Ford has ‘fessed to four more quality problems that require owners to visit service centers.
The 3.5-liter F-150 pickup, Expedition, and Lincoln Navigator SUVs may have a misaligned oil plug. Transit Connects could overheat, F-150 hybrids lose drive, and the Expedition has seatbelt problems. When you’re an automaker pumping out millions of vehicles every year, it’s understandable that a few might suffer quality gremlins. But last year, Ford announced far more recalls than rival GM, and this month it dropped another four campaigns, only two weeks after announcing four others and two more we didn’t cover.
The first of the new recalls concerns 4,163 examples of the 2024-2025 F-150, Expedition, and 2024 Lincoln Navigator, the common thread there being not their shared ladder-frame chassis, but the 3.5-liter V6 in the front of it.
Ford engineers discovered that some engines are fitted with a misaligned oil plug in the cylinder head, which could cause an oil leak. At best, that’s going to eventually make a mess of your driveway, but there’s a chance it could cause a fire, or even make you spin out.
The Expedition and Navigator return for an encore in our second installment of recall action, but this one relates to 105,322 SUVs built for the 2018-2020 model years and is to do with faulty seatbelts. The belt pretensioner in one or both front seats might lock, preventing the belt from extending or spooling back up. Ford dealers will take a look and replace the retractor if necessary.
Next up, we’ve got the F-150 Hybrid, and this being a 2025 model we’re talking about, only 47 examples are affected. The problem? An incorrect fuse in the high voltage battery junction box can fail, leading to a loss of drive power.
And finally, it’s the Transit Connect’s turn to take the drive of shame back to its nearest Ford service depot. A total of 152 examples built for 2019-2020 need their powertrain control module (PCM) software upgraded because they were left with the wrong code even after Ford published a service bulletin in 2020, making some of the vans overheat.
Ford’s last recall bonanza came in the middle of March when it announced that 60,000 units across seven different model lines needed TLC. Problems dealt with by those four recalls included malfunctioning cameras and windows failing to retract when detecting objects. And earlier in March, Ford announced eight different recalls, including five for the Maverick alone. Ten bucks says we’ll get another one before the end of the month.