be related to the Autometer design it could also be related to the I/C itself manufactured by Autometers sub-supplier. The signal processing appears to be done in each individual gauge module in the GT. Autometer is the key to this problem unless Ford can get the assembly code, gauge schematics and do a forensic analysis on failed parts. Doing a new design for the gauge modules would probably be cost prohibitive at these volume levels.

 

[SteveA]

Man, under no circumstances ever buy any other exotic car if this situation is souring you on your GT, especially a Ferrari....

Probably a oil pressure sending unit short. I'll bet the gauge is now junk, poor s.o.b.

 

[dbk]

They said it was some type of glue in the wheel wells that wasn't appropriate for the heat being generated and recalled the car. That doesn't explain the propensity for 430s, 360s, 599s, etc to all light up like Christmas trees at random.

This is not to minimize the fact that it's a pain in the ass to have a gauge go bad. That said, the total cost of ownership of a Ford GT over the past 5 years is lower than virtually any car on the planet, even if you replaced all your gauges twice. 04 Gallardo? $76k, $77k, $83k, $78k, $88k, $92k. Those are real wholesale numbers from the last 4 months of a car that was tens of thousands more expensive than Ford GT. Carrera GT clutch change is $30k. Bought an SLR at sticker and you could have easily lost $200k in value to date. These aren't small disparities in the price of ownership. In some cases, if you bought said SLR or an LP640, you could have literally seen depreciation greater than the price of Ford GT. And did I mention that seemingly half of us are running anywhere from 100-500 rwhp more than stock reliably? Perspective...

 

[BlackICE]

DBK, well said!

 

[david b]

I just have to say this.....

Are people actually that silly to complain on a ford gt forum about ford gts. Look, they are not perfect cars but it doesnt take anywhere close to a genius to figure out that the gt is probably the cheapest supercar to maintain when you consider everything involved. Go on a ferrari forum or lambo forum and complain about the gt's..... and the gauges...

If anyone has a gt that they are so unhappy with that they cant stand anymore (working or not working gauges) I will be more than happy to take it off their hands. Pick any car that was made in 05 or 06 and I will apply half of what that car depreciated on a percentage basis and then apply that to the sticker price of the gt to figure out the price. PM me....

 

[HHGT]

BMW and iPhones never have problems.

 

[Nardo GT]

Surely the economy would have no bearing on Ferrari fires.

 

[dbk]

Why don't Porsches or AMG (all money gone - depreciation) cars or Ford GTs show up turning into impromptu bonfires in LA traffic?

If you dropped $300k on a 458 in June and it went up in a blaze of glory in July, it's a stretch to think it's because you went broke in 30 days and decided to become a felon.

 

[dbk]