Ford owners left out of pocket - BBC London

Imagine you’re driving on a busy motorway when your car suddenly loses all power - or worse, you start to see smoke and flames coming from your engine. Hundreds of Ford owners across the UK say they’re experiencing catastrophic failures with their Ford ecoboost engines and in some cases they are being left thousands of pounds out of pocket. Keeley Donovan went to investigate.

[motobazuka]

Engine of the year! But not engine of 3 years!

[Discretesignals]

I work on cars for a living. Thanks to Ford, GM, and Chrysler I have lots of tools, a paid off house with a pool, and food in the fridge.

[robertpaget]

There’s a red flag in itself a 1.0 tugging that big heavy car and a family down the road

[ubbgn]

That George is an intelligent guy, he bought another ford!

[uktech]

Ford's customer service stinks in the UK. It is really, really bad. The Dealership's are just as bad. If you can, *AVOID* buying a Ford. There are plenty of alternatives out there, some with 7 years warranty and a much higher level of customer service. I had a Ford Mondeo that did not lock when driven forward. I took it to a Dealership who refused to tell how to enable the feature, but were happy to charge me £60 to enable the feature. After a bit of research, I did it myself and it took 2 minutes and 16 seconds to enable the function. Charging me *£60* for *under* 3 minutes of labour is daylight robbery. I will name and shame the dealership. It was Allen Ford in Coventry. *Don't go there. You will get ripped off.*

[mr.conductor]

2:29 Pretending to understand what the mechanic is saying

[DerbJd]

Ford Engine Failures. This video seems to be painting over a BIG problem. There have been numerous problems with new Ford engines, ever since strict EU and US emissions laws have forced car makers to develop small, lightweight engines, which need to be turbocharged just to give them some power.

The metals are weak, the gasket areas are thin and cramped, and easily fatigue. Take the Focus RS (the latest one)... Ford (for some ridiculous and stupid reason) designed the engine in such a way that the four piston cylendars are actually unsupported inside engines block, but remain ‘kept in place’ only by the head gasket!!

Lots of Focus RS owners reported total engine failures at around the 20, 000 mile mark, and around 1-3 years of age. What happens, is that the engine vibrates away the gasket’s material, and begins allowing coolant to seep into the cylendars. This creates a situation where the engine loses coolant and needs topping up. But, all of a sudden, the gasket would fail completely and lots of coolant would rush into a cylendar and seize the engine up by ‘hydro-locking’ it. Along the way, it also likely overheated and warped the top and bottom sections of the engine block, resulting in a scrap engine. Fords solution? Recall Focus RS and replace head gasket with a slightly better one! A 300bhp engine relying on a wager of metal to keep it in check!! Jesus!

And since 2010, these little put-put-put three-cylendar EcoBoost engine’s have been pretty much the same. Except worse! When coolant can seep into the exhaust manifold area, this can cause detonation and fire. Not good. Imagine if a driver was startled by it, crashed and fell unconscious or injured and couldn’t get out. They would be killed.

The biggest issue is that Ford have been very dismissive to customers until class action was taken and TV jumped in too. Ford telling customers that the solution was to fit a better “Coolant Low Sensor” is NOT solving the crappy built engine issue. My advice? Stay away from second-hand Ford EcoBoost cars. If you must, lease one on HP, not buy outright.

[stevenvirdenrasmussen-jone]

I have a 10 year plus history working in Ford service departments in the US, and they have an extremely long history of making what are called in the industry here as "Industrially Acceptable" (UA)decisions when producing components. I worked for them starting in the 1980's and my first experience with them was with my 1988 Mercury Sable with the 3.0 V-6 and the AXOD automatic transmission. That transmission had a long history of failure. In my case, it was caused by a spot welded cross shaft in one of the planetary gears popping loose and essentially grenading the transmission. This was an engineering decision with the UA principle above. My more recently, I purchased a 2013 Focus with the 2.0 liter 4 cylinder coupled to the Getrag computer shifted dual clutch manual transmission. Ford, in my opinion, made a very bad decision bringing this transmission into the US, as it was designed, in my opinion, for European-style driving conditions, Try driving that transmission in San Francisco or Los Angeles traffic, and before long the clutch pack will start to chatter. It is costing them Millions to fix this, and it boils down to a very poorly advised corporate decision. Lack of field testing??

[boddylan]

Big cars shouldnt have a shitty 1.0 litre engine

[io]

Is George driving a Ford again after the insurance payout?

[piperbob]

You'd have thought that, after decades and decades of car production, testing and development, that car manufacturers would have got their products right by now !

[luckz]

So these people's Ford cars burnt and... they got themselves another Ford cars 🤔🤔🤔 Excuse me... but WTF?!

[soundseeker]

There's reason why the Ecoboost has become nicknamed the EcoBoom! I thought it was just the 2.3 in the focus RS and Mustang that had serious failures but it seems the whole lineup is pretty bad! Meanwhile my old BMW with 180, 000 miles sails on with no mechanical issues at all, just the odd sensor here and there needing replacing. German and Japanese are clearly better for reliability.

[mooke]

They were already called Ecoboom years ago, yet rubber belts submerged in oil causing oil pickup issues, holes in blocks/heads causing loss of coolant into the exhaust. If they were engineered with timing chains and made with slightly better materials around the block it would be great engine imo

[Thomas-cuhp]

George doesn't sound like a very smart person.

[MagicVato]

My neighbour had the same problem with her Ford and she wanted me to have a look at it. Anyway we ended up shagging and long story short she now uses public transport and I’m trying to sell the car on eBay for her.

[davidnl]

"Engine of the Year"...which shows that car journalists have no clue what they are voting for :-)

[vviiper]

wtf. The car doesn't have a sensor for low coolant?

[TheLewisw]

George accepted an insurance offer and got another Fiesta ST? I wouldn't buy the same car again after it went up in flames, especially due to such widespread issues!

[stevieboy]

Premature fail of the wet cambelt now a major issue. Got rid if mine before it went boom, Honda driver now