New 2020 GT350 HEP engine failure

[Hack]

To the OP: I'm sorry to hear about the engine failure you had. I know it will be a long and difficult road, but I hope you are satisfied in the end.

As far as the Voodoo failure discussions go, I'm glad that Ford is still interested in investigating all failures. I think the Voodoo is a great engine and I loved the 33,000 trouble free miles I got out of mine before I sold my GT350. I want Ford to learn everything possible from this great engine, because I'm hopeful that Ford will build something similar (even better) in the future.

I get the impression that some people think every engine is failing in the exact same way. I think it's unlikely. Engines are complicated and there are a lot of potential failure modes. We already know that Ford has changed the piston ring design and there probably are other things such as assembly techniques, manufacturing processes, inspection methods, etc. that have been changed as well.

But we all know that most of the original Voodoo engines are bulletproof. All the work Ford is doing is to reduce the percentage of engines that fail even further.

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[Stevbas]

My brand new GT350 Heritage Edition with 24 days of ownership and only 728 miles on it had engine failure and needs the whole long block engine replaced.

I bought it a brand new from a dealership showroom with 8 miles on it. I liked the looks so much that I wanted to preserve it and I invested $3600 in PPF, ceramic coating, and paint correction right after I got it. Still breaking it in and giving it the white glove treatment.

Last Friday I was driving to a nearby coffee shop and strolling in low speed and low RPM on a major street and was about to stop at a red light when I heard a loud, random, short sound from the exhaust pipe. When the traffic light turned green, the car lost all power and could barely move. I parked on the side of the road and had it towed it to the dealer.

Today I got the verdict from the dealer service center: Something broke in the valve train mechanism (cam/follower/valve), fell into the cylinder, and hosed the engine. He said it wasn’t my fault. The whole long block engine needs to be replaced and they ordered another engine under warranty.

Happy Holidays!

Sounds familiar? After this happened to me, I did search and found at least 10 other folks like me here and in other social media with similar stories: New 2020 GT350 with very low mileage had their engines fail due to valve/timing parts breaking while the car is driven gently.

Picking the car at the dealership:

Filling gas before taking it home:

24 days later, towing it to the dealer after the engine failed:

Hello There ,

The same thing happened to me at 424 miles. They will put in a new engine. Work with Ford to get an extended warranty! My car has over 2000 miles with no issues. Mine had a broken #5 valve. Love this car.

 

[mk1spyder]

It's always valvetrain, it's a fault in the timing chain system, sometimes it comes completely off sometimes it just loosens enough to smack some valves. Either way the result is the same, I think the "diagnosis" from the dealers and what we are being told is what differs. If they're not allowed to tear the engine apart how do they really know what failed lol. Mine was passenger side bank just fyi.

I bet years from now we find out what this is related to and there are upgrade parts. It's really sad all ford put into this we still have to upgrade the oil pump gear on our own, and if you don't want oil smoke after a hard track run you have to install your own ford performance oil catch can. Like really? On the R model that should have come from the factory installed.

There are a lot of things about this car that are great. I'm not a fan of how they blamed exhaust routing on why they couldn't make a traditional flat plane crank firing order etc... Let's be real you just didn't want it to sound like a ferrari lol. But the ferrari design is better sadly.

On a complete tangent look at the cargo vans you used to be able to get a transit connect cargo with an ecoboost 4 now you can't because they were all blowing up, fusions are dropping flywheels left and right, escapes/ecosports/edges blowing head gaskets still and now there is a class action lawsuit . The regular cargo vans you could get the 5 cylinder diesel, that's gone too my friend had one lose all oil pressure and drop a cylinder after 2 years. All you can get is a 3.5 which is honestly their most reliable engine. Ram went from the cp3 injection pump in 18 to the cp4 (that ford uses on the 6.7) and 2 years later in the 2021 they changed it back to a design similar to the cp3 because the cp4 scatters on the regular. There are big problems with EVERY engine they make except maybe the 3.5 it seems pretty stout. Everyone chimes in and says oh every manufacturer has that problem. That's simply not true. Ton of other manufactures that don't have regular serious engine/driveline failures across their entire line of transportation.

My plan is to keep this 350R and make Ford put about 5 or 6 engines in it on their dime with my extended warranty. Not going to modify it one bit, no burnouts, let the dealer service it so it's on record that it got all the services, and then drive it like it was intended to be driven. If I don't wind up on the 5th engine by 75k I'll be impressed either way it's the only thing I can really do to stick it to Ford.

 

[dom418]

Love how some of the folks with issues like to paint to entire motor with a broad brush of doom and gloom and inevitable failure. The use of the words “Many”, “A lot” is used freely as it relates to the number of GT350s having issues. Although your specific event sucks, you are apart of the unfortunate few and most certainly not the majority.

Every motor is prone to issues including the coyote and I own one. I don’t people realize how many thousands of voodoos were made each year. If there was a true issue we would hear much more about it.

It is all speculation as to why these isolated failures occur. In every failure, “proper” break in was followed to which I don’t believe to be the case.

The only FACT in this mess is that there are a large majority of owners who are enjoying this motor problem free.

 

[Caballus]

We don't know how many are affected. My guess it's a lot. But if we don't publicize what's going on with us, how would we know? Ford lost a major class action lawsuit and was forced to do buybacks (see link below). If no one talked about what they were going through, the problem would've been shoved under the carpet, the consumers would've sucked up and suffered through the problems, and Ford would've gotten scot-free. No motivation to improve quality control for the rest of consumers.

https://www.freep.com/story/money/c...a-transmission-settlement-buyback/3486344001/

Seems like three related issues. 1. What to do if your engine fails. 2. How common is engine failure? 3. What is causing engine failure?
1. Personal choice, dealer, Ford and law determine

2. Common enough to be a common topic of discussion. There's a thread buried on here somewhere with a spreadsheet for the known failures among forum members. Obviously, only a non-scientific snapshot, but informative, nonetheless.

3. Only Ford knows for sure. They have collected every blown engine and it would be unrealistic to think that they have not analyzed each one to determine the exact cause. Also buried on social media is an unofficial statement from a Romeo team member acknowledging a supply issue with valves during 2017-2018 MY. So, it would be safe to deduce that at least some of the failures can be attributed to that issue.

From a macro perspective, the following seems true:
- In the grand scheme, a relatively small number of engines failed
- A higher percentage of non-R engines failed than R engines
- Oil consumption contributed to failures (or one could attribute it to failure to check and refill oil)
- Ford attempted to address the oil consumption "problem" by issuing novelty oil filter wrenches complete with VIN, along with an oil filter and instructions that emphasized proper torque
- Ford modified the engines once (twice if we consider the oil filter mod)
- Ford ultimately stopped using non-R engines and decided to equip all GT350s with R model engines. When one considers the fact that R's comprise about 1/10 of the GT350 population, it would be illogical to attribute the switch to economics

Bottom line--interesting to talk about but at this point it is what it is.

 

[RPDBlueMoon]

It's always valvetrain, it's a fault in the timing chain system, sometimes it comes completely off sometimes it just loosens enough to smack some valves. Either way the result is the same, I think the "diagnosis" from the dealers and what we are being told is what differs. If they're not allowed to tear the engine apart how do they really know what failed lol. Mine was passenger side bank just fyi.

I bet years from now we find out what this is related to and there are upgrade parts. It's really sad all ford put into this we still have to upgrade the oil pump gear on our own

There are a lot of things about this car that are great. I'm not a fan of how they blamed exhaust routing on why they couldn't make a traditional flat plane crank firing order etc... Let's be real you just didn't want it to sound like a ferrari lol. But the ferrari design is better sadly.

The oil pump gear issue isn't just the Voodoo engine from my understanding, the Coyote engine has the same problem.

As far as timing chain goes, what would an 'upgrade' entail? Just a stronger component like a bullet oil pump gear?

Also the Ferrai engine (F136 V8, the one in the Ferrai 458) isn't really better. The Ferrai 458 needs to have an engine rebuild at around 50k miles or so I can't remember exactly with just regular street driving. The Ferrai California also has oil consumption problems too, both are FPC V8s.

 

[K4fxd]

Its not like any Yenkos sat on a lot....

Thats because the 200 and 1 people who wanted them paid for them before they were built.

Sorry for the hyjack

Get the extended warranty. I think it is a vibration issue like having to torque the oil filter. Ford should have had Ferrari engineers double check the voodoo

 

[RPDBlueMoon]

From a macro perspective, the following seems true:
- In the grand scheme, a relatively small number of engines failed
- A higher percentage of non-R engines failed than R engines
- Oil consumption contributed to failures (or one could attribute it to failure to check and refill oil)
- Ford attempted to address the oil consumption "problem" by issuing novelty oil filter wrenches complete with VIN, along with an oil filter and instructions that emphasized proper torque
- Ford modified the engines once (twice if we consider the oil filter mod)
- Ford ultimately stopped using non-R engines and decided to equip all GT350s with R model engines. When one considers the fact that R's comprise about 1/10 of the GT350 population, it would be illogical to attribute the switch to economics

Bottom line--interesting to talk about but at this point it is what it is.

The GT350 and GT350R have the same engine there is no difference. More failures happen with the GT350s probably because they are just more of them on the road.

What are the GT350R engine upgrades that you are suggesting?

 

[Caballus]

The GT350 and GT350R have the same engine there is no difference. More failures happen with the GT350s probably because they are just more of them on the road.

What are the GT350R engine upgrades that you are suggesting?

They now have the same engine. That started with 2018 replacement engines and continued for MY19 and 20.

Edit: According to the non-official, non-scientific (but rather common sense) info that is available, non-Rs suffered higher PERCENTAGE of failures during the 17-18MYs. 16 saw failures as well, but not in the numbers seen in 17 & 18.

 

[mroad]

Hello There ,

The same thing happened to me at 424 miles. They will put in a new engine. Work with Ford to get an extended warranty! My car has over 2000 miles with no issues. Mine had a broken #5 valve. Love this car.

Steve, I'm sorry about what happened to your car. I will fight for a buy back. There is a pattern to these failures: 2020 engines, driven very low mileage, and something in the valve train or timing is failing, causing the entire engine to be replaced. By any definition, these are faulty cars that we paid a lot of money for.

The way Ford is fixing it, i.e. sending you an anonymous engine, with mismatching numbers, and a stigma on your Cafax record, is not fair, especially if you just purchased the car. This is causing an abnormal, steep depreciation of the value of your car. After this happens, if you look at the depreciation graph of your vehicle, there would be a steep dip right after the engine replacement event. The newer the car, the more pronounced this deep as this affects newer cars much worse than cars that have been in ownership for many years and had 10's of thousands of miles on them.

Is it your fault? Why should you bear the consequences for sloppy quality control and fault parts?

 

[mroad]

Some Ford apologists here have a habit of ad hominem attacks instead of rational reasoning. They are armchair psychologists who want to analyze your mood and judge your motives. We should simply ignore them.

 

[mk1spyder]

The oil pump gear issue isn't just the Voodoo engine from my understanding, the Coyote engine has the same problem.

As far as timing chain goes, what would an 'upgrade' entail? Just a stronger component like a bullet oil pump gear?

Also the Ferrai engine (F136 V8, the one in the Ferrai 458) isn't really better. The Ferrai 458 needs to have an engine rebuild at around 50k miles or so I can't remember exactly with just regular street driving. The Ferrai California also has oil consumption problems too, both are FPC V8s.

Yeah I know it's not a voodoo engine only problem what I'm pointing out is they spent all this money stretching an existing platform for race use and didn't bother swapping out a known issue like a cast oil pump gear that is just lazy. Then left out the oil catch can unless you want to pay extra for it which is def needed on one bank for sure. Then didn't bother to upgrade the timing chain system at all even though they raised the RPM's compression ratio valve spring tension and cam lift. That's just lazy penny pinching at its finest. Back in the 80's if the factory added a supercharged model for example they upgraded the entire drivetrain for like a 50hp difference lol.

We still have the same gold necklace single row timing chain as the coyote.

Ferrari recommends a rebuild, but their engines don't just blow up when they cross 50k. It's just something they sell rich people on doing. And they sound like a proper flat plane crank, Ford didn't want that they still wanted the mustang burble so they made a different flat plane crank setup which is a risk. My friend has a new 488 and it doesn't have any of the engine vibrations my gt350r has.

 

[DrumReaper]

Cars that are worth a shit ton of money are cars no one wants when built.. Plymouth super birds. Dodge Daytona's. Ford Torino Talladega They couldn't give them away, now they are worth fortunes.


GT350 and R

Sure these are limited editions and will always outperform a regular GT but buying for an investment is stupid, IMO.

Especially due to the numbers of units made. The Superbirds were made in numbers to conform to a mandate for eligibility to race in a major racing class. 500 units if I remember correctly, and no one at the time wanted them. Many dealers took off the front fenders and replaced them with road runner's and the corresponding grill, and removed the wing. Just to get them off the lot.

This is foul logic. By your logic, every valuable Ferrari was a fail-to-sale... a gull-wing Merc was a fail-to-sale.... and I guess those 7-figure GT40’s and 427 Cobras, nobody wanted them either right?

It’s his car... whether he bought it to invest in or drive the hell out of it is his deal. I support him either way.

 

[DrumReaper]

I'd be pissed if my Ford, Chevy, Dodge, Toyota, Honda, anything blew up while in warranty., I'd really be pissed if it blew up just out of warranty.

Sorry I would not keep any GT350.

My Son is an engine engineer at Cummins. He said he doesn't care about the thing living longer than the warranty period. If it lasts 30 years or 30 days longer than warranty he did his job.

Sounds like Ford's engineers did not do their job.

I’m just gonna ask this... why are you on the GT350 forum bitch in’ about a blown 350 when you appear not to have one?

 

[K4fxd]

Drum

No one bought any of those cars as an investment. They bought them because they liked them, and could afford them.

If they went up in value, that was a bonus.

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