My husband was on his way home from work tonight and without warning all of a sudden warning lights came on (something stabilitrak and something about reduced engine power) and it just shut down basically. It wouldn't drive or rev but the lights were still on and the battery level on the dash was low. He was barely able to coast to the side of the road. He tried restarting it and nothing. Thankfully he wasn't far from home and before we decided to tow it, my dad went over and was able to jump it and it immediately started back up. He was able to drive it home perfectly fine, but the engine light was on. My husband used his code reader and both U0100 and P0700 came up. He left it to run for a bit and restarted it a few times with no issues.

He's guessing the issue is the battery especially when it was able to be jumped so quickly? For the past month when he turns the truck on it takes a few seconds to turn over but wouldn't listen to me to get it checked. Now the past few days has been in the negatives for weather and that isn't helpful either. We've had the truck 3 years and no idea when the battery was last replaced. Not sure if it's relevant to this but we did have the transmission replaced last year also.

Just looking for insight. We have put so much money into this thing, he's tired of taking it to the garage. Thanks!

 

Hello and welcome.
Before getting into the error codes, the "service stabilitrac/reduced power" messages point to a common issue of a bad ground(s). This generation are notorious for bad electrical ground issues. I got the same messages/symptoms as you not long after i bought my used 2016 and after doing some extensive digging online (theres a couple videos on Youtube about this issue), the fix in my case was replacing the battery and then doing the following. You need to clean/reconnect some of the ground wires. Theres a ground connection point under each of the front dash speakers and a main ground under the truck behind the passenger side front tire where one of the negative battery cables runs down the firewall and is bolted to the frame of the truck. The two under the dash speakers were actually a bit loose on mine because when they were installed, the ring terminals were partially sitting on the rubber dash pad (under the top dash panel & speaker) and not making a good tight connection so i cut back the rubber a bit on the pad and then tightened them correctly. For the main ground, i removed the bolt and ring terminal, cleaned both and the frame surface with a wire wheel and reconnected, then i sprayed it with an anti corrosion spray (you could also use spray paint just to keep it covered) and i havent had the issue since. Now on to the codes, the U0100 code means a loss of communication with the ECM (engine control module) or the PCM (powertrain control module) and one of the symptoms for the code is a weak or low battery, so that may be the issue for that. I would take the battery to your local parts store and have them load test the battery to see if its weak or outright bad. Most batteries these days are 3 or 3.5 year batteries so if you've had the truck 3 years and dont know the age of the battery, it may be one of your causes and when combined with a possible bad ground situation, it plays hell with an electrical system. As for the P0700 code, thats a transmission related code which may be deceiving because the code may also show up because of the other code/bad or weak battery issue you may be having. I would start with testing the battery, fixing the grounds, clearing the codes, and see if it comes back. If he P0700 code comes back, then chances are its either the TCM (trans control module), trans range selector switch, or shift solenoid being the most common issues so have it checked by the transmission company you used. Considering you already had the trans replaced, i would say its probably a secondary error caused by the other issue(s). Hope this gives some insight on what direction to start with.

 

Thanks for your reply! My husband thankfully has the day off today and is going to take it to our local car part store to have it scanned and check the battery. I told him to have his buddy follow him just in case!