Thread regarding Ford layoffs

Ford designed 8 different wipers in-house over the decades, A-wiper through F-wiper in Rotating Electric Devices engineering area. The designs for the latest motor weren't great. Wiper linkages were supplier designed and an F-wiper engineer accused the linkage supplier of designs that were too challenging for the Ford motor. The motor chattered and you would get a growl from the engine compartment even when you weren't accelerating.

Lots of memories...seems the outside motor suppliers aren't doing any better.

Apparently these F150 owners failed to pay for the $20/month subscription for the wipers that work properly.

Wiper motors are emerging technology. Takes awhile to work the bugs out. The iPhone wasn't invented overnight ya know!

Anything electrical has a long history of recalls at Ford

Hah, looks like they are already off to a great start planning on 2023 contract negotiations. Google "uaw proposed contract negotiations 2023" and look at the form for the locals to fill out. You'll need to look at the pdf file. First line of the form states:

"UAW Local Union _________________submits the following demand which has been
approved by the membership."

Nice friendly wording to get things going. Hope they go on strike forever.

Wouldn't surprise me either. Buddy of mine works as a service manager and had all kinds of stories about things they have found in vehicles. Plenty of customers that come back with a new vehicle that has bad rattles when driving. The kind of stuff the mechanics have pulled out of door cavities, dash boards and the absolute worst is behind the evaporator. Have to pull the whole dash in many cases to find the issue. Bolts, nuts, screws are the most common but they have found beer bottles and pop cans galore. Dumping a half eaten sandwich or banana peel are other favorites.

453,000 vehicles? If true, criminal.

That could be true...

I had a college professor who used to be a UAW auto worker. He told the class a story about how the OEM he worked for (he wouldn't tell us which one) was prototyping a different material for bumpers in the 1970s.

He told us that he and his fellow union guys just didn't like the supplier reps, and they worried that the new material would increase efficiency to the point that they would need fewer UAW employees. And then he said that he and his peers intentionally sabotaged the entire prototype build. Messed up the stamping, the installations, the checks. And the trials failed and the OEM kept the existing material / process.

I wish you could have seen the pride beaming from this man as he told us that they had probably delayed that progress in bumper engineering by at least two years...

So it would not surprise me at all if some factory workers somewhere decided to sabotage wiper motors...

I heard the UAW sabotaged all of those units. Some sort of leverage for the next union negotiations. Then they blame it on the supplier that blames the engineers. Wiper motors are a cutting edge technology.