Anyone following me at all knows I sell these wonderful machines! That being said, I feel being open about changes is important. I've had a few of my stock Transits have bad hesitation and stalling after this winter. Now we have probably 20 in stock, and it's affected 3. Ford engineers are working on a fix. Here is what I know so far. Somehow water is saturating the air filter. I'm sure it has something to do with the angle the vehicle was parked at with snow melt. The ones I found were after heavy snows. As I said, Ford is working on a fix. I just figured if anyone here experiences a hesitation or stall you should check the air filter for dampness in order to save some diag cost. I asked my tech to let me know when he finds out more and I'll post.

 

Our E series vans occasionally run poorly in bad weather and can even die completely due to the mass airflow sensor getting waterlogged. To get the van running again we unplug the sensor and the engine computer defaults to calculated mass airflow rather than measured and the engine runs well enough to get home and dry out the sensor.

Perhaps the same thing is going on with the transits. I think some improvements can come from routing of the intake to avoid getting a water slam, but it would be nice if there was a way that the sensor could recognize the waterlogged situations and just pull itself out of the loop until drier weather prevails.

You can pass that on to the Ford Engineers if you like.

 

It seems its the base 3.7 motors. The Ecoboost and Diesel have their air boxes somewhere else. As I mentioned. The air filter itself is saturated when this condition exist. This is after being parked, not running through heavy weather. Still no updates from Ford to our techs.

 

Frantz, the airbox on my EB is right in the back corner. There is a gutter under the windshield that is suppose to catch the water and it goes into a drain that is directed into the fender. Which doesn't seem right.

But 3 things are wrong; 1-the drain hole is small and can easily get clogged or block by debris or ice which makes it overflow and go over onto the air filter box. 2- Or in many cases, like mine. there is a gap under the gutter/trough at the corner of the windshield directly above the air filter box that allows water to drain straight down on it. 3-And what is likely the worst part, is the air filter box is designed so that the lid fits into the bottom part, instead of overlapping to prevent any water from getting in. The lid does have a small gasket but if it is not installed 100% correctly, or maybe even it is, water can get in. I see water spots inside of mine from where it has got in.

On the drivers side is a similar situation with the gap under the gutter but it only allows water to drain on the electrical black box and all its connections. Smart designs?

European transits have had the same wet filter issue for some time, you would have thought the US engineers might have traded notes at some point to get it right before production??

Dean