Front Camera Fault Errors - Issue fixed! DIY How-to

[bbulkow]

I believe that my applying some force to the clip and increasing its hold force has improved reliability. I usually get a few faults per driving hour and i think i have seen only one, but driven two hours. Of course i also just played with those wires a little. Could be wishful thinking.

Mine the spring was providing some force, but a used a screwdriver and bent it, now it's apply a lot more.

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[azerik]

Thanks for this I'll try to get at it shortly.
No luck for me. The camera is quite tight. I can rock it if I push hard enough on the bottom forward but nothing loose per se.

 

[TTT]

I had a long series of repeated errors in my mock e resulting in on-screen messages and Phantom braking for no reason. Because I had blue Cruise issues reported from the very beginning with visits to the service department I eventually threw in the towel when Ford couldn't fix it and made Ford buy it back under California lemon law. I essentially drove the car for two and a half years free. Now I have a 2025 sitting at Junction point in Texas waiting to be declared okay to sell by Ford and shipped to the dealer. I think through a combination of this error have potentially from the front radar echoes noted in a recent TSB they could have made my blue Cruise work properly, but they never did. Looking forward to having a properly sorted car with properly sorted blue Cruise as several of my friends do. This is a great find, encouraging. Thank you.

 

[dtbaker61]

I've been battling an increasing level of Front Camera Fault errors on my 21 GTPE. I tried moving the coax cable to different positions with little-to-no success.

While playing around with the camera and cables, I noticed that the left side of the camera was loose. I could push on the left side of the camera body and it would freely move up and down about .050". The mounting method for the left side of the camera is a tab into a slot: where the camera body casting is a metal tab and it fits into a plastic slot on the plastic "dish" that's glued to the windshield. The right side of the camera is a metal post that slides into a spring-loaded clip.

I decided to unclip the camera and remove it just to have a look. Eureka! In the top of the slot, above where the camera tab slides in, there is a spring meant to push the camera tab down against the bottom of the slot holding it firmly in position. I my case, the spring was completely collapsed and not supplying any tension on the camera tab, allowing it to vibrate. With a small screwdriver, I bent the spring downward so that the tab is now held very tightly in the slot. Doing this completely eliminated my front camera faults. For me anyway, it turns out that the coax cable is not the problem, but camera vibration is.

For the mechanical engineers among us, this makes perfect sense. I used to be a quality engineer and worked with mechanical engineers to do vibration testing on mechanical structures to the point of failure. My theory with this small/lightweight camera and a sloppy tab-in-slot arrangement is that high frequency road noise (think: crossing 5 sets of train tracks at a crossing at speed) caused the camera to vibrate wildly and screw up the video signal. I have just such a RR crossing near my home and this used to cause a camera fault 2 out of 3 times that I crossed it. Now... nothing. Simply by nailing down the left side of the camera, the problem has completely gone away.

For those of you who have not pulled the trim piece off of the camera mount, I've attached a few pictures. First picture - on the right side of the picture is the left side of camera (tab), and then the plastic slot that it slides into, and the spring above that is supposed to provide spring-loaded tension to the camera tab.

Second picture - the right side of the camera body (post) and the spring clip that it clips into.

Some other random pics of the area.

If you're having this issue, pull off the trim piece above your rear-view mirror (5 clips total). First check to see if the left side of you camera has any slop in it . It should have none. If it does, carefully pull the right side of the camera down to slide the post out of the spring clip, then slide the entire camera slightly to the right to pull it out of the left slot. Using a small screwdriver, bend the spring down so that it will push down on the metal camera tab when it is reinstalled. Fairly tight.

Reassemble: Slide the left-side tab back into the slot, push the right-side post back into the spring clip. Before you reinstall the trim piece, take the car out for a spin to that favorite place or yours where the front camera always faults. Lemme know if this fixes the issue for you.

I used to get multiple camera faults per day. I made this fix on March 2nd and have not had a single fault since.

A+ detective work!
I have a strong correlation between vibration and "blinks" as well.... I will give this a try and see if issue stays fixed!

reminds me of the early days of CD players in vehicles... skipped like crazy on rough roads, RR tracks, bridge seams, etc....

 

[Bdsmith10]

Does anyone have recommendations on how to remove the plastic covering without breaking anything?

 

[GT-Papa]

A trim removal tool like the one on the right works great. Cheep on Amazon or probably readily available at any auto parts store.

 

[azerik]

I popped it off with my fingers. Starting at the sunglasses area, pulling towards the center console. then just worked around in a circle until the panel came off. This would be one of the easier panels to pull if I must say.

 

[dtbaker61]

Does anyone have recommendations on how to remove the plastic covering without breaking anything?

it just pops straight away perpendicular to windsheild... not too bad if you pry close to the tabs, you won't break anything...

 

[Bdsmith10]

it just pops straight away perpendicular to windsheild... not too bad if you pry close to the tabs, you won't break anything...

Got it…thank you

 

[justalfe]

Great catch!

I've been seeing similar alerts of past triggers and not currently present when manually checking my DTCs via ForSCAN for months now. Never got an error while driving… until yesterday. I hit a bump in the road, and got full-on alerts as the OP described. While still driving, 5 minutes after the alerts cleared up on their own.

I have nothing "after-market" for the front glass. I did have the Windshield Glass Recall 21C22 recall done way back in the day. It was given to a third party glass shop as the dealership I was working with at the time didn't do glass in-house.

It's going to be two weeks or so before I take a look, but I'll be following the thread and reporting back once I take a look.

I've been battling an increasing level of Front Camera Fault errors on my 21 GTPE. I tried moving the coax cable to different positions with little-to-no success.

While playing around with the camera and cables, I noticed that the left side of the camera was loose. I could push on the left side of the camera body and it would freely move up and down about .050". The mounting method for the left side of the camera is a tab into a slot: where the camera body casting is a metal tab and it fits into a plastic slot on the plastic "dish" that's glued to the windshield. The right side of the camera is a metal post that slides into a spring-loaded clip.

I decided to unclip the camera and remove it just to have a look. Eureka! In the top of the slot, above where the camera tab slides in, there is a spring meant to push the camera tab down against the bottom of the slot holding it firmly in position. I my case, the spring was completely collapsed and not supplying any tension on the camera tab, allowing it to vibrate. With a small screwdriver, I bent the spring downward so that the tab is now held very tightly in the slot. Doing this completely eliminated my front camera faults. For me anyway, it turns out that the coax cable is not the problem, but camera vibration is.

For the mechanical engineers among us, this makes perfect sense. I used to be a quality engineer and worked with mechanical engineers to do vibration testing on mechanical structures to the point of failure. My theory with this small/lightweight camera and a sloppy tab-in-slot arrangement is that high frequency road noise (think: crossing 5 sets of train tracks at a crossing at speed) caused the camera to vibrate wildly and screw up the video signal. I have just such a RR crossing near my home and this used to cause a camera fault 2 out of 3 times that I crossed it. Now... nothing. Simply by nailing down the left side of the camera, the problem has completely gone away.

For those of you who have not pulled the trim piece off of the camera mount, I've attached a few pictures. First picture - on the right side of the picture is the left side of camera (tab), and then the plastic slot that it slides into, and the spring above that is supposed to provide spring-loaded tension to the camera tab.

Second picture - the right side of the camera body (post) and the spring clip that it clips into.

Some other random pics of the area.

If you're having this issue, pull off the trim piece above your rear-view mirror (5 clips total). First check to see if the left side of you camera has any slop in it . It should have none. If it does, carefully pull the right side of the camera down to slide the post out of the spring clip, then slide the entire camera slightly to the right to pull it out of the left slot. Using a small screwdriver, bend the spring down so that it will push down on the metal camera tab when it is reinstalled. Fairly tight.

Reassemble: Slide the left-side tab back into the slot, push the right-side post back into the spring clip. Before you reinstall the trim piece, take the car out for a spin to that favorite place or yours where the front camera always faults. Lemme know if this fixes the issue for you.

I used to get multiple camera faults per day. I made this fix on March 2nd and have not had a single fault since.

I was having this issue and reading on another post someone mention using foam to fill in the gap. it completely eliminated my issues with the camera

 

[dtbaker61]

I was having this issue and reading on another post someone mention using foam to fill in the gap. it completely eliminated my issues with the camera

where, exactly, did you put the foam ? picture please.

 

[am142j]

I kept getting this error intermittently for a few weeks/months and I finally brought it to the dealership. They didn’t explain anything when I picked it up, but the paperwork says they found a TSB and replaced two coax connectors.

 

[GT-Papa]

where, exactly, did you put the foam ? picture please.

@dtbaker61 Check out this thread. I've not tried this, but this is what I was going to do if I had not discovered the collapsed spring. By putting a sandwich of foam up against the camera body and cables, it essentially also prevents the camera from moving/vibrating.

https://www.macheforum.com/site/thr...ot-available-errors.18710/page-55#post-656839

 

[available_username2]

the camera faults I've gotten have always been when hitting a jarring dip/pothole on the highway

 

[Wonder_MachE]

I kept getting this error intermittently for a few weeks/months and I finally brought it to the dealership. They didn’t explain anything when I picked it up, but the paperwork says they found a TSB and replaced two coax connectors.

I too started getting errors and dealer repaired under warranty for a TSB for coax cable.

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