We have a Ford 15 pax van in our fleet at work. It had developed a whine from the tranny. I had gotten a letter from Ford three years back offering an extended warranty on the tranny for certain VINs, one of which was ours, and saying that there could be problems with a bearing in the planetary gearset and that this would cause a whine.
I sent this letter to our tech and then forgot about it.
Last week, our tech called me, described the van as having the whine and remembered the letter from Ford. He asked me to come out to the garage and listen to it. You have no idea how flattering it is to have an ASE master who had years of shop experience before taking a pay cut to come to work for us ask one's opinion on a diagnoses is.
Anyway, the whine did seem to be coming from the tranny. The dead giveaway was that when you loaded the tranny by selecting either first or reverse at rest, the noise went away.
So, our tech called around and selected a Ford dealer. They began work by removing the pan. Their service writer called me and said that their tech found a lot of metal debris in the pan, which would be consistent with the bearing failure that we suspected. He then said that they'd need to do a teardown to find out for sure and that if the bearing problem turned out not to be the cause, we'd have to pay them around a grand. Having little choice, I gave the okay. The guy called me back today and said that the bearing was the problem and that there was other consequent damage and that Ford had authorized a complete rebuild which wouldn't cost us a dime.
Kudos to both the honest dealer service department and Ford for stepping up to the plate.
Incidentally, the vehicle in question has 118K on it so it's not like it's almost new.
I sent this letter to our tech and then forgot about it.
Last week, our tech called me, described the van as having the whine and remembered the letter from Ford. He asked me to come out to the garage and listen to it. You have no idea how flattering it is to have an ASE master who had years of shop experience before taking a pay cut to come to work for us ask one's opinion on a diagnoses is.
Anyway, the whine did seem to be coming from the tranny. The dead giveaway was that when you loaded the tranny by selecting either first or reverse at rest, the noise went away.
So, our tech called around and selected a Ford dealer. They began work by removing the pan. Their service writer called me and said that their tech found a lot of metal debris in the pan, which would be consistent with the bearing failure that we suspected. He then said that they'd need to do a teardown to find out for sure and that if the bearing problem turned out not to be the cause, we'd have to pay them around a grand. Having little choice, I gave the okay. The guy called me back today and said that the bearing was the problem and that there was other consequent damage and that Ford had authorized a complete rebuild which wouldn't cost us a dime.
Kudos to both the honest dealer service department and Ford for stepping up to the plate.
Incidentally, the vehicle in question has 118K on it so it's not like it's almost new.
