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one more aspect..engineers and designers can build the perfect vehicle, but the bean counters bring it all back to reality. Plus Ford is a business. Why sell a vehicle that will never wear out and need to be replaced.
There is a lot of spot-on information in this thread.
For almost 19 years I was a development engineer/supervisor in automatic transmission engineering. I developed the calibration for the transmission, what is commonly called "tunes" on these forums. I always had prototype vehicles to do my work. You wouldn't want to drive them. They had more squeaks and rattles than you could believe. Door handles fell off, engines had problems, transmissions had problems, etc.
We didn't give vehicles to the average person for the reasons listed above, plus the average person doesn't put enough miles on their vehicles to make the testing worthwhile. We often did place vehicles with fleets where they would get a lot of miles.
When I left Ford in 2007 they were in the middle of a program to reduce the number of prototypes built, since these cost about $250,000 or more EACH. The goal was to do more computer modeling and testing on dynamometers instead of in vehicles. I don't know how that progressed because I left.
Another factor (in my never to be humble opinion) is that when I left on February 28, 2007, 14,000 other white collar workers left the company with me. Ford offered buyouts to 85% of the salaried workforce. They had a target of how many people needed to leave. I only knew two people that wanted a buyout offer and were told they were critical and wouldn't receive one.
The downside (again, my opinion) is that a HUGE amount of product and manufacturing knowledge left the company that day. No matter how much is written down, nothing can substitute for experience. I believe that led to quite a few errors in both design and manufacturing. Ford's quality scores dropped after 2007 and recalls increased. When I was a supervisor I had a mangler (the official title is manager, but that isn't what this person did) kept insisting that an engineer is an engineer is an engineer. You can take any engineer off of their job and bring in a different engineer and things will just continue as if nothing changed. I think that the buyouts proved that is incorrect.
As for the Torqshift problem, I was there. The shafts that are inside the planet gears in the planetary gearset are staked in place. The staking operation is done in house, not by a vendor. That process got out of control which created staking that was too small. This in turn allowed the shaft to walk out. This went on for part of the 2004 model year before the problem was discovered and fixed.
Thanks for chiming in. I know all to well what happens when corporate knowledge leaves the organization.
one more aspect..engineers and designers can build the perfect vehicle, but the bean counters bring it all back to reality. Plus Ford is a business. Why sell a vehicle that will never wear out and need to be replaced.
True, but if they have to spend billions in warranty claims and recalls that greatly affects the bottom line as well. It also pissess a lot of customers off lol. I'm not speaking of any one manufacturer, but all the big 3.
they cant test a vehicle for every possible circumstance but freezing water is something 75% of the country has to deal with 4-6 months every year
i believe alot of stuff barely gets tested because they want the vehicle to market. especially if it has new features no other vehicle has. then they can make commerials claiming "class exclusive this" and "class exclusive that". who cares if a few things dont work as they should, we have 5 more cameras than the other trucks
one more aspect..engineers and designers can build the perfect vehicle, but the bean counters bring it all back to reality. Plus Ford is a business. Why sell a vehicle that will never wear out and need to be replaced.
You missed the point. It’s not about making something that never wears ou. Read the op again. Yes Ford is a business and as such they owe the consumer at least a quality product. Quality is in the eyes of the beholder. As stated in the op that new redesigned 2015 F 150 which was bought brand new should not have had all those problems. It should not be left to the consumer to find these types of problems due to a production schedule. I do not know about the rest of you but at the dealership service dept I deal with Ford now wants all old parts sent back to them so their engineers can figure out cause of failure. This may help future designs but does nothing to help the full supply shelves of current spare parts. In the op the water pump bearing went out at 40,000 miles and was replaced with an identical water pump probably to fail at 80,000 miles. The PVD rims were replaced with identical PVD rims. This process will go on till all the spare parts in inventory are used up or until a severe safety issue comes to light.
Oh and don’t get me started on the problem with the panoramic moon roof that truck had. And I found that problem just 2 days after ownership.
Last edited by Retiredout; Jan 25, 2019 at 07:01 PM.
Reason: Left something out.
I get it why they do their own in house testing. But if they torture test in all conditions imaginable like manufacturers claim, why do the common issues that lead to recalls, TSBs, field actions, etc not rear their ugly head during these tests that should be more extreme then everyday use? Or do they find the problems but have production dates to meet?
It is impossible to test for all conditions imaginable. There is an infinite number of conditions that need to be tested. If a company built 10,000 prototypes they would be able to test more conditions, but still not all of them. And the costs would be so high that nobody would be able to afford the vehicles that still haven't been tested for every imaginable condition.
I remember having this discussion with my chief engineer one time. Not long after we launched a new model car we had a customer complain that when she made a right turn at a certain corner that car would not accelerate for a very long time. I sent an engineer to ride with her since she only lived a few miles from our office. She couldn't make it happen with the engineer present. A couple weeks later Ford bought the vehicle back because she still was unhappy. We got the vehicle for testing.
We instrumented it so that would could monitor what was happening. After a few days of driving one engineer was able to recreate the problem. Now that the conditions were recorded we could make it happen every time. What was happening was as the vehicle was slowing the PCM commanded a coasting 4-3 shift. Less than 500 milliseconds after the 4-3 shift was commanded the throttle was opened and the commanded shift changed to a power on 4-2 shift. The software had an error that caused it to freeze for 5 seconds. 5 seconds doesn't seem to be a long time, but if you press the accelerator pedal and count one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand, and THEN it downshifts and accelerates you'd think that was a very long time, too.
We fixed the software error and got the new software into production. We also sent updates to the dealers so that they could update the cars already sold. Then I was summoned to a big quality meeting run by the transmission chief engineer.
He asked me to add a check to our production ready checklist so that this would never happen again. This is where I should have just said, Yessir! and left it at that. I couldn't do that. His request showed a major lack of understanding of just how complex an automatic transmission really is.
I told him I would absolutely add this to the checklist so that we would never have a 4-3 coast changed to a 4-2 power on within 500 millisecond error again. But what if there was a problem at 300 milliseconds? or 100 milliseconds? Or a 5-4 coast turned into a 5-3 power on within 600 milliseconds? There are an infinite number of possible shifts that an automatic transmission can do. No matter how many prototypes and engineers I had I cannot test an infinite number of possibilities. I believe that permanently put me on his excrement list. That wasn't one of my best career moves, but I was correct.
∆∆ Granted all conditions imaginable might.be a stretch. But how about some basic stuff like locks and latches freezing or the death wobble? Shouldn't testing reveal these defects? I remember when Chrysler had so much trouble with brakes in their minivans and jeeps. Brakes have been around since the horse and buggy so that should not be too hard to get right but it was for them lol.
Lots of good info from most in this thread. I remember in engineering you could do risk analysis and morph charts till the cows came home, but there would be that one scenario with probability projected in hundredths of a percent, that would occur and cause a project to fail.
I could see internal testing missing the freezing door handle cables, making it a design issue. I could also see them not getting a truck to death wobble in their testing fleet. The vast majority of these trucks have no issues with DW, an issue that is not easy to model or predict
Software smash ware, frozen door linkages and locks, frozen tailgates, leaking windshield, roof lights leaking, batteries over tightened causing cracking batteries and corrosion, , this crap got nothing to do with computers, it’s lack of quality control,
Steering Wheel shake, drop front tires to 50psi, and drive over a rail road crossing about 40 mph, then do it at recommended psi, much better, so we ll only evaluate it at recommended tire psi, and go with the cheap steering stabilizer and shocks,
It is impossible to test for all conditions imaginable.
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nobody would ever argue otherwise. but freezing water is almost a daily thing for alot of us. functioning latches should be high on the list of things that just have to work without question. water and snow in all the body gaps during the day and freezing at night is a everyday thing for me. you can see right behind the wheel
Well I have a 1000 miles on mine, I love it, it’s a beast, sold my tundra to give ford a chance and make towing my sxs and trailer a more relaxed drive, time will tell if wifey was right or wrong, she’s Toyota all the way.
Well I have a 1000 miles on mine, I love it, it’s a beast, sold my tundra to give ford a chance and make towing my sxs and trailer a more relaxed drive, time will tell if wifey was right or wrong, she’s Toyota all the way.
Keep the SD and get her a new Land Cruiser... Worked for me 😂
As for the Torqshift problem, I was there. The shafts that are inside the planet gears in the planetary gearset are staked in place. The staking operation is done in house, not by a vendor. That process got out of control which created staking that was too small. This in turn allowed the shaft to walk out. This went on for part of the 2004 model year before the problem was discovered and fixed.
Mark, appreciate your input here and the history lesson on the TS planet failures. Its been more than a few years and I didn't remember the details clearly. That, and I got most of my information 2nd hand as I wasn't directly involved with the program.
My favorite "prototype" experience was doing high speed testing of a particular company's (that shall remain anonymous) new performance model. We were actually doing tire and suspension alignment testing at the tire company's proving ground. I hit a bird at speed (150+ mph) and the removable roof panel instantly blew off. The pressure change was as if there was an explosion and I struggled to maintain control of the car until I regained my wits (scared the crap out of me).
The very next day a pair of engineers showed up to examine the top and its latches. Then asked me; if they could arrange to setup a test where I would hit a bird again to see if latch modifications were effective, would I drive the car? I think they ended up doing that test in the wind tunnel.
