Back in September 2024, The Blue Oval recalled 90,736 2021-2022 Ford Bronco, Ford F-150, Ford Edge, Ford Explorer, Lincoln Nautilus, and Lincoln Aviator vehicles equipped with the 2.7L V6 EcoBoost and 3.0L V6 EcoBoost engines over faulty intake valves that could break and lead to a total engine failure. The automaker instructed dealers to perform an engine cycle test and replace it if necessary, but regardless, a class action lawsuit was filed against Ford this past January. Now, Ford is asking the court to dismiss that same lawsuit.
According to Car Complaints, Ford has asked the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan to dismiss the lawsuit – Barkus, et al., v. Ford Motor Company – on the grounds that neither of the plaintiffs have had any trouble with their vehicles or the EcoBoost engines that power them. “They do not even allege their own intake valves are actually out of specification and thus have any heightened risk of fracture,” the automaker stated. “Instead, the premise of their case is as follows: Other people with vehicles manufactured during a different time period had a possibility of being manufactured with out-of-spec valves.”
Ford ultimately determined that only around one percent of the 90k recalled vehicles have defective intake valves made from a material known as Silchrome Lite, which can become “excessively hard and brittle if exposed to over-temperatures during the machining of the component.” Once it made this discovery, Ford stopped using that material in October 2021, replacing it with an alloy called Silchrome 1, which has thus far proven to be trouble-free. The automaker also created a customer satisfaction program (24N12) that provides extended warranty coverage to impacted vehicles for 10 years or 150,000 miles.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) closed its own investigation into this matter following Ford’s recall on the grounds that it believed this action was sufficient. The agency noted that “defective intake valves will likely fail at a low time in service and . . . the majority of subject vehicles equipped with defective valves have already experienced a failure. The vast majority of failures have occurred before 20,000 miles with over half of all reported failures occurring before 5,000 miles.”
Comments
I think maybe the gatekeepers of warranty actions, i.e., dealership service departments may prove more troublesome with claims than Ford Motor Company itself. Reluctant compensation for labor and other associated cost reimbursement from FMC, I think may be the culprit.
I’d like to know when Ford is going to take responsibility for all of the EcoBoost 2.0 owners who are having serious issues with their engines that are experiencing coolant intrusions and requiring replacement to the tune of around $9k. This often isn’t showing up until just out of warranty. To-date the issue has been acknowledged by Ford in TSB 22-2229 but no recall has been issued. This is a massive issue and a huge financial hit for owners, and is in fact a safety concern as well. But Ford customers are out in the cold. Ford knows that it’s an issue. They know that the engines in question were found in 2015-2019 models and were built in the Detroit plant. They know what the cause was and they have fixed it in the replacement engines. So it was clearly a faulty engine design. But no movement from Ford to rectify this major issue. It’s unconscionable.