Tailgate problems of the 2017 Ford F-250

Tailgate will not open, using button on truck or on key pod.

On more than 20 separate occasions the tailgate has randomly opened on its own while truck was in motion on highway. In one instance this allowed the load I was carrying at 55 mph to fall out the back of the truck and onto the highway nearly causing an accident.

I have owned a 2017 f250 super duty vehicle for a little over a year and twice the tailgate has opened when driving. The first time was not long after I had the truck in the fall of 2018 and thought maybe I had left it down, although it made no sense since I had not loaded anything in the bed of the truck, but someone waved me down in the neighborhood as I was driving out of the neighborhood. However, on the expressway, less than five weeks ago, in austin, texas (we live in atlanta and was visiting our son,) the tailgate came down and a piece of luggage fell out in heavy traffic and I was only notified of the problem after several drivers came up beside us and yelled out their windows that the tailgate was down. To my knowledge no auto was damaged behind us but hard to know for sure since we were going about 35 miles per hour and not sure how far back the piece of luggage fell out. Sadly it had some of my wife's medicines and other items amounting to approximately $600 in total value and we could not recover the piece of luggage. Luckily the other items did not fall out (several heavy boxes of items for our son). In looking online today, I found that other owners have had this problem and wanted to report it. I will be glad to furnish additional information if required.

The tailgate is electronic and is opening on it's own while in motion. With my 5th wheel RV connected I cannot tell when the tailgate opens and this time it damaged both the tailgate and my RV when I made a right turn. I also lost cargo that was in the bed.

I am having the same issue as in case # pe18-011. My tailgate will open randomly on its own. The tailgate release will actuate over and over when the button is pushed once. Took it to a Ford dealer and they confirmed that it is the same issue as TSB 17-2196. Water gets into a wiring harness. This should be a safety recall as the tailgate opening while towing could cause a limit to steering ability as the tailgate can make contact with the front of the trailer. It can also cause damage to the tailgate itself if it lands on something.

The tailgate opens by itself. It has happened when parked. It has happened when moving in town, and on the highway. It is a base model with a manual tail gate, so no key fob release could cause it. The truck has done it a lot, and there is no pattern to it.

Tl the contact owns a 2017 Ford F-250. While driving 55 mph, the automatic tailgate activated independently. The contact pulled the vehicle over off of the roadway and closed the tailgate. When the contact re-entered the vehicle, the tailgate activated independently again. The vehicle was taken to gjovik Ford inc (located at 2600 us-34, sandwich, IL 60548, (630) 552-8058) where it was diagnosed that water made contact with the wiring harness that controlled the tailgate. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failure. The approximate failure mileage was 37,000.

I continue to have issues with the tailgate opening on its own. Today it came down sometime while I was traveling down the interstate to work. I will eventually loose something out of the back, and I have a cover on the bed, so I cannot see when the tailgate is down. My truck does not fall in the time frame Ford has on their TSB so I the dealership cannot address the problem. May truck was an August build and the TSB for the problem only covers trucks built up to July.

Tl the contact owns a 2017 Ford F-250. While the vehicle was reversing and towing a 26 foot trailer, the tailgate dropped down and crashed onto a tool box. There were no warning indicators illuminated. The vehicle was taken to five star Ford (3800 highway 78, snellville, GA 30039, (678) 384-4242) where it was determined that the vehicle was not covered under a warranty. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was contacted and provided case number: cas16909652. A decision on repairing the vehicle was pending. The failure mileage was 75,000.

I recently parked my tt at our new RV campground. While backing it up the gate opened randomly in the middle of a turn and dented the top of my tailgate. Extremely upset I new it was going to be a hard case to submit to warranty for them to believe that it wasn't user error. A few days later I left work and drove 20 miles down the highway only to get to where I was going and get out of my truck to see the tailgate down with a full propane tank in the back an a $1000 worth of fishing poles. Today I took my wife to lunch and when we parked and got out the gate was down again. We ate went a few miles down the road, shopped and unlocked the doors using the fob and the gate dropped. That's twice in one day. It was getting worse. Shortly after, I got a last minute call to move my tt due to rising waters here in buchanan at the RV park and while I was getting ready to leave the gate opened on its own while the doors were unlocked. So I got out my camera and closed the gate. Within 20 seconds it opened again. This time I video taped it and texted the video to my Ford warranty rep. I rushed my truck to covert Ford and by gods good grace the tailgate opened repeatedly in front of every Ford rep working. I'll let you know what they find. My truck is a 2017 f250 lariat ultimate. I have a video but it is 9. 63mb. Email me if you want it.

Twice now I've had the tailgate of my truck (lariat) has opened on its own. I'm unable to reproduce the fault so I haven't taken it in yet, but both openings were unexpected.

Automatic electric tail gate opens randomly without driver selection. This has happened several times while vehicle is moving and has caused damage to tailgate and travel trailer. No indication tailgate is open given to driver. This happened within the first 100 miles after purchase, the first time. It happened several times after that. Last incident I had just pulled onto the freeway and was flagged down by a passing trucker while I was driving at 65mph that my tailgate had opened. Imagine if something had fallen out of the bed of my truck and caused another motorist to crash. I had heard a creaking sound while turning onto a roadway with my airstream travel trailer attached. The tailgate had crunched against the propane bottles causing damage to the tailgate, the propane bottles, and the cover. This had happened to me several times in other instances but thought it was a fluke until this last event while towing my airstream travel trailer. I contacted Ford dealer where I purchased in austin; they submitted to Ford and Ford said they would pay part of the bill, but I am on the hook to pay also. This is a Ford wiring harness issue. Several other people have reported same issue. Ford should fix this 100% before something serious accident occurs from items falling out of the back of the truck when bed opens automatically.

Power tailgate is coming open while driving. Tailgate was damaged due to it coming open while towing a trailer. Tailgate has opened on two occasions and requiring replacement both times. Both times the tailgate has come open it has been while there was a trailer connected. Once while driving down the highway and the other while pulling out of a parking lot. First occurrence was 05/22/2018 and the second occurrence was 10/08/2018.

Automatic tailgate assist just randomly goes down either while driving, while in park, or even just for no reason. This happened while in park with a trailer on the back and caused $2000 in damage which we had to pay for. Luckily all the other times it has happened, there was not a trailer on the back. We were not touching the key fob, so it didn't get "pinched" in a pocket or anything.

My 2017 Ford sd F-250 tailgate has opened by itself on several occasions. Several times last year both stationary and in motion. It has happened twice this year while stationary. I've never seen it happen in real time only after it has happened. In 2017 on 2 different occasions I was going down the highway and passing cars pointed to my tailgate. This year 2018 the truck was parked at work for several hours and when I walked to it the tail gate was wide open. The key fob is always in my front pants pocket.

The automatic tailgate in the 2017 king ranch f250 can come open without any warning when in drive. This has happened to me at least 4 times; most recently while pulling my airstream trailer while in utah, causing damage to my airstream propane bottles, the aluminum cover, and also putting a dent in my f250 tailgate. This issue could cause serious problems in traffic, should something fall out of the back during this malfunction. My experience recently: I had just entered the freeway and was accelerating to freeway speeds in utah, after a quick stop for takeout breakfast at mcdonalds. A trucker flagged me down to pull over as I entered the freeway. He ran back and told me my tailgate was open. Upon inspection, it appeared the open tailgate had caused damage to my propane tanks on my airstream, the aluminum cover, and also put a dent in the tailgate when leaving mcdonalds parking lot onto the street to get back onto the freeway. We were lucky nothing had fallen out of the rear bed, as it was packed with camping gear. The automatic tailgate can only be activated by the �keyfob� or by manually pressing the release button on the tailgate when unlocked. 1) there is no way to open or lock the tailgate other than the push button on the tailgate or with the keyfob. 2) there is no indication the tailgate is down, once in drive. (safety issue) 3) the tailgate can/does open intermittently on occasion while in drive without any operator intervention.

My wife and daughter were traveling south on interstate 55 north of sikeston, missouri. My wife was driving the truck. And was at the time of the incident passing a semi-truck. She noticed the truck lost power in the engine and a light came on on the dash. A message appeared on the dash relating to the power loss. She was able to get the truck to the shoulder safely. As soon as she stopped the truck, she noticed smoke coming from under the hood and told our daughter to get out of the truck. As soon as they got to the tailgate flames started shooting out of the truck. She saw that the fire started on the lower right hand side of the engine with flames dropping down about one foot from the front passenger tire. This is the location of the oil filter on the truck. The truck was soon engulfed in flames. This incident happened at approximately 3:30 in the afternoon. She had the oil changed at the Ford dealership in cape girardeau, missouri (Ford groves) earlier that day. Luckily there were no injuries and only property damage resulting from the fire. If there had been a child in a child restraint, it could have been tragic. The truck was towed by d & k towing and stored at their facility in sikeston. The scott county fire department responded to the fire. The truck and thousands of dollars in personal property were destroyed in the incident.

April 2, 2018. I own a Ford f250 super duty platinum with 4753 miles on it, purchased Nov 2017. This week was the 1st time I towed my travel trailer (gvw 7800lb) and on three (3) different occasions the tail popped open by it self. All three occasions I was turning at slow speeds and was traveling on flat pavement. The result of the unintentional openings was damage to the tailgate when the tailgate hit the trailer stanchion while turning.

Uncommanded tailgate opening. Tail gate opens and drops all by itself. This happens sporadically but persistently. Ford dealer has been unable to fix, after repeated service visits including involvement of Ford factory technicians. Uncommanded opening most frequently occurs when shifting to reverse, releasing parking brake and/of shifting into drive. This has been going on for along time, months and months. Dealer performed work called for by 10/17 tech service bulliten, didnt fixit. Has replaced wiring harnness, relevant switches, checked and rechecked all connections and replaced master control module. . . None of all that worked. This is dangerous as you dont know when tailgate is open. Ford has a serious problem with this and factory seems completely dismissive of the issue. This problem has been going on for months and months.

I have experienced multiple occasions of issues with the power tailgate release on my 2017 Ford F-250 super duty truck. In most cases, the problem exhibits as a failure to open when the button is pushed, but what I believe makes it a safety issue is that on two separate occasions, the tailgate has opened while driving down the highway, without the open button being pressed. This could result in items being carried in the vehicle falling into the roadway at highway speeds, which could result in serious injuries or death to other drivers on the roadway.

Tailgate has been opening on its own while driving. The last time this happened I was driving with a trailer attached and the tailgate dropped while driving and the tailgate and trailer were damaged. Not sure what caused the tailgate to open on its own. Key fob was on the dash when this happened so couldn't of been pushed on accident. Vehicle was in motion on highway. Damage occured when turning, the tailgate caught the cargo door(s) of the attached fifth-wheel trailer.

In 2017 I purchased a new F-250 super duty pick-up from lithia Ford, boise, idaho. Unfortunately I have experienced the unexpected opening of my tail gate numerous times while turning street corners, in motion, on boise, idaho, city streets, while pulling my RV, and at random times. It has resulted in damaging my RV propane tanks, and resulted in two permanent dents at the top of my tail gate. The last incident occurred November 15, 2019 when turning a street corner, my tail gate fell open, and my new (never shot . 17 cal rifle (in a hard black plastic case)) rifle fell out, and was never recovered. I filed a police report with the garden city police department #2019-02600. I even had one incident where the tail gate fell open, while stationary in my drive way. . Read more...