It's why they are loosing so much market share. If the American Car Companies got some fresh leadership that took care of the customers instead of taking the typical "they'll buy what we tell them they want" attitude,they'd rule the world again. Instead, they are only interested in trying to turn short term profits instead of long term stability. This will be their downfall. It's a total shame how Ford, GM, and Chrysler went from the most highly eseemed manufacturers in the world to the laughing stock of the automotive world. I's not that they don't have the ability, it's that they don't have the desire.

 

Yes but remember the 'Big Three' own major interests in other brands as well. For an example Ford Motor Company owns parts of Jaguar, Volvo Mazda and Land Rover as well as others.

Anybody ever heard of Damier/Chrysler? They have interests in Mercedes Benz and others.

Not sure where I'm going with this, just wanted to point out that yes they can do a lot better for their American customers...

 

Eyewash. They want everyone to think association must mean better quality.(or just an investment because the U.S. stuff isn't cutting it!)

 

Hi all, I am pretty new here, But I do own a 4.6L 3V Mustang, and one thing we have fopund that can contribute to this issue is the gas you run. The Mustangs are subject to the same TSB's. We have found that running the wrong gas and / or a poor quality of gas allows for extra carbon deposits on the plugs, causing them to get jammed in the head. I am actually planning on pulling mine soon as I have 20k on it now. IF your vehicle is tuned for 87 octane as most of them are unless you have a custom tune or a custom vehicle, you can only run 87 octane, you CANNOT run 91 or 93. Also if you have a vehicle tuned for 91 or 93, you can only run what it's tuned for. The vehicle's computer does not adapt to the grade of gas, resulting in poorly burned mix, leaving deposits behind. Also it is strongly reccomended to stick to the higher quality gas if possible, the ultra cheap private label stuff of unkown origin is nothing but trouble. I hope this helps prevent this issue for some of you.

 

And since you know what they think, why isn't the US stuff cutting it.

 

Customer service for the most part, not controlling the dealerships service quality and saying that it's "their" company.

 

I find it hard to believe that engines of today, at 20 or 30 thousand miles, considering computerized controlled combustion, fuels specifically engineered for the combustion chambers designed, high energy spark ignition systems, close tollerances in engine parts never before seen, the latest in petroleum development of synthetic and synthetic blends of extremely light weight reducing friction and burning in the combustion chamber, etc., could develop carbon deposits on the end of these latest spark plugs that would put what I routinely saw on the end of a plug pulled out a 1965 Plymouth Fury with a 318.

In fact, my old 1968 142 Volvo, burning a quart of oil every 400 miles showed a little carbon black when I checked once a year.

The idea of not pulling a loosened plug out of the triton head I would have to see to believe.

In fact, could someone please take a picture, I'm sure we'd all like to see what it looks like at, say, 30,000 miles.

 

I think it has to do more with executives not having the headlights to see what is in the future. For instance, most domestic sales were trucks, SUVs, and larger cars, or cars with higher HP. Then came the gas price increase. Well Americans did what they did back in the 70's gas cruch, they opted for smaller more effecient cars.
This left the big three behind. They did not expand their business enough to allow for any switch in buying habits to take up the slack in the lost business of the gas guzzler vehicles.
Bad management! They sell for today!
The second thing is it seems they are trying to maximize profits by taking the lowest supplier bid. This backfires in their face since the lower bidders may offer inferior quality control. This is pretty evident in Fords ongoing rear end ring and pion whine, that was inherint on the earlier Explorers and kept going on to name one.
The foreign car manufacturers have a better business model that lends them acceptable revenues when the market shifts.

I do not think it's so related to the dealerships! Nissan has had some nightmares with dealerships on some of their cars, yet buyers keep coming back.
Besides a lot of owners of these dealerships own more then one and have rights to multiple vehicle manufacturers.

As far as carbon deposites, it's not so much related to the oils but to the fuels with all their additives. MTB's are an oxygenate and have been added at much higher concentrations then in the first couple of years after no lead. This helps decrease emissions. Well they helped emissions but increased combsuton by products. As far as engines clearances, they have not changed that much over the years. They are kept under better quality control.
Now with the replacement of MTB by ethanol, it will be interesting to see if the carbon buildup gets even worse!

 

Interesting, but:
1) Profitability has ALOT to do with the deals that foreign makers have made with the unions, saving them hundreds if not thousands per vehicle.
2) Domestic dealers jerk their customers around when they have a problem moreso than the foreign dealers
3) If the cause was fuel and additives, why doesn't every vehicle have this problem?

 

There is a world of difference between Ethanol and MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether). I'm not looking for an argument here so let me just say this; MTBE is a manufactured product and is absourbed by water. Bad stuff, evaporates easily and when it gets into the water table it stay for a very long time. That's why it is not blended into gasoline anymore. Where Ethanol is basically a nautural fermented product (as in beer, I'm sure most of us can relate to that) and should be enviormently safe.

 

Also, considering that Ford for three years prior to the 2004 introduction of its new F150 half ton body, it spent over 1 billion dollars in its development.

I find it hard to believe that Ford would deliberately not engineer every single part for every possible contingient possible failure as any problem would jeopardize any possible profit for the duration of the run of the new platform.

That being said, when these flaws raise their ugly heads I'm inclined to see them rather as human errors than plots to make profits based on international capitalist conspiracies.

In 2004 Ford was losing (?) 1500 dollars per unit on the investment made previous to its introduction. Let's hope, for the sake of the American economy that this head thing is glitch.

Wouldn't Ford, in this massive development of a new platform, have put all engines on a mule for at least 100,000 miles, and then pulled the plugs to come up with the 100,000 mile service recomendation?

That's what I do every day, think up spark plugs!

 

Judging from fords response to this problem I am going to say they either didn't even look at the plugs and if they did and knew there was a problem it was to late to address it and just pushed it on through!!!IMO

 

As with any new product development, there are typically upper limits to costs allowed to be spent on building the product because we as consumers always insist on paying less for everything. If every Engineer was given an open spending account to build-in and over-engineer the truck with parts that were resilient to every possible fault and with the longest longevity, we won't be paying as much as what we're paying today.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of compromises that are made in Engineering to meet cost targets and deliver a product that meets those cost constraints... sometimes we end up paying for it as the end consumer.

Furthermore, since humans designed the thing, and there's a finite amount of time to test/debug the first prototypes before production, there's likely stuff that gets overseen or missed, hence the rash of TSB's after the first year of production to fix stuff... It's not just Ford, though it seems some other mfrs seem to do it better than others.

Then there's the simple financial aspect of these things. Ford is selling just about 1Million of our trucks per year. $1 saved on using a part that just meets specifications versus one that is far superior is $1M/yr less spent from their bottom line... It can also be the case where they would rather spend $500K/yr to fix a few customer complaints than to spend $1M/yr to do it right.

It's all about money...

 

Y-Blockhead - no one is debating the environmental issues of MTBE, but Ethanol is also an oxygenate, of which the by product of combustion is also carbon. So I don't understand why you even posted what you did since the discussion was about carbon deposits. The point I was making is if the ethanol content will have the same carbonizing effect within the internal combustion process. As far as how much is still left up in the air.

Simmy150 - your analogy was correct 10 to 15 years ago, but unless the vehicles are manufactured in a 3rd world country the cost are pretty much the same. In fact a major portion of Japanese and German vehicles are manufactured right here in the US. Labor in Aisa (Japan) and Europe has been on the steady incline. So at one time your union labor comment would have been correct but in today's market it's not the major factor.

As far as carbon issues just about every vehicle has the issue. Ever hear of the manufacturer or dealership suggest a top end cleaner, and for drivers to use a cleaner such as Techron etc. during a fillup.

 

KevinM,
I agree with you, but since you mention MTBE I thought I would point out why it was replaced... take it for what it's worth.