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Explorer Navigation Tracking Problem

update after TSB

Hi everyone, I've been pretty quiet here but have an update for you on my '14 Sport nav issues that started upon the install of 245/60R18 Blizzak DM-V1 winter tires. I had TSB 14-0037 done 3 days ago, while the snows were still on, and the results were very good. The nav after being "off the mark" since the winter tire install, was spot on....no matter if I was in the country or in the city, it held true to my actual position, and stayed spot on for 3 days (hooray, no more driving across lakes, rivers and fields!) I just swapped out the snows for the 20" Hankook's and can say that the nav remains spot on. I will be watching it closely over the next few days, but thus far the TSB seems like it took care of things.
 



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I contacted my Ford dealership that I bought the car from and they said that there are no TSB's out on my vehicle and everything is up to date. The TSB 14-0037 looks like its for vehicles built before January of 2014. Mine was built in March but is having the exact same symptoms. They suggested I unhook the battery for 20+ minutes to do a master reset on the electronics. Anyone else still having issues? Any suggestions on what else I can do? The navigation is all but worthless without this fixed. It puts me 50+ yards off the road I am on so when it gets to a side road it recalculates route and cant get me back on track. Very frustrating for a brand new car to have. Google maps by far is better.
 






Try disconnecting your battery overnight... it worked for me (none of the other 'fixes' helped). Good luck!
 












**Final Update**

Since the summer tires went on the navigation tracking has been perfect. We've driving from Ontario to Myrtle Beach 1200-ish miles and it's been perfect every step of the way.

It will be interesting to see once we put the winters back on.

**UPDATE**

I brought the Sport into the dealer 12-13 days ago. We switched out the winter tires to summers & I had them check the navigation issue. They advised the TSB didn't apply to us because our system was up to date with everything. This didn't make sense to me because we've had it since mid-December. They also said they didn't "do" anything other then check the build.

All I know is the system had definitely been worked on or reset because all the setting were changed. Breadcrumbs were turned on, lots of differences to the settings we'd had.

With some scepticism, I asked the next steps for replacing the module because I was sure the tracking issue would be back by the time I made it home. The service manager said there was no specific protocol however it would take time to convince Ford to go to that expense. I pushed & he mentioned logging the issue with Ford would be a good thing to do.

I let him know I was going to go hard after this because were heading on a family vacation at the end of April & I wasn't leaving without the issue fixed. His suggestion was to use my Harley GPS as a backup.

I let him know we didn't spend tens of thousands of dollars on a new vehicle to need to use a portable GPS.

He was quite pleasant the whole time.

Expecting the worst, I left & for the least two weeks the tracking has been dead on 100% of the time.

My conclusion, I haven't got a clue...

Winters off, summers on, possible system reprogramming(???), possibly just reset.

Happy its working though.

Best of luck to everyone else.
 






Disconnect Battery for Navigation fix...

Try disconnecting your battery overnight... it worked for me (none of the other 'fixes' helped). Good luck!

I disconnected the battery overnight last night. Once reconnected, at first I didn't think it had worked because all my radio stations, MFT background, and other settings hadn't changed. Thought disconnecting the battery overnight would have reset all these settings. At any rate, I set my navigation to my office as I've done over the past couple days to check it out and see if it would do the same thing. When I got to the locations that had been putting me off by 50 to 60 yards on the side of the road the nav kept me right on track today. I'll be monitoring it more over the next few weeks. ***I did not have winter tires removed and summer tires put on. I simply disconnected the battery overnight***. Keeping my fingers crossed! So far it seems to be fixed. The one thing I'm still not 100% pleased about is that it constantly tries to recalculate to a better route when I know for a fact that the one I'm on is the best one. Google's maps match up to what I know to be better. Wonder why their so different? Obviously algorithms are different but the navigation is trying to take me off of the main highway onto side streets. I've tried each of the settings in route settings and nothing seemed to changed. Oh well, I can live with that. Thanks for the help/suggestion.
 






In the route choices, if its Shortest or Fastest, it may still do as you described, although in my area hiway is usually fastest', local is shortest, as the hiway cuts around everything.

Leaving mine on fastest' has let it go hiway as much as possible and no
avoids' are turned on. Works well.

When the GPS took me along a hiway and then local, cutting across the hiway, then back to hiway - it stunk.
But it was shortest'...

It will also keep prompting and recalc as you pass by any street after deviating from the GPS route to get to a point you know is faster or easier.

Essentially if you have no clue and are in a new area, it will get you there but
if it goes local on a trip you know has more hiway, its a drag.

Try fastest' and no avoids.
Besides a 2nd GPS on a phone is reviewing the route before leaving, and you can edit the turns shown in the route.
That sometimes will allow you to remove excessive local exits that only take you off the hiway and back on it later.
 






In the route choices, if its Shortest or Fastest, it may still do as you described, although in my area hiway is usually fastest', local is shortest, as the hiway cuts around everything.

Leaving mine on fastest' has let it go hiway as much as possible and no
avoids' are turned on. Works well.

When the GPS took me along a hiway and then local, cutting across the hiway, then back to hiway - it stunk.
But it was shortest'...

It will also keep prompting and recalc as you pass by any street after deviating from the GPS route to get to a point you know is faster or easier.

Essentially if you have no clue and are in a new area, it will get you there but
if it goes local on a trip you know has more hiway, its a drag.

Try fastest' and no avoids.
Besides a 2nd GPS on a phone is reviewing the route before leaving, and you can edit the turns shown in the route.
That sometimes will allow you to remove excessive local exits that only take you off the hiway and back on it later.

Thanks. Will try fastest with no avoids. I'll try playing around with the settings more and try different variations.
 






Navigation system in 2011 Ford Explorer faulty.

The navigation system in my 2011 Explorer does not work very well. The system usually displays the 'GPS' icon with an 'X' through it, and the location displayed on the map can be blocks away from where it should be. On the rare occasions when the icon does display without the 'X' through it the location shown is usually correct. This problem appears to be worse ever since the latest software was installed.
It almost seems as if there is a problem with the system (the antenna?) not picking up the signals from the satellites. Has anyone else had a similar problem which has been definitely shown to be an antenna problem?
It's interesting that my Android tablet computer (about $200) onto which I've downloaded free GPS navigation software has absolutely no problem working in the Explorer. Seems to me that Ford has a real problem with their overpriced GPS system, but they will, of course, not admit it!
 






The navigation system in my 2011 Explorer does not work very well. The system usually displays the 'GPS' icon with an 'X' through it, and the location displayed on the map can be blocks away from where it should be. On the rare occasions when the icon does display without the 'X' through it the location shown is usually correct. This problem appears to be worse ever since the latest software was installed.
It almost seems as if there is a problem with the system (the antenna?) not picking up the signals from the satellites. Has anyone else had a similar problem which has been definitely shown to be an antenna problem?
It's interesting that my Android tablet computer (about $200) onto which I've downloaded free GPS navigation software has absolutely no problem working in the Explorer. Seems to me that Ford has a real problem with their overpriced GPS system, but they will, of course, not admit it!
It's not unusual for it to be off track if there isn't a signal being received (red X). For your info, the GPS receiver is under the dash.

Peter
 






It's not unusual for it to be off track if there isn't a signal being received (red X). For your info, the GPS receiver is under the dash.

Peter


I would estimate that 80% of the time I have been in the ex, the red x was displayed. Yet much of that time the gps does appear to function. I have gone into diagnostic mode and best I can guess is when you see 4 or less satellites, you get a red x.

I have a hand held garmin that locates 8-9 satellites in the same location that the ex finds 3-4. I truly believe this is the root of the problem with the gps that some of us experience. Ford should fess up and replace the hardware that runs this system. I'm not asking for anything more than what I paid for.
 












"It's not unusual for it to be off track if there isn't a signal being received (red X). For your info, the GPS receiver is under the dash.

Peter"

Thanks, Peter, for your comment. I do appreciate that the system can't work if it doesn't receive a signal from the satellites. (I've worked with hi-tech electronic equipment all my working life.) My problem is understanding why Ford's expensive system doesn't have an antenna that can pick up the satellite signals at least as well as my relatively cheap 'tablet'. The more I think about the problem, the more convinced I am that the primary cause of the problem lies with either the design or the location of the antenna.
 






"It's not unusual for it to be off track if there isn't a signal being received (red X). For your info, the GPS receiver is under the dash.

Peter"

Thanks, Peter, for your comment. I do appreciate that the system can't work if it doesn't receive a signal from the satellites. (I've worked with hi-tech electronic equipment all my working life.) My problem is understanding why Ford's expensive system doesn't have an antenna that can pick up the satellite signals at least as well as my relatively cheap 'tablet'. The more I think about the problem, the more convinced I am that the primary cause of the problem lies with either the design or the location of the antenna.
With the antenna being under the dash, I'm sure there would be more likelihood of some kind of interference from other objects compared to an item that is out in the open. Have you tried disconnecting the battery for an extended period of time? This seems to have helped a number of members in getting the Nav back on track.

Peter
 






With the antenna being under the dash, I'm sure there would be more likelihood of some kind of interference from other objects compared to an item that is out in the open. Have you tried disconnecting the battery for an extended period of time? This seems to have helped a number of members in getting the Nav back on track.

Peter

I do appreciate you trying to help, but honestly having to disconnect the battery to make something work is a failure of engineering in my book.

AND it does not work anyway; my battery died three weeks ago and so it had to be disconnected and removed. Driving away from the sears I still had the red x and 500 yds off course displayed by the nav.
 






Similar Garmin Results??

fyi, have heard from cyclists that when biking around large bodies of water that their garmin gps's will sometimes show them way off the route. i've seen the garmin results myself and they look very similar to what i see in my explorer gps.

note when biking in a city with tall buildings the garmin route is often off. they guess that it's likely due to gps signals getting reflected off the buildings. they also wonder if the signals get bounced off the water, scrambling their route a bitl.
 






Any fix yet? I have bought a 2014 Ford Explorer Limited. I just drove to Chicago and found GPS is showing my car at off road position. It always showing a distance between my car and the actual road. I have rebooted the MY ford touch and also updated with latest software Gen2 - V3.6.2, but still no luck. Why Ford does not show a simple interest to fix this issue?
 






Welcome to the Forum fordlimited.:wavey:
Since your position seems to remain consistant I assume that you don't have the GPS with the red X showing. Have you tried just removing the S/D card and reinserting it? I would think that this is a navigation issue and not an MFT one.
You can try sending a private message to Rebecca (FordIVTteam) to see if there is anything she can do to help. You can use this link;
http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/private.php?do=newpm&u=181992
When you PM, be sure to include your full name, best daytime phone number, VIN, mileage, and servicing dealership in your message.

Peter
 






Welcome to the Forum fordlimited.:wavey:
Since your position seems to remain consistant I assume that you don't have the GPS with the red X showing. Have you tried just removing the S/D card and reinserting it? I would think that this is a navigation issue and not an MFT one.
You can try sending a private message to Rebecca (FordIVTteam) to see if there is anything she can do to help. You can use this link;
http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/private.php?do=newpm&u=181992
When you PM, be sure to include your full name, best daytime phone number, VIN, mileage, and servicing dealership in your message.

Peter

Thanks Peter to show me the right direction. I appreciate. I hope Ford do take some initiative to resolve these issues.
 



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I had the same issues with my '11 Explorer until I took it to another Ford dealer a few months ago. My dealer worked with Ford IVT and they discovered that 2 modules that work with the GPS mod had different issues of programs in them. They ended up wiping out the programming in all 3 mods and reinstalling the latest ones available. Since then the nav system is about 98% reliable. It still gets 'lost' once in a while, but usually corrects itself within 2-4 minutes. It is a vast improvement over what I experienced since the Exp was new. Best part? Even though my Exp was way out of warrantee (60K miles), Ford covered the entire cost.
 






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