[Sputnik378]

I have seen a number of posts about it, but nothing definitive.. Hoping we can shed some light on this for everyone's sake.

I would love to add all these features to my base cargo Transit, but I need to be sure before I hunt down the parts that it will work.

Can I swap just the steering wheel or the entire steering column to change this out, or do I also need to swap the dash module because of the necessary interface with the dash info system?

Would it be easier to just add CC and audio controls instead of all 3?

Who has a solid handle on the CANBUS control system? Would you be willing to share your experiences and or expertise?

Does the ECU need to be flashed to accomplish this task? If so is that a Ford factory thing or FORSCAN, and can it be done in a shop with software or by an individual?

If it's useful..

My setup is as follows, and I promise to be as helpful as possible to answer these questions and I will happily share my findings as I dive into this.

2018 Transit Cargo 3.7 HT-EL 35,000 and it's halfway outfitted to where it will be in a few months.

• Phantom S9 Window Tints
• Max Fan
• Wall EZ Cool Insulation (Full)
  • Complete Sound deadening
• Thinsulate wall panel insulation (Full)
• Fully Insulated Flooring build up (insulation, ply, vinyl)
  • Fully insulated
  • Professionally Installed Lonseal Laminate Flooring
  • Coin-mat in Garage + 2’ Side Walls for Utility & Easy Cleaning
• Professionally Welded Aluminum Wall & Roof Framing
• L Track on the Walls
• Upholstered Paneling Wall & Roof System
• Central Control Unit for Power & Lighting
• Thetford 92306 White Toilet
• (8) Flush LED Lights O.C. (2-Zone Control)
• Versa Bed & Bench System
• Aluminum 42" Galley with 1 Door and 3 Finger Slam Drawers - (Silver)
• (2) Aluminum Overhead Cabinet for Non Factory Headliner (42” x 18”)
• 15" Ruvati stainless steel sink
• Passenger Swivel Seat
• Walnut Counter top (+Walnut Trim) (4’ x 8’) & Back-Splash
  • Extendable 1’ Walnut Counter
• Goal Zero Yeti 1400 Lithium Battery System
• SS Pull -Down Faucet w/ 3 Function Spray Head (Regulated Stream, Spray, Pause
• Dometic CFX 65W 12v Cooler, Fridge Freezer
• CR Lawrence Passenger Slider Door Pop-Out T-Window
• (4) Open Country AT III ON-/OFF-ROAD ALL-TERRAIN TIRE
  • SIZE: LT255/70R16
• FVC LOW PRO ROOF RACK - TRANSIT 148" HIGH ROOF EXTENDED
• Renogy Solar Panel

 

[dinocarsfast]

Cruise has been added with OEM functionality except the indicating light on the dash won’t work because you have the most basic instrument cluster if the van was ordered without cruise control. You will need a steering wheel with the buttons and a corresponding steering angle sensor.
radio buttons won’t work unless you upgrade the radio to one that is able to receive control signals from the can bus.

the search isn’t great on this site but @hayduke gets cruise to work on his van in this thread and others have followed. A dedicated how to thread would be helpful to people like yourself
add cruise control

 

[Checkswrecks]

Cruise control is an entire system and harness so not an easy addition. Aftermarket CC can be done but those are usually quirky.

These work with some units for radio and phone, depending on what you have:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06Y5YQZ7N/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_4?smid=A15UVRWDN5GR9Q&psc=1

 

[dinocarsfast]

Cruise control is an entire system and harness so not an easy addition. Aftermarket CC can be done but those are usually quirky.

None of this is correct, if you look at the schematics the only difference is 3 or 4 wires going from the buttons on the steering wheel to the steering angle sensor. Once the hardware is installed cruise control can be enabled using forscan, it’s that easy, I’ve done it and so have others.
Aftermarket cruise control systems aren’t so bad the throttle is controlled by throttle-by-wire on these vans like most new cars. So these systems work by unplugging the throttle pedal and the throttle signal usually goes through the aftermarket cruse control box and interrupting the signal and creating it when cruise is active.

 

[Checkswrecks]

None of this is correct, if you look at the schematics the only difference is 3 or 4 wires going from the buttons on the steering wheel to the steering angle sensor. Once the hardware is installed cruise control can be enabled using forscan, it’s that easy, I’ve done it and so have others.
Aftermarket cruise control systems aren’t so bad the throttle is controlled by throttle-by-wire on these vans like most new cars. So these systems work by unplugging the throttle pedal and the throttle signal usually goes through the aftermarket cruse control box and interrupting the signal and creating it when cruise is active.

If you've done it I'll accept that for this.
In many other vehicles there can be quite a difference.

 

[Sputnik378]

I did it. Followed @hayduke instructions and it was pretty seamless as far as the install and enable. Where I'm stuck at the moment is with the steering angle sensor is off, and I can't get a realtime value from either Forscan or Torque. It is causing the dash to give me a couple of lights and the wheel appears to be about 3-5 degrees off of straight. @dinocarsfast Do you have any thoughts on this?

I am pretty new to Forscan so I am hoping that the steering angle sensor is something that I can enable to see in realtime so that I can adjust it back to 0 and hopefully everything will work after that and my dash will look less like our christmas tree.

On a positive note, the CC works flawlessly of course without the ICS display info.

 

[hayduke]

@Sputnik378 can you elaborate on what you mean you can't get a realtime value in Forscan? Not sure if it requires extended license, but there should be a icon/tab on the left that looks like a wave/chart. You need to find the appropriate signal (SW_ANGLE and SW_ANG_SENS and SW_ANG_DIR seem like maybe the most helpful) and select it and start recording. I have a screen shot here:

add cruise control

I came across a pretty cool tool over at the FORScan forum that has some features to diff as built (.ab) files bit-by-bit. They specifically support putting in a bunch of .ab files from different VINS and using this to generate a report about bits that differ. Ideally if we could find very...

www.fordtransitusaforum.com

Not sure about the wheel being off a few degrees. If i remember right the steering wheel shaft only accepts the wheel in maybe one of 6 positions so if you were off it would be off by a LOT like ~60 degrees. Maybe the van was off a few degrees before and you never noticed? Not sure what else it could be.

 

[dinocarsfast]

@Sputnik378 its not clear to me what your experiencing, do you mean the steering wheel is off 3-5 degrees when you are driving?
And are you able to view other live data but not the steering angle?
What are the faults that are stored in abs, steering angle sensor and bcm and maybe instrument cluster too. Did you try clearing the faults and see what returns

 

[Sputnik378]

@hayduke I got it figured out. There was just a little bit of a learning curve with Forscan, I set the clockspring to 0 and put the wheel back on and everything but the airbag light went off.

I still have a few remaining codes that I am working on now then I'll start diving into the steering wheel controls.

Codes:
UO422 - Invalid Data Received from BCM (could be due to me changing the tire rolling circumference to 2260, and not driving to update the PCM yet?)
B112B - Steering wheel module
B124D - Tire Pressure Sensor (this one has been present since I bought the van, and I attribute it to the 245/75 R16 tires)

Interesting thing happened. The steering wheel controls lit up for my first test drive, but now they do not. I am wondering if I need to enable this steering wheel in Forscan or something like that.

 

[hayduke]

Did you reset the codes with Forscan? Some are persistent and will not go away until explicitly reset.

 

[Sputnik378]

@Sputnik378 its not clear to me what your experiencing, do you mean the steering wheel is off 3-5 degrees when you are driving?
And are you able to view other live data but not the steering angle?
What are the faults that are stored in abs, steering angle sensor and bcm and maybe instrument cluster too. Did you try clearing the faults and see what returns

I have reset them all, and the ones that remain are listed above.

 

[dinocarsfast]

The airbag light is still on, try pushing the the clip down on the airbag harder, the pins ground the airbag out for safety when it is removed, it makes it less likely to get ignited by a static shock.

do you have tpms sensors in the new tires, if so you can relearn them and set the placard value with forscan so the light doesn’t come on until a lower pressure

did you put a new steering angle module in or used one

 

[hayduke]

Putting the error codes aside I wanted to post this up while it's still fresh in my mind. In my base model van the following things are true

IPC connector (C220) pins 4,5 (multimedia can bus) wires are not present on vehicle harness
IPC connector (C220) pins 6,7,8, wire are present (info center wires, not CAN apparently)

Now what I can't remember if I checked is if C2414 (SASM to vehicle harness, 14 pin) has any wires missing. This is probably your key to whether the radio/volume buttons ( which seem very different from information center buttons in the way they are wired) logically send their signal through the IPC. If so, you'd need a different IPC.

But in either case, you'll need to create a multimedia CAN bus somehow.

So, a solution to get the radio buttons working probably means modifying/adding to the vehicle harness to add the multimedia can bus.

I remember that I could see the info center buttons lighting up on the CAN bus using forscan, but not so for the audio buttons. The question is where is that signal getting lost. SASM at C2414? IPC at C220? Somewhere else? If someone has their steering column apart checking the pins/wires present on the the 14 pin connector on the SASM that would help figure it out. My car is assembled and it's 10 degrees outside so it's not going to be me

If someone is interested I could also check my factory wiring manual for the pinout on the giant stereo connector but I am guessing the multimedia bus is missing there too.

Also this is just a theory at this point. My assumption is the multimedia CAN bus transmits the radio button signals to the stereo. If that's not right then forget this whole post

 

[hayduke]

Another thing I am confused about is how Forscan reads the stereo buttons on the dignostic obdii/elm port. My dongle just has a toggle switch for the medium speed and high speed busses. I wasn't sure there would be a way to expose what's on the multimedia bus. If someone with factory audio controls could test in Forscan if the button presses are recorded and maybe figures out how we might learn a bit more.

 

[kazuo]

The multimedia buttons are resistive values, not CAN BUS, and sent directly to the radio, no network.

 

[Sputnik378]

The airbag light is still on, try pushing the the clip down on the airbag harder, the pins ground the airbag out for safety when it is removed, it makes it less likely to get ignited by a static shock.

do you have tpms sensors in the new tires, if so you can relearn them and set the placard value with forscan so the light doesn’t come on until a lower pressure

did you put a new steering angle module in or used one

The new tires appear to have tpms sensors in them, but both the fronts are reading like 14 psi. Not sure what that's about because they are not.

The clip is definitely plugged in, and I still have no horn and both a B0001 airbag code and B112B Steering Wheel Module.

I used my CC successfully 1 time then I lost all power to the steering wheel. Could be a fuse, but I"m not sure which one yet, and the horn still works when I lock the doors.

 

[hayduke]

The multimedia buttons are resistive values, not CAN BUS, and sent directly to the radio, no network.

Oh thanks for prompting me to look again. There is another connector C218A on the clock spring. It should have 6 wires:

1,2 airbag
3 unused
4 horn
5 ground
6 unused
7 SWITCH - REDUNDANT AUDIO + (gray/yellow stripe)
8 CTRL MOD - AUDIO # SWITCH REDUNDANT AUDIO (BU/WT)

So many it's pins 7-8 on C218A? Not sure what the redundant part is about, but I guess it could be worth seeing if these wires go to the radio plug.

Oh look, I even took a photo in this post. If I zoom in, sort of looks like pins 7/8 are missing

 

[kazuo]

I was hoping those wires were in base wiring harness. Going to install cruise control thanks to your write up. Audio control looks easy, (except for running the extra wires) ordered a go between box for audio control for Kenwood.

 

[Sputnik378]

I was hoping those wires were in base wiring harness. Going to install cruise control thanks to your write up. Audio control looks easy, (except for running the extra wires) ordered a go between box for audio control for Kenwood.

what go between box did you get?

 

[kazuo]

Metra Access ASWC-1.