Significantly so. They've had good quality cars for quite some time.
The wires that were exposed by the header
A former college roommate works in finance for Audi USA. Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche are all the same company. One night over a few bourbons he told me never base your expectation for quality on MSRP of the car you bought - base it on the cheapest version of what you bought. As an example he said look at the VW, Audi, and Porsche versions of an SUV. They’re all the same platform and basic manufacturing process but they mark up the VW $3,000, the Audi $13,000, and the Porsche $23,000. So unfortunately for GT350 and 500 owners, the same schmucks who assemble no-option base Mustangs are putting your cars together, with some of the same tools and equipment - and some of the same test and inspection processes.
Translation: Morons training Idiots, or Idiots training Morons.
TomToday, I got to spend some (not so) quality time with my car after it has been in and out of the shop ever since I bought it. One of the main reasons it has been in the body shop is due to manufacturing defects both by Ford and Penske. Some of the things needed to be done so far are panel alignments (door/fender, hood/fender, wing hole mount anti corrosion, and clear coat defects on rear bumper.
So, I took delivery of my car back in late August. The car went immediately to PPF. It was there for about a week. That process had to stop due to the defects found above. The car then went to my dealerships body shop to correct the manufacturing defects. After 3 weeks in the body shop, the Xpel process was finished.
Today, I finally got to spend some time with the car and it is absolutely appalling what I found.... Where do I start?
I looked into the cold air intake from the outside of the car. If you are facing the front of the car, it is on the right hand side. I saw an obstruction that didn't look right. I removed the cold air intake box and to my horror, I found that a wiring harness was incorrectly run through the cold air intake and on top of a radiator component. It was routed incorrectly through the air barrier on the side of the radiator and would have been subjected to immense heat over time and certainly would have led to failure over time. There is no easy fix for this. To correctly reroute the harness to where it is supposed to be, the whole front end has to be removed. The wiring harness would have to be relocated and then all put together. Please reference photos. Have a look into your cold air intake plenum and if you see any kind of obstruction, you probably had the same lazy POS put your car together as well. This over time will fail. You need to get this fixed.
This is how the wiring harness was supposed to be run. Thank you @Epiphany
Next up is my oil pressure sensor..... This sensor sits just a few inches from a header that gets cherry red hot. There is a reason that it is supposed to be wrapped and insulated with heat protection. Hey, look at that.... my wiring is exposed to the heat from the header. The GT350 oil pressure sensor has been problematic over the years. They have been known to come loose and spew oil all over the header and smoke or cause fire. I guess Ford hasn't learned its lesson. This is important and all GT500 owners need to make sure that their wires are insulated in the silver wrapped insulation. One of my students cars caught on fire because of a brake fluid drizzle onto the very header in question.
And last but not least is the supercharger cooling line that we all have heard about. This time there is a new twist on the story. My line had a kink. This kink probably would have caused failure or protection mode from a lack of coolant. Hey, you ding dongs working the line who just don't care, why don't you start caring? This topic has been known for a while. I could understand a few early on mistakes. This has been going on for a while.
Again, I said this a while ago..... Ford has lost its way. People on the line don't care. Management doesn't care. Case in point. Parts for this car are horrendous. Hood pin latches with an MSRP of $700 each. Carbon fiber wing costing $26,000, Splitter over $1,000. You give us defective cars and then want to gouge the daylights out of us for spare parts. On top of that we have defective brake components, and you choose not to do an immediate recall? This is a track car that depends on these brakes and you want to wait until November?
Shame on you Ford. Every worker who puts out this crap product ought to be embarrassed. For all the crap I have been through, Ford owes me an apology. Yet Jim Owens, who has my email address, sits in silence. Call me Jim, anytime. I'm tempted to call you, but I don't know what good it will do.
I am in complete disbelief that I spent over $100,000 for a mustang and this is what I got. Detroit, you seem to have forgotten the late 70's when you crammed crap down people's throats. What was the old saying? You don't want a car built on a Monday or Friday? Well in this case I guess you don't want a car built on any day of the week.
People, take the time to check out the items highlighted above. This is serious business, not cosmetic trivial stuff.
They were in the photo. The oil pressure sensor has a heat insulated cap (due to its proximity to the header). The harness that comes out of the cap is supposed to have heat insulation covering it..... The insulation is short and leaves the exposed harness. If you need a photo, go back to my original post. The wires were purple and ??? Those wires are supposed to be insulated by a heat protection insulation.
are you referring to the photo above or the photo of our oil pressure sensor wires being exposed?Not to take away from this thread, but I brought this up as a concern to my dealership and they passed it by Ford which returned a response that this was the way its suppose to be, I cant see how these wires should be this exposed on the left side of the engine when facing the car.
And Tom my dealership service guy knows me all too well, and they will make damn sure its done right, cause they always show me everything they have done. They are a good batch of people. They know me from when I had my '16 CS.
I got that one. I was looking for an after pic to see how you fixed it.
