There have been a couple threads on here about engine hours and such. For the paranoid mind, when does the auto industry find a way to calculate engine hours regarding warranty coverage?

For instance: Factory power train warranty = 60,000 miles or 72 months or XXXX engine hours. Which ever comes first.

Could they possibly throw us a curve ball like that or am I being real untrusting?

Here's a John Deere warranty statement:https://www.deere.com/en_ASIA/docs/b...y_warranty.pdf

Different animal yes, but the auto industry could make it apply.

 

I don't see why they wouldn't want to include hours as a measure. At this point I imagine it isn't implemented because not all vehicles make engine hours readily accessible.

 

The electronics are in place to do this. When you think of the hours some service vehicles sit and idle, the hours factor makes sense for warranty.

 

The commercial stuff gets covered this way. I don't know that I've seen it on the retail car side. Just by a 2.7 you'll cut back on engine hours =-P

 

My Ram 2500 4X4 kept track of total engine hours along with hours at idle. You could bring it up in the dash display. Didn't figure into warranty but it was helpful for maintenance and tech diagnosis.


I didn't even know the F150 had that info available on the dash. I'll have to check that out........sometime.......

 

Our Police Interceptor Explorers and Crown Vics are warranted to the 60k mark. The idle hours on them are astronomical.

 

I think that's an interesting question. For normal users, idle time doesn't seem to be a big issue. That's why the description of "harsh environment" use include excessive engine idling and the service intervals are shortened. I'm assuming the engine idle hours are a factor in the oil change meter. So in a sense, Ford has already added engine idle to their warranty. If you ignore your oil change light they can use that to deny a warranty claim (in theory).

 

This all makes sense. My tractor, ATV, and generator all use hour meters because miles don't exactly provide a useful measure.

 

Short answer: It doesn't. It may someday, but as of right now there's no hour limitation in the warranty terms. Don't take my word for it though, download the Warranty Guide of your choice from www.motorcraftservice.com and do some looking around. The term "Hours" is only used once in the guide, and that's where it mentions the Ford Customer Service line is available 24 hours a day.

Hours matter though, and if they ever offer a different warranty to fleet customers I can see there being an hour limitation. Last year walked away from a certified used F250 because it had over 2,400 idle hours.

 

Maybe I worded my original post a tad wrong. I know they don't now but when could they or would they as in when in the future could they enforce this.

In truth, they would probably have to wait for an entire generation of vehicles to be built that have the capability to display hours before they could enforce such.

However, I really like your post about walking from a truck due to idling hours. Since my truck can't display hours, I never knew that any of them could until the 2015's arrived and someone mentioned it.

On the 2011-2014 trucks you had to buy an XLT or higher trim to get the productivity screen. Can this info be displayed on the lower trim level 2015 and newer trucks?

 

If they could, would they? Absolutely. Anything they can use to limit their liability for under warranty claims will be used. It's all about the bottom line.

 

I think a lot of it goes to whether or not this is a problem they need to solve. If the average bear idled his car or truck like a police officer this would have probably been done decades ago. I suspect manufacturers would use this to protect themselves when they start paying warranty claims to vehicles that have been idled to death.

I don't think it could be displayed on any of them. When we had this conversation a few months ago I went into the owner's guide and couldn't find anything regarding engine hours, even with the 4.3" screen. I don't think I remembered that right.

The '13 Super Duty I walked from had the base two-line instrument cluster, very similar to what you have. It displayed engine hours under the "System Check" menu.

Hour meters have been around since the dawn of time. Seriously...they've been in use almost since the introduction of the internal combustion engine. These things have been tracking idle hours on their PCMs since the advent of electronic controls. For years these things have known their hours, and yet I've not seen a single vehicle manufacturer implement this into the warranty. Why hasn't this been done decades ago if they were all about the bottom line?

 

I know that our tractor (a Kubota) does not count idle hours the same as working hours. It factors the RPM into the engine hours display. IOW, I can idle the engine for 10 hours, but it will only display some fraction of that. Up the RPM and the hours get closer to real time. I don't know what the cross over is, but it's mentioned in the manual.