Another one checking in. 2008 FEH audiophile edition with navigation. Found this board through google.

I didn't drive my car all weekend, and when I started it for work yesterday morning, it said Jan 05 2004. Of course today, it says Jan 06

I would be happy with just making it go away at this point, without putting a piece of electrical tape over it.

 

Hi all, I have a Mercury Mariner (same car, different skin) 2008 with the audiophile / navigation package and I'm having this issue as well. Can't find anything about changing the date online or in the owner's manual. Hopefully we can figure out what's going on soon!

 

My 2008 Escape Hybrid did the same thing as everyone above. Jan 2, 2004. Very strange indeed!

 

Glad to find this discussion and know I am not alone. I called Ford Corporation (800-392-3673) and explained the problem to them. I was told that they could not do anything about it and recommended that I take it to a dealership to have a technician look at it.

Apparently Ford no longer has the development team for this system, since they created the SYNC system a few years later. Did Ford put a shelf-life or something for this system that caused it to revert back to Jan 4, 2004 for all the 2008 FEH systems on the same day? Did they not expect this vehicle to last as long as it has?

Not sure to what extent the dealership can help or what it would cost to fix the problem. We didn't do anything to the vehicle to cause this issue, because it is [apparently] a widespread problem with this specific make/model.

Guess it's back to square one, unless someone was able to find a better solution.

 

Comedy of errors and circular firing squad, manufacturer says to see the dealership and dealership says to contact the manufacturer.

Black electrical tape seems to be the solution till we can get a real solution to this one.....

 

I noticed the same issue today with my 2008 mercury mariner with navigation. I hope it gets a fix.

 

I have a theory that the date is set by GPS for those of us with the navigation system. We have been bitten by the week count rollover. If I am correct a fix would be unlikely as if wound require a new GPS device.

 

The date cannot be fixed. That is the official word from my Ford service center. (I took my Escape in this week to look at my acceleration issue mentioned above.)
Apparently, the date in the car's system can only be set through 2014. I said that it had been showing 2023 until this past week, and they don't know why that was possible. But the technicians are unable to manually reset the date to anything after 2014 due to the system limitation.

 

Wow. And the fact that it was only supposed to go to 2014?? That's crazy. Not great, Ford. Thank you for reporting back.

 

Agreed. January 01, 2004 is 1024 weeks (2^10) from August 18, 2023. This is a classic GPS rollover bug. Only a firmware update (unlikely at this point) or new hardware could fix it.