Stranded by PAAK and Backup Passcode failure

[spicy_taco]

FYI if your phone is trying to connect to the OBD dongle that can mess with PAAK. You should unplug/disconnect any non-necessary Bluetooth devices if you are having PAAK issues. You don't want anything else occupying the Bluetooth radio's airtime or PAAK performance will suffer. Another common example is listening to music on Bluetooth ear buds while trying to unlock or start the car.

Understood. My BT dongle was not plugged in and no other BT devices were active during most of this The BT dongle came out later while I was waiting for my wife to drive over with my key set, to confirm my phone's BT was still working.

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[spicy_taco]

I've been using PAAK exclusively on my Mach E for over 3 years. Has it been perfect? No. Have I ALWAYS been able to solve the problem? Yes. In EVERY single time when a challenge was presented to me that seemed unsolvable there was one thing I could do to solve it. Reboot the phone and then open the FordPass app once rebooted. It has never failed.

Yesterday I tried rebooting, I tried logging out, enabling/disabling BT, etc. I understand things can go wrong with the phone and that's why there's supposed to be a backup (the passcode).

But it's useless when the UI doesn't give you a keyboard to enter that backup passcode.

 

[Dysan911]

Remove the battery from a fob and hide it in the car.

THIS!. You can put your Keyfob battery in backwards. (Just flip it over) and hide the keyfob in the vehicle. Now in an emergency, you can just pop the side of the fob open. Flip the battery back correctly and snap it closed and you are all set.

If you don't want to flip the battery you can buy one of those little bags on Amazon that prevents a signal from escaping and use that.

 

[Mach-Lee]

THIS!. You can put your Keyfob battery in backwards. (Just flip it over) and hide the keyfob in the vehicle. Now in an emergency, you can just pop the side of the fob open. Flip the battery back correctly and snap it closed and you are all set.

If you don't want to flip the battery you can buy one of those little bags on Amazon that prevents a signal from escaping and use that.

Just leave the battery out and put the fob in the holder if you want to use it. No battery required.

 

[Robob]

Yes, it seems like a very recent behavior. When it gets in that condition where it stays in Disconnected state then rebooting the phone, restarting the app, logging in/out doesn't seem to help. In the past few times that it happened to get in that weird state, I've had it eventually come up as Connected after some time, but not yesterday.

Yes it is a recent thing, I am also not in EA and I noticed it when my car said no key detected one morning after updating with FDRS so I figured a powertrain update messed with it.
Jump to the next time it locks me out at work, that wasn't as fun but the password worked fine.

No amount of logging in and out, hard resetting phone, resetting car. Just stayed stuck at "disconnected" the Apple car play and bluetooth media connect and work fine but when its happening if you look in your bluetooth devices the one with the last part of your VIN+mache as the name will be stuck on disconnected.

If you remove/reset the PAAK system and add the phone as a key again it will then connect to the vin+machE BT device and work fine.

The only other fix I have attempted is I re-wrote the config to the RFA module, this seems to have fixed it for know *knock on wood*

 

[bbulkow]

A few things:

I have a Pixel Fold with various bluetooth issues. All kinds of things don't work right. When I have problems with PAAK not recognized, I turn off bluetooth for about 5 seconds then restart bluetooth. FordPass attempts a reconnect. I know OP is on IOS but I think this is a good voodoo to keep in the bag of tricks.

I keep the fob in the car with a faraday bag. I also do this because once in a blue moon I do valet parking and I don't trust they'll figure out how to use the Valet Code system. It's certainly true that having the fob without battery is elegant and more theft-proof.

Good to know about the "foot on brake" to bring up the keyboard. What will they think of next.

 

[AliRafiee]

I had PAAK not work a couple of times in the past 2 years. I soon realized that I had turned Bluetooth off on my phone.

 

[Dysan911]

Just leave the battery out and put the fob in the holder if you want to use it. No battery required.

True and I suppose you can still use that FOB holder with the battery flipped if you just need to get the car started and be on your way but it's nice knowing that battery is in there in case you find yourself needing to hand over a fully functional Fob for those rare situations where you might end up using a Valet or you brought your vehicle in for some sort of service and have been so spoiled with only needing your phone as a key that you forgot to snag the other spare working Fob for them. . Now you can simply flip the battery around and hand it over which helps reduce confusion when the fob behaves as they'd expect it to in regards to starting, locking, and unlocking and not having to explain anything about the fob holder location or give out the Door pillar code.

 

[spicy_taco]

If my car gets stolen and the insurance company finds out there was a key fob in the car, won't they deny compensation?

 

[sockmeister]

Yes it is a recent thing, I am also not in EA and I noticed it when my car said no key detected one morning after updating with FDRS so I figured a powertrain update messed with it.
Jump to the next time it locks me out at work, that wasn't as fun but the password worked fine.

No amount of logging in and out, hard resetting phone, resetting car. Just stayed stuck at "disconnected" the Apple car play and bluetooth media connect and work fine but when its happening if you look in your bluetooth devices the one with the last part of your VIN+mache as the name will be stuck on disconnected.

If you remove/reset the PAAK system and add the phone as a key again it will then connect to the vin+machE BT device and work fine.

The only other fix I have attempted is I re-wrote the config to the RFA module, this seems to have fixed it for know *knock on wood*

This seems to be relatively recent.
I've owned 2 Mach-Es now -- the first was a 2021 Job 1 Premium. PAAK had the typical quirks for 3 years, but never really required a full PAAK reset to work. Usually some combination of rebooting the phone, quitting the app, and toggling bluetooth would do it.

On my 2023 Mach-E GT, the problem seems different. So far it's happened to me twice, and seems to happen almost exactly once a month.
Basically, it'll work almost flawlessly for about 4 weeks. And then on a random day, even after recently driving it, PaaK completely refuses connect at all -- no amount of rebooting, force closing, or toggling bluetooth will resolve it. It's almost as though the "key" expired. The car doesn't recognize it.

The only solution so far when this happens is to do a PaaK reset and create a new paired key again. I'm going to start logging the days when it occurs and see if there's a pattern.

 

[Frankis843]

I got stranded today because the backup passcode keyboard would not pop up too.
Can the passcode only be used one time before the physical key is used?

 

[Ford Motor Company]

I got stranded today because the backup passcode keyboard would not pop up too.
Can the passcode only be used one time before the physical key is used?

Hi Frank! I can look into your Mach-E's concern on my end. To get started, could you please send a private message over with the name/location of your local Ford dealer and your Mach-E's VIN?

 

[K2H]

This happened to me again today, too. 23 GTPE. I was able to start climate control and unlock door with phone but was not detected. This also set the alarm off which was fun as I couldn’t turn it off. After I was also locked out with the other recent big bug, getting really tired of this.

 

[phil]

I got stranded today because the backup passcode keyboard would not pop up too.
Can the passcode only be used one time before the physical key is used?

No, it can be used dozens of times without a key.

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