Wrench light in 2009 Ford Escape came on, power decreased. Took vehicle to Ford dealership for code to be read. Dealership couldn't read because vehicle had been shut off. Service told me code for wrench light is not stored. Noticed wrench light was gone when vehicle was restarted. Escape drove fine. This is the second time this has happened within the last 4 months. First time it happened, I thought it was a sensor problem since light disappeared and vehicle drove fine. This is the second incident. Now I'm concerned. Did some research and noticed on NHTSA, there is a Ford incident report regarding this problem with Ford vehicles. Not a recall, though. Not happy to find this has/is happening to a lot of Ford vehicles. It's not an isolated problem and Ford should do the right thing by it's customers and pay for this problem to be corrected.

A very scary situation happened, my Ford Escape was not accelerating and was sputtering and the "wrench" light illuminated. I thought it had died so I tried to make my way off of the 405 freeway as safely as possible with a sputtering car that was going about 3 miles and hour (what I later found out to be "limp mode". I pulled the car off the freeway and sputtered to a semi safe location off of the road and stopped there wondering who I should call. Out of curiosity I tried starting the car and it started up fine and I drove home.

It subsequently started happening more and more frequently up until a point where I was afraid to drive the car. I took the car to Auto Nation in Irvine, CA. They "flashed" the system, but did not replace the throttle body even though they were told the wrench light was coming on. They wanted to charge me $159 to run diagnostics for this known issue, I told them no, to fix it. Well they only flashed the system and did not replace the throttle body.

The next day while at work, I was driving normal and preparing to park my car, the truck surged and went into "wrench" mode and I plowed into a cement pillar that ultimately did $5000 damage to my truck + rental car + higher insurance. I have been a Ford person all of my life, they have put many lives at risk by not addressing this appropriately. After the incident I tried to contact them twice and the service manager did not return either of my calls. When I called their customer help line they said unless I can bring the car in and this shows up on their scan they will not pay for the part, and I will have to pay the scan fee. Well after you stop the car and restart the wrench light goes off, so unless I get extremely lucky I am out the $159 + potentially not getting my car fixed.

I am buying the part and replacing it myself. Ford is no better then GM, people will have to lose lives before anything is done about this. Shame on Ford Motor Company. This is a very, very, very dangerous condition, and their "fix" although it makes the car more drivable if it goes into "limp" mode, it makes things dangerous as the car is much more unpredictable in its current state. I will have this fixed this weekend.

Traveling along a rural out of state highway, in the dark, vehicle suddenly lost power and wrench light came on. I was forced to coast dangerously to a safe place to pull over, with another vehicle nearly hitting me from behind due to the sudden loss of speed. Vehicle behind me laying on the horn added to my tore up nerves too! Gas pedal seemed to not be working at all. Once vehicle came to a stop, the car had an extremely rough idle. After turning the car off and restarting, the problem seemed to be reset, and gas pedal worked again, but the problem occurred again the next day, dangerously again along an Interstate Highway. Thankfully, we were right at a Rest Stop exit (Thank You, Lord). I took it by AutoZone, and there were no codes showing on their handheld reader. Have not yet had the problem fixed since I have made it back to my hometown. Researching it and knowing that it is going to be pretty costly, I will have to wait. All warranties are already over due to the mileage on the vehicle.

This should certainly be a recall - the sudden deceleration is very dangerous!!!!

If you are having this problem too, please file a complaint, so that maybe Ford will issue a recall on this very common problem:

http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/problems/defect/results.cfm?action_number=PE13003&SearchType=QuickSearch&summary=true

I have researched on the internet and I have seen several 2009 Ford Escapes with the same issue and of course it happens after the 36,000/3 yr warranty is up. This problem should be a recall. This is very dangerous as I was driving on a highway and my car jumped down to 25 mph and wrench light came on and i had to coast to the side of the highway. I am lucky no one hit me from behind. I had to shut car off and when I restarted it I eventrually got home but the next day i tried to drive to dealership and it kept jumping down to 25mph and shutting off. I had to have it towed at my expense plus pay the 585.00 to have it fixed and you also have to take it to a Ford Dealer so they cand charge you 100.00 to read the code prior to fixing this.