Hi Scotty!
I have a 2012 F-250 6.2L V8 with 187k miles and I've had it for 5 years. Everything works great. I've replaced shocks, rotors, pads, along with standard maintenance and never had any major issues. Runs and drives beautifully.
About 1 1/2 years ago, I started seeing an intermittent issue where the indicator would start beeping and then I would see the dash lights popping on. In a few moments, the dash would completely go out. Head/tail lights, AC compressor, turn signals all stopped working. Everything else seemed OK. I would drive for a few seconds and then hit a bump in the road and it would magically come back on. This has come and gone quite frequently, and when it's not an issue it's fine for a month or three. When it does come back, it's pretty persistent and I'm able to get them to come back on by banging on the top of the dash. If I run over extremely rough road or take it off road, it seems to go away for a while and then spontaneously comes back at some point down the road. I took a short video below.
Before I start ripping the dash open, I'm looking for some ideas on what might be wrong so I can research them and get pricing/effort estimates. I love the truck, but I don't have 2k to invest in it and dread the day when it does that and won't come back on. It won't start up in that condition and I can't afford any unexpected, expensive surprises.
Thanks in advance!
Good luck is all I can say. I've heard murmurs on the ford forms when the Overdrive Cancel Switch on the Gear selector gets all chafed up. They are small wires compared to the others and it has seem to be a problem with some of these trucks. People there recommend also checking a couple fuses and relays. Forget which ones though. Sorry. If it do happen to be the OD, then the assembly should be replaced from what I hear.
Thanks, Bruce. I'll (begrudgingly) look into it some more!