bb56

So - wait... Was the car in park? Is it AWD? How steep is your driveway? Seems like the Park tranny pawl pin may be broken or non-functional. I know I can't exit my car without it reminding me to put it in Park (2011 Limited). I can exit the car without putting on the parking brake though. Is yours the electric parking brake (ebrake)? Possibly something wrong with that circuit/fuse or maybe a Forscan error turned it off by accident? My parking brake is strictly mechanical with cables and such. I just replaced a caliper in the rear because the piston would not adjust properly making the parking brake very weak (as well as a soft squishy pedal). Maybe something there in the rear calipers? Check that the pads are very close to the pistons on each rear wheel. It should not roll while in park unless it is on steep hill (Lombard street?) AND the parking pawl is busted. Just offering some ideas.

Thanks @Gadgetjq. I had the brake booster replaced 18 months ago under the warranty but it was obvious what was wrong. The pedal would go down and a whistling noise would start as the brakes lost more and more power. Just sitting still with my foot on the brake pedal would allow the car to start rolling until I pushed harder on the pedal. @bac2010 - I've seen a lot of folks on the forum tell the "several days at the dealer" story for soft brakes and it is the principle reason I decided to document this. Checking the operation of the self adjusting rear brakes is now one of the first things I plan to do if the brakes get soft again. I'm not big on taking my car to the dealer. I got burnt badly when my wife's Mercury Montego had a bad Instrument Cluster and indicated with a seat belt warning light. I have the service manual and the second step of the troubleshooting procedure pinpoint testing would have pointed to the bad IC. After a week at the dealer, I asked if they ran the pinpoint tests and they said yes. The next day the car was fixed and the manager told me that the pinpoint tests showed them where the trouble was. I'll never know if the tech I spoke to ever told him and just did the pinpoint tests, or he was embarrassed and fessed up. The dealers are not known for their quick troubleshooting skills - they need billable hours like lawyers so why follow the Ford prescribed steps.

Hi all, I thought I would pass along my hard earned lesson when I decided to tackle fixing my squishy, soft brake pedal. The pedal (engine running or not) was going very low to the floor, and stopping power was not great. The pedal would stop the car, but it would continue to get lower and lower as long as I was pushing it down. I've been fixing cars (and everything else) for a long time and I keep my cars for a very long time, so I've seen plenty of problems and fixes. I went around and bled all 4 wheels, using a quart of new brake fluid. I made sure the pads were at least 1/4" thick or more. Fronts were 1/4, rear were 3/8 inch. The fluid that came out was clear, no bubbles, so no fix.I noticed that the rear brake disks had a bit of light rust but since it just rained, it made sense. I decided to change the master cylinder for lack of a better indication of where the problem was. Although I did the bench bleed on the new one, by the time I reconnected the brake lines, I was certain I left air at the fittings connecting to the master cylinder. So I bled the fittings by loosening them and having someone push the brake pedal until no more bubbles and spurts came out. The brake pedal felt the same, so again, no fix. I knew I needed to bleed the brake lines again, but I had to go buy more brake fluid first. While waiting until morning, I spoke with my neighbor who also has plenty of car repair experience. One thing he mentioned was to check the pads to see if they were stuck and flexing under pressure. So since I needed to start on the right rear brake caliper when bleeding, I gave the pads extra scrutiny. Sure enough, there was at least 1/16" gap between the piston and the inner pad! I exercised the parking brake cable and saw that the piston comes out to close the gap. I had my neighbor push the brake pedal while I watched and the piston come out as expected - but then retracted right back to where it was. So the piston was not frozen. It simply was not adjusting to the pad wear. If I exercised the park brake, it should move out then stay, and each subsequent park brake exercise it should do the same, ratcheting it's way toward the pad. To be certain, I checked the opposite rear wheel and it was fine - the piston was right up against the pad. With this evidence, I replaced the caliper for $90 (FoMoCo part from Napa) and it worked. Brakes feel fine now. I am embarrassed that I missed this the first time when checking pad thickness. It was so obvious after the fact. So the lesson here for those with squishy/soft brakes - check the rear adjusting calipers. They should be touching the brake pads, otherwise all the fluid from the master cylinder push will go toward filling up that volume of the retracted piston, the second pump, if fast enough, will bring up the pedal and improve the stopping power - just like mine. Both rear brakes were not getting the pressure from the brake pedal thus causing slow stopping power. I hope this helps others with soft brakes. My guess is that it might even get missed at the dealer service shop which is why you see others on the forum have so many issues with soft brakes. Lesson learned. Good luck!

@1004ron Just checked the rubber cushions and they look fine. I snapped them back together and they do sound noisier than the new ones. Maybe all they need is new grease, but too late now. I did not want to take the strut apart and reassemble with old parts so now I have 2 good struts (with ? miles left - who knows) and 2 questionable mounts to throw away. Wish I knew where to get rid of car parts. I have several others stacked in the garage. Thanks for the comments and suggestions - it always helps to discuss with others!

Hi All, In the matter of squishy or soft brake pedals, has anyone noticed that stopping in reverse is a lot harder than going forward? My 2011 Edge is suffering from the soft/low/squishy brake pedal issue and I have to really push hard to stop it while backing out of my garage. The pedal goes pretty far down too. The booster does not make any noise at all. I did a complete brake bleed (not ABS Service bleed) yesterday but it didn't change anything. I did notice a lot of air coming out of the left rear caliper and thought 'This should fix it!) But it didn't. It makes me thing something is going on with the rear brakes but I'm at a loss as to what it could be. The emergency brake goes pretty far down when I park but holds the car still. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how to approach? I'm thinking about replacing the master cylinder - maybe the plunger for the rear is leaking? I don't know - just thinking out loud. Thanks.

@vega I haven't cleaned them up so I do not see any irregularities in either mount that would cause the thumping. But then again, the thumping wasn't regular. It would happen often enough while turning AND going over a small bump like turning into my driveway but not all the time. When I would stop while waiting for the garage door to open, then turn/straighten the wheel, the thump would likely happen. @1004ron Yep - I basically concluded it must be normal. Actually, when the second new one was like the first, I pretty much accepted it as normal. I can understand some spacing but it seemed excessive at about 8 mm. (the balls are 0.15" or just under 4 mm diameter). I've forgotten what it was like to have normal quiet turning. It's been like that since I got it in 2016 and it was on this forum that I learned about the bad mounts making the thumping noise. It just took me a while to read enough posts to get there LOL! So I thought I would share what I found. Thanks all!

And here are the OLD ones that would make thumping noises when I turned my steering wheel. Interestingly enough, they also look like 2 bearing balls are missing: Neither looks bad to the naked eye except for the brownish look to the grease. I would hazard to guess that repacking them would refurbish them to usable bearings again. Unfortunately, it's a lot of work to pull the strut apart to not spend the $90 for new ones.

Has anyone tried Dorman produts? I'm thinking of using a Dorman Mater Brake Cylinder for $50 rather than a Motorcraft for$100 unit. I've had good luck with Dorman before, but never tried a master cylinder. All thoughts appreciated. Thanks.

@gern The forscan forum showed this: https://forscan.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11840&p=41134&hilit=abs+bleed+ford+edge&sid=21ab43342cfccc273cfc999ad95ec14b#p41134 which leads me to believe it may not be available on my 2011. Interesting how one poster said he did it on a 2013 though...

@gern THe pedal goes pretty low when I step on it and engages brakes softly at the bottom. It also goes pretty low when I start it with my foot on the brake. It takes a long time to stop and no tire squeal or ABS on dry roads. I get ABS action when one side is off the road in dirt. The rear bleeders are 11 mm and the fronts are 8 mm (5/16). @Xtra I just did a full 4 caliper bleed and did not see any air and the pedal feels the same as before the bleed. The fluid that came out was pretty darn clear so, rather new I'm guessing. @mrgrouper My pedal is low and spongy like yours was .So the other day I did the backup hard stop (about 15 mph) routine a couple of times but could not get ABS to kick in or get any tire squeal. Maybe I'll try it tomorrow again as we're supposed to get snow. That should make it easier to engage the ABS. I wonder why going in reverse worked for you... Overall, if I just sit on the brakes while stopped, they slowly travel down to the bottom, but the car never moves. It seems that if I am slowing to a stop and I pump the brakes after the initial press, the pedal is higher with each pump and the brakes are more firm. I'm thinking it's the master cylinder with these symptoms (like the fluid is bypassing the piston and it gets more fluid with each pump.) I'm going to search for people's experience with changing the master (I really don't look forward to bleeding the brakes again - my garage is too small to do it easily.) Thanks for the helpful responses. Bart

I just downloaded the latest version of forscan for my 2011 Edge. I don't see the abs bleed procedure in the list of procedures. I'm assuming (guessing) that the 2012 is the same as the 2011 in so many respects. All I found was the ABS self test. Where did you find the ABS bleed procedure? Also, is it possible to bleed the brakes without removing the wheel using a jack and jackstands? UPDATED: No it's not. Have to remove the wheels but it was easy after that.

I didn't realize how squishy my brakes have become until I drove my wife's car to get it inspected. When I got back into mine, I realized just how soft my brake pedal really is. I can't even make the tires squeal with a hard stop. I tried double pumping them and felt them come up a bit. I looked around other postings and tried doing a couple of panic stops in forward and reverse and it appeared that my brake pedal was harder after that. I also did forward and reverse ABS stops with the passenger side on some grass. The pedal seems a bit more firm at the moment but I will have to see what happens after she sits in the garage overnight. I had the brake booster replaced last year when it failed completely (sinking pedal, whistling noise) and I was a little disappointed in the soft brake when I got it back. I expected it to be rock hard given the work the dealer did. I'm thinking they may not have bled the brakes properly so I will try that next. I used Forscan to see if my 2011 LTD has the ABS brake bleed maintenance procedure but all I could find was the self test which it passed. Has anyone used forscan to bleed the brakes properly? Has anyone replaced their bleeders with speed bleeders? If so what sizes are they? My standard bleed procedure for a long time has been to use a long clear hose that is always pointing up and magnetic clipped to the roof of the car. This way I can see the fluid and bubbles rise from the driver's seat when I pump them. I also remember from way back that you should never bottom out the pedal as it causes the rubber piston to contact areas of the bore that never get smooth in the master cylinder. I wonder if that's true any more. So I'm going to buy a liter of brake fluid and bleed all four in the right order. if anyone has suggestions or experience doing a straight bleed without the ABS bit, please tell me before I make it worse! Many thanks!

Thanks Mike. Very helpful to know. I've done struts in other cars and I agree that it is best to have 2 people when putting it back in, but I'm on my own for most of my auto repairs. I don't remember how difficult the last one as so I'll give it a go. Glad there's no special tools required and I hope to come close to your 2 hours total. I'll be lucky to get one side in 2 hours - LOL! UPDATE: I'm assuming you used quickstrut assemblies to replace the originals Mike. Two hours is impressive but I'm surprised how straightforward the job was. Each side took me 2 hours to take it out, disassemble it, build the new strut and replace it in the car. When I bought the Motocraft struts, I could not find them with springs and all. I watched MacT's video and he made it look difficult. I think the hardest part was the very time consuming upper 4 bolts where the cowling is - not only in the way , (can't use socket wrench) but also the outermost rear bolt is covered so closely that it is tough to get a closed end box wrench on them. Passenger side was worse and I had to remove the 10 mm bolt where the cowling meets the fender to flex the cowling up enough to get the wrench on it. . The borrowed spring compressors worked like a charm but getting the center shock nut off was tricky. The strut shaft has a 10 mm head and luckily a 13/16 offset box wrench fit down into the well. Breaking it loose required placing another long wrench between two of the upright bolts then laying it down on the floor to prevent spinning. The same technique worked when tightening the new one. I was able to put the whole assembled strut back without help as you can see the upper bolt holes pretty clearly. I rested the strut assembly on the half shaft with a piece of wood between them, then stood up and screwed the upper 4 bolts finger tight. Then I positioned the lower bolt holes and replaced the two big main bolts and 24 mm nuts. I couldn't have done it without the 13 mm ratchet-end box wrench I borrowed. It was a big time saver getting the upper nuts off. Now she's quiet as a mouse when I make turns. I'm hoping the new mounts don't fail because of what looked like missing 2 ball bearings in each one. Cheers and thanks for the help.

Hi all, I realize this is very subjective but I only need two tires as my Discoverer CTS are doing really well... I bought my 2011 Edge LTD AWD with 62K miles on it and it had near new Cooper CTS tires. I've got 98K miles now and one of the front tires is wearing unevenly. It's likely due to a bad tie rod end. I liked the Coopers but they don't make them any more. The latest (I think) is the CS5 Ultra. All my other tires are looking great with the rears looking only slightly worn. They are getting very good tread wear. That said, I only want to buy two tires for now but concerned with mix and match performance - especially on an AWD vehicle. My gas mileage is averaging 21.2 mpg which is down from 23.4 when I bought it back in 2016. I am in the NE US so wet/snow performance needs to be good (the CTS were fine). I hope to get the road noise lower too. Has anyone been driving on Cooper tires? If so which ones? Any other recommendations are appreciated. Thanks for any insights. Moderator: This was mistakenly posted in brakes and suspension topic but I don't know how to remove it from there. My apologies.

I'm about to replace my Strut mounts in my 2011 Edge AWD Limited. I decided to replace the actual strut too even though they feel great. I figured since I have to take the strut apart anyway... So I ordered the Motocraft strut mounts from Rock Auto. They arrived in one day which was pretty impressive. The problem is that one mount was in it's original box with no packing while the other was wrapped tight with shipping paper. Both original product boxes were shipped in a larger box with air pillow packing. The product box with no packing showed where the mounting bolts were poking almost through the cardboard. So upon opening that slightly damaged box, I see a new mount that was slightly cocked to one sice and i could wiggle the two halves. When I tried to straighten the two halves, they came apart and the ball bearings and races were open. Since the balls stuck to both races, I moved them to one and noticed that it looks like at least one, possibly 2 balls are missing as you can see in the following pic. I also noticed there wasn't much grease in there. So not knowing if this mount was defective or not, I opened the second box and fount it tightly wrapped in paper and not crooked. I gently pulled the two halves and it came apart as easily as the first one! It also looked like 1 or two bearings were missing so I'm thinking this is normal. After closing them back up and spinning it several times, the balls looked pretty evenly distributed. So the only thing I can think of is that they don't have enough grease and I packed them with wheel bearing grease and snapped the two halves together again. So before I put them in the car, can anyone with hands-on experience with these strut mounts tell me if I'm really way off base in thinking that: 1) It is normal for these mounts to come apart so easily. 2) That it is normal to see spaces between the roller balls in this type of bearing 3) That Ford makes them with just a small amount of grease and that's why they go bad so easily. I am assuming that when fitted over the spring and strut, the two halves are clamped tightly together and will be OEM quality fitment.The last thing I want to do is this job twice after finding out these are bad mounts. I hope to do this job this week so please send your thoughts. Thanks much. Bart

Hi all, I bought my 2011 Edge LTD AWD with 62K miles on it and it had near new Cooper CTS tires. I've got 98K miles now and one of the front tires is wearing unevenly. It's likely due to a bad tie rod end. I liked the Coopers but they don't make them any more. The latest (I think) is the CS5 Ultra. All my other tires are looking great with the rears looking only slightly worn. They are getting very good tread wear. That said, I only want to buy two tires for now but concerned with mix and match performance - especially on an AWD vehicle. My gas mileage is averaging 21.2 mpg which is down from 23.4 when I bought it back in 2016. I am in the NE US so wet/snow performance needs to be good (the CTS were fine). I hope to get the road noise lower too. Has anyone been driving on Cooper tires? If so which ones? Any other recommendations are appreciated. Thanks for any insights. WRONG TOPIC - RE-POSTING in TIRES and WHEELS. (How do I change just the topic?)

Hi Mike, I'm about to do my 2011 Limited struts. Did you have to remove the cowl above the strut to get the top bolts out? How long did the whole job take? Any special tools beside spring compressors? Any tips? Thanks!

I have a 2011 Edge limited AWD that I bought with 62K miles on it. The tires looked new and are Cooper CTS 245/60 -18. I now have 98K on the car now and the rear tires look really good. One of my front tires is wearing on the outer edge. I plan to replace the strut mounts and will need an alignment and at least a pair of new tires. They don't make the Cooper CTS any more but I want to be careful about mixing brands of tires. The Cooper CT5 seems to get good traction ratings and good for low noise. Any suggestions from other owners? Has anyone been driving the Cooper CT5? Thanks

@OMAR - good description Omar. After I read the Ford F150 post, I realized I never knew there was an "On Until Cancelled" (OUC) mode. Thanks!

When I had a DTC in my ABS, this happened to my 2011 Limited. I used Forscan to reset the DTC in the ABS module and it has not returned. Hope this helps. What happened with yours?

@2Fast4U - what Gadgetjq said. Looks like a C or a D will give you 6 flashes. Unfortunately, I don't know what the difference in the bits will do (C=1100, D=1101) so you may have to try both to see.

@Gadgetjq Someone mentioned in another topic that they found an Edge specific list of mods but I have not heard back on my request on where they found it. I am using a spreadsheet that lists 2011-2015 Explorer, plus any items I find looking through these posts. I did manage to fix it properly. When the DTCs set, it also turned the idiot lights on and even after I restored the Asbuilt data, they were still on. It made me a little nervous but resetting the DTCs solved it. So I redid the blink rate and when the DTCs showed up, I simply reset them. Now I have it set to 5 blinks which feels about right. Have not been able to get Global Window open/close to work though. I have the smart motors, but not sure if only the MKZ can do it but not the Edge that year. Thanks for getting back to me.

I have a 2011 Edge Limited. The windows have the safety feature where they will reverse direction if hitting an obstacle but I can't get my global open/close to work. I have the IPC bits set for Global open and Closed to "enable" but it does not show up in my left hand dash panel under settings. I've seen several global open changes, but none either work or match what's in there. Can someone with an MKX or Edge tell me if they have a DCM or PCM (driver and passenger Door Module)) that needs altering? Any help is appreciated.

2011 Edge Ltd - I changed the blink count in the turn signal duration from 3 to 5 (SCCM 724-01-01 7 to 'B' in Forscan). When I went to write it back to the SCCM, it said there is a checksum error - continue? First time I said no and tried a different value ('A') but the same thing. I wrote it anyway assuming Forscan would calculate the checksum before writing it. As soon as I switched off then on, I had a TRACTION CONTROL SERVICE REQUIRED notice on the display panel. The two idiot lights for traction control and traction control off were lit. I refreshed the connection to OBD and looked at DTC's and the ABS module had both a checksum DTC and an 'unknown value' codes set. I put my As built data back in the SCCM and cleared the ABS code and it was gone. Has anyone run into this error?

Thanks for the reply onyxbfly. I believe I tried that sequence but nothing happened. I suspect it wasn't available in the 2011 Ltd yet. Does anyone have this option working on their 2011?