Diagram I have is showing it in that area. Look under dash to the left side of steering wheel. Sucker has to be there somewhere. It will be a smaller stand alone box. Did you try the horn unplug route?

 

The little black box in your picture is a relay. I don't believe that's the one, but that is what they will look like.

 

According to the manual, that's the accessories relay.

I pulled both of the 30A and tried the horn, but it turns out both of those are for the power window and power lock motors. I didn't have the manual in front of me at the time, which probably would've been better than hitting the horn at 10PM. Oops

I'll dig around in there again tonight.

 

So I went and looked. I didn't see anything like I expected.

However, I did more Googling and came across a post in a Ford Escape forum where they were discussing trailer wiring and the guy showed a picture of a big blue box with two large harnesses plugged into it. I saw something similar to that above the fuse box in the kick panel but can't recall if it was blue or yellow. He said this was a relay, but not which one.

I snagged his picture. Is this it?



Edit: I asked a buddy of mine and he managed to find this. According to the image on that page, it's on the back of the fuse box in the kick panel.



/facepalm

 

THATS THE ONE. sorry, got all wound up.

 

Any luck?

 

I can't get the danged thing out. It won't budge. I removed the connector from the opposite side, but it won't budge...

 

I bought some relay pulling plyers from Amazon. That sucker comes out TODAY

 

So the tool didn't help. I can't tell if the relay is melted to the fusebox or if there's a bolt on the underside holding it in. I did see that the fusebox appears to be a clamshell but wasn't able to get it apart.

After putting everything back together and driving maybe 10 minutes, the power to the Tribute died and it wouldn't start. I managed to jump it using my car but the engine acted like it was going to stall. I removed the jumpers and when I gave it gas, it died. So now it's sitting in my fiancee's father's front yard, having bested me.

I'm not totally inept when it comes to cars (I helped rebuild the engine in my first car as well as regularly do my own brakes, etc) but this Tribute has given me nothing but headaches. I'm assuming I jarred something when trying to get the relay out or there's a short somewhere and something else got fried.

UGH