The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced on Monday that it was enhancing and broadening its probe into 708,000 Ford Motor (F.N) trucks and sport utility vehicles related to catastrophic engine failures linked to a defective valve.
According to the EPA, cars may suddenly lose power under normal driving circumstances owing to catastrophic engine failure linked to a possibly defective valve in 2.7 L and 3.0 L EcoBoost engines.
The inquiry includes cars from the Ford Bronco, Edge, Explorer, and F-150 as well as the Lincoln Aviator and Nautilus model years 2021 and 2022.
NHTSA opened a defect petition study in May in response to a request from certain owners, starting a preliminary assessment in July 2022 into 25,000 cars, and is now elevating the investigation to an engineering analysis, a necessary step before it may seek a recall.
Ford is collaborating with the NHTSA to help their inquiry, according to a representative for the carmaker.
487 warranty claims and 328 consumer complaints about the cars under examination, according to NHTSA records.
According to the report, examination of the data provided by Ford “revealed that the alleged defect is present across the ‘Nano’ engine family, which includes both the 2.7L and 3.0L EcoBoost engine variants.”
The “Silchrome Lite” alloy, which Ford said was used to make the faulty valves, is capable of becoming “excessively hard and brittle if an over-temperature condition occurs during the machining of the component.”
Ford said that an October 2021 design modification resulted in a different alloy being used for the intake valve. Ford continued by stating that it thought “defective intake valves commonly fail early in a vehicle’s life and has suggested that the majority of failures have already occurred.”
