When a new car’s engine breaks down while still under guarantee, it costs the car company a lot of money, and the owner is in a lot of pain. Recently, Ford has had more engine problems than it should have, which prompted the government to look into the matter more. According to Automotive News, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) started looking into about 25,000 2021 Ford Broncos with the 2.7-liter EcoBoost V6 in July 2022. The agency began looking into it after getting 26 reports about the car losing power on the highway and unable to start up again. The Office of Defects at the NHTSA stepped up the probe on Friday. After Ford showed proof that both the 2.7-liter and 3.0-liter EcoBoost engines might have problems, the agency is now looking for a technical review to determine how big the problem is. Between 2021 and 2022, the Ford Bronco, Edge, Explorer, and F-150, all of which have these engines, will be tested. The Lincoln Aviator and Nautilus models for 2021 and 2022 will also be examined. In a document about the investigation, the NHTSA said, “During the investigation, multiple contributing factors were found that can cause the intake valves in the engines in question to break.” Ford confirmed to the group that a broken valve usually leads to “catastrophic engine failure,” which means the whole engine needs to be replaced. Ford thinks that the broken intake valves were caused by problems with how they were made. It says that the Silchrome Lite metal used to make the valves can become “hard and brittle” if it gets too hot during the machining process. Ford started making valves with Silchrome 1, a new metal less likely to cause this problem, in October 2021. The carmaker told the NHTSA that it thought most of the failures caused by this problem had already happened since faulty valves often fail soon after installation. So far, there have been no reports of crashes, injuries, or deaths caused by the problems with the EcoBoost engine. The NHTSA says that the probe was expanded so that the full scope of the problem on the ground could be found out. The government also wants to know if Ford’s change in engineering solves the problem. Once everything has been taken care of, the NHTSA will either ask Ford to issue a recall for safety reasons or to stop the case.
