Ford Motor Co. recalls almost 900,000 pick-up trucks

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Ford Motor Co. recalls almost 900,000 pick-up trucks.

Ford Motor Co. is recalling about 874,000 trucks that have engine block heaters after reports of fires.

The vehicles affected in the recall include 2015-2019 models of F-150 vehicles built in Dearborn, Mich., and Kansas City. Also affected are 2017-19 models of Super Duty vehicles built in Ohio and Kentucky.

The recall affects vehicles with engine block heaters. Anyone affected by this?
 
Ford Article Link
"Dealers will inspect the engine block heater cable and replace it if it is damaged or corroded. If there are no signs of damage or corrosion, dealers will apply dielectric grease to the splice connector and reconnect. If a replacement cable is required but unavailable, the customer will receive an information sheet and will be notified via mail for a follow-up appointment once parts become available."
 
Sounds like a supplier sent Ford ~900,000 cheaply made heater assemblies.
Ever see a cheap faucet dissolve in the presence of water? Garbage metal is probably what the connectors were made of.

The fun questions include:
Were the bad heaters made shoddily by a dishonest manufacturer?
Did Ford spec baddies to maximize profit margin but got something even cheaper?
 
No need to panic. A little grease on the connection and most owners will be good to go. Most of these will be fixed by the time it takes to drink a hot cup of coffee.
 
I plug in at -5F. Just checked, according to the weather map, there are no locations in the Continental USA where the temperature will drop below 0 F tonight. Santa might be plugging in but no one else in the lower 48 needs to!
lol.gif
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted by Kira
Makes you sorta wonder why car companies don't put dielectric grease on things in the first place.....


$0.02 of grease on 900k units is $18,000. Spread that over the entire lineup and on every connector and you can see just how quickly this adds up.

While I don't like this reasoning, it is the true reason.
 
Originally Posted by joekingcorvette
No need to panic. A little grease on the connection and most owners will be good to go. Most of these will be fixed by the time it takes to drink a hot cup of coffee.


Except that every Ford dealer I go to for any kind of warranty or recall repair, it's "can you leave it with us all day?"
 
Agree RamFan. How many times when working on you're /our vehicles do we see something the manufacturer did and we say I could have made it or designed this better. Why put it here when over there would be easier.
 
Originally Posted by RamFan
Originally Posted by Kira
Makes you sorta wonder why car companies don't put dielectric grease on things in the first place.....


$0.02 of grease on 900k units is $18,000. Spread that over the entire lineup and on every connector and you can see just how quickly this adds up.

While I don't like this reasoning, it is the true reason.

It's a gamble they took and lost, they're supposed to "engineer" the risk out of it so that the gambling favors them but apparently they didn't do that and counted the beans instead.

The cost of this recall campaign, possible replacement wires, the labor, all of the lawsuits and headaches caused by burning trucks and the hit to reputation, was not worth skimping out on greasing a connector that's in a place that is exposed to corrosion. This smells like bean counters fudged it up yet again. The saddest part is at a minimum they're going to have to grease the connectors like they should have done from the start, that's the lower bound to their cost, the upper bound however is not known until they finish the recall campaign. Had they just greased the connectors from the start they would have been limited to the lower bound but oh well.
 
Originally Posted by Brybo86
My cousins 2014 Ford focus hatchback just randomly caught fire this morning after a short drive to the grocery store.


Is it not suppose to look like that ?? I thought they called them hot hatchbacks.

They just got cheap when they bought the cords from probably some china source as I see a lot of china made parts on many brands of cars these days, you know the bean counters a good part from a known supplier is 2 cents and this place will do it for 1.3 cents.
 
Originally Posted by RamFan
Originally Posted by Kira
Makes you sorta wonder why car companies don't put dielectric grease on things in the first place.....


$0.02 of grease on 900k units is $18,000. Spread that over the entire lineup and on every connector and you can see just how quickly this adds up.

While I don't like this reasoning, it is the true reason.

+ labor.
 
Originally Posted by Kira
Makes you sorta wonder why car companies don't put dielectric grease on things in the first place.....

The money they saved (on the part contract and the grease application) sure looks like money that would have been well spent in retrospect. Beats recalling a million vehicles...
 
pennies make dollars, BUT with the OVERPRICED TRUCKS today its like when a top paid NFL player gets fined 20G for a hit, its just POCKET CHANGE + considered the cost of doing business!!!!
 
Originally Posted by RamFan
$0.02 of grease on 900k units is $18,000. Spread that over the entire lineup and on every connector and you can see just how quickly this adds up.

Probably less than 1% of owners will actually take it into the dealer.
 
Originally Posted by benjamming
Ford Article Link
"Dealers will inspect the engine block heater cable and replace it if it is damaged or corroded. If there are no signs of damage or corrosion, dealers will apply dielectric grease to the splice connector and reconnect. If a replacement cable is required but unavailable, the customer will receive an information sheet and will be notified via mail for a follow-up appointment once parts become available."

The wife works at Ford and came home today snd said the recall involves pulling the plug and and looking for corrosion, if they dont find any...i cut her off and said "they will put some grease on it right" she was like how did you know. I said cuz they should have just done it in tbe first place. I live in canada, we have winter and us e salt. I put grease on anything i do electrical wise
 
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