New 2020 GT350 HEP engine failure

[GreenS550]

I think back to the old muscle car days. Those things really were a pile of garbage by today's standards. But by yesterday's standards they were hot stuff. You got a whole 12-month $12,000 mi warranty. Then you got to put a set of points in it every two thousand miles. Then you had the bias ply tires that would get a flat if you went over a sharp Rock. Every one of those cars had well used jacks. but we expected that so nobody complained about it.

Here I am thinking about buying a used 2011 GT500 with 50,000 miles on it and not too worried about it.

The Ops car died and I know how I would feel if this happened to me. But as stated earlier with a brand new long block and Ford being concerned about making sure you're happy it's likely the engine will have been well examined before sent to the dealer. That's a good thing. and if you ever turn around and sell it you can explain exactly what occurred and it's likely you will get a few thousand less for it. But if a guy like me buys it would say 20 or 30,000 miles on it I wouldn't be concerned a bit. and this is real life because I do stuff like that. Just not looking for a GT350 right now. I think you're going to be fine.

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[Hadelson]

Engineers if left alone will build it to last forever. That said, little story. Close friend was a Nuclear Engineer. Joined the Army and they made him a Combat engineer with specialty of blowing up barriers/Obstacles using conventional munitions. Point behind this he was told (ordered) by the leaders where he was best needed. In big business terms, the bottom line determines design specifications and cost meeting an average operations time between failure to earn a profit. Ask yourself this question? Why does a Semi Tractor with average maintenance run 500000 miles? Because the price point sets the design to meet the Mean time between failure. Anything built will break and quality control eliminates the random failures outside the designed life specification. Always comes down to four things; you hit something or something hit you, Quality defect resulting in failure, bad engineering or you beat on it and broke it.

 

[Tomster]

why cant ford stamp the vin on the new block. and are people letting the oil get to temp before getting on it

Thats a good question. Honestly, it probably wouldn't make a difference. The vehicle record (OASIS) would reflect that the engine was swapped out. If you want to keep a true numners matching car, you have to retain the block and have it rebuilt.

I think most are pretty thoughtful to warm the car up before honking on it. IMHO, these failures are most likely due to component and parts failure as opposed to operator error.

 

[Fatman1966]

What I cant understand is the replacement engines appear to not have issues. They are built by the same people with the same parts as the original engines. No one seems to ever say the new engines are blowing. Which tells me the engines that blew with low miles must have had a bad batch of parts. It should be easy to determine the build date of the original motors verses the replacement engines to figure out the window of opportunity on possible parts issues. The new engine is essentially the same as the engine that blew (all Gen2) so quickly but they are apparently not blowing?? I find it so puzzling. The only other reason would be factory engine builder issues but I would assume this is a premium job in the plant with very qualified people. Its so puzzling to me the dynamic of why the replacement engines are apparently better than the originals in terms of not blowing but... they are inherently the same design. It had to be a bad batch of parts and Ford should easily on a $30,000 motor be able to pull build dates and correct the issues as they cant keep eating $30,000 motors . The parts vendors also cant eat that cost long so they also would be studying parts shipments and stopping the cost impact. At some point if it was parts that were removed from the build table anyone at Ford with basic math skills should be able to determine the "issue timeline.

 

[shogun32]

They are built by the same people with the same parts as the original engines.

we have no idea about the parts being "same". Engine assembly problems isn't likely a meatspace problem as much as some tool configuration was wrong. If you watch the build videos the people doing the work are just automatons - no skill/thought required. There aren't any feeler gauges or calipers in evidence. Now maybe the problem was further up the chain at the binning station.

Just like with the total fiasco with the backup cameras, some wisenheimer probably got cute with supplier selection and pooched a bunch of builds. What I find more concerning is that Ford hasn't sent everyone with a known suspect engine a letter and admitted to the problem publicly. Damn lawyers...

 

[ice445]

I hope this isn't going to be another Taurus V8 SHO engine debacle, where there's some actual engineering flaw that will destroy 98% of engines over time. They ended up just sweeping it under the rug with that one, blaming owners for bad maintenance. Eventually there were no more engines or parts available, so even cars still under warranty were no longer repairable.

Once word got out the value of those cars TANKED too. By 2003/4 they were selling for under 10 grand when sticker was 45k.

 

[shogun32]

I hope this isn't going to be another Taurus V8 SHO engine debacle, where there's some actual engineering flaw that will destroy 98% of engines over time.

I hope not as well. Taurus were driven but the vast majority of GT350 sit on the shelf and never played with so mileage-based failures will take a long time (calendar) to show up. Most of the recent failures are infant mortality so if the engine survives 3000 miles it's at least past that point.

 

[ice445]

I hope not as well. Taurus were driven but the vast majority of GT350 sit on the shelf and never played with so mileage-based failures will take a long time (calendar) to show up. Most of the recent failures are infant mortality so if the engine survives 3000 miles it's at least past that point.

Right, and infant mortality is a good indicator of a parts issue. But we won't know for sure for years to come. The average mileage for cam failure on the Taurus was 75k miles. Most GT350 owners won't hit that for a while, as you said.

I hate to cast doubt on such a wonderful engine, but I can't help be reminded of that story.

 

[Rocketman]

I’ve read most of this thread, but frankly had to skim a bit to not get sucked into the “debate.”

Question: has anyone been able to correlate VIN or engine number with the 2020 failures?

I’m thinking about replacing my 2016 R with a 2020 R... or a 911.

That's why I've been considering a MY2019 model specifically, since you still technically get the "gen 2 Voodoo" and all of the QoL updates without the seemingly faulty manufacturing issue.

 

[stanglife]

That's why I've been considering a MY2019 model specifically, since you still technically get the "gen 2 Voodoo" and all of the QoL updates without the seemingly faulty manufacturing issue.

There are sporadic failures in all years.

 

[Jago768]

I hope this isn't going to be another Taurus V8 SHO engine debacle, where there's some actual engineering flaw that will destroy 98% of engines over time. They ended up just sweeping it under the rug with that one, blaming owners for bad maintenance. Eventually there were no more engines or parts available, so even cars still under warranty were no longer repairable.

Once word got out the value of those cars TANKED too. By 2003/4 they were selling for under 10 grand when sticker was 45k.

Now you have my attention, and this is something I was unaware of. I would really love more information on this chapter in performance engine history. The "engines no longer repairable" part sends shivers down my spine. Losing value on a car is one thing, having a car that's not repairable is another. I am going to scour the internet for information on this. ... as magician Professor Hinkle would say Busy Busy Busy!!!!

 

[ice445]

Now you have my attention, and this is something I was unaware of. I would really love more information on this chapter in performance engine history. The "engines no longer repairable" part sends shivers down my spine. Losing value on a car is one thing, having a car that's not repairable is another. I am going to scour the internet for information on this. ... as magician Professor Hinkle would say Busy Busy Busy!!!!

https://www.v8sho.com/SHO/96shohome.html
This link is particularly troublesome, because it shows how they did whatever they could to weasel out of replacing the VERY costly long blocks. They cost about the same as a GT350 long block back then due to the advanced tech for the time.
https://www.v8sho.com/SHO/WorthlessWarranty&DisturbingTrends.htm

Tons of info on there. It's not organized very well, but they did what they could with the tools available to them back then. Most of this hasn't really been updated since the mid 2000's. They catalogued over 1500 engine failures during the process of the class action lawsuit that was filed against Ford, which unsurprisingly Ford won based on a technicality. All cars that aren't welded will fail eventually. There's less than 1500 left out of the 21,000 car production run by this point.

 

[RPDBlueMoon]

No parts available, so even cars still under warranty were no longer repairable.

Do you know what happened to the people that had their engines fail when there no more replacement engines?

 

[Jago768]

Do you know what happened to the people that had their engines fail when there no more replacement engines?

This X1000 ....

 

[olaosunt]

Do you know what happened to the people that had their engines fail when there no more replacement engines?

They were beholden to the Visionaries who built spare engines when parts were available

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