FORD KUGA ENGINE FAILURE -?not fit for purpose

jaffa61

I have a Ford Kuga with a 2.0 litre diesel engine. I bought the car from new at a Ford Dealership. Have had the car serviced annually at same dealership.

When the car was 3 yrs 5 mths old (5 months out of warranty) the engine failed - the car needs a new engine at a cost of over £7000. The cause of engine failure is not known.

The car has only done 15950 miles!

Ford Customer Relations have offered £3870 towards the costs.

I feel that I have been sold a car which is "not fit for purpose", and has not "lasted a reasonable length of time" in respect of the low mileage.
The Ford mechanics have not seen a diesel engine fail at such low mileage before!

I feel that Ford Motor Co. should be offering full payment for the cost of replacement engine, but they say that £3870 is their best offer.

Do I have a case - or is this their offer reasonable?

Ford spend millions on advertising how reliable their products are - but seem not to be particularly bothered when things go wrong.

jaydeeuk1

The fact you have full dealer service history gives you some leeway. I'd be demanding they pay up in full, even if it is out of warranty. You'll need to deal with headoffice, not the dealership, and threaten to kick up a fuss.
Ford usually play ball with this sort of thing, just thank the stars it wasn't a VW or Mazda dealership.

BeenThroughItAll

Although I can't offer any advice in general, this is another example of a very low mileage diesel demonstrating just why diesel cars should not be bought unless they're going to be properly used.

AdrianC

"The cause of engine failure is not known". I think that's fairly important. You could insist it gets stripped down and investigated thoroughly, which should come up with a cause, but that's going to cost.

How are they calculating their contribution? Covering the parts cost, but not the labour? Somewhere around 60% of the total bill is not a small goodwill contribution.

At the end of the day, very low mileages - 4,000 per year is WELL within that - are not recommended at all for modern diesel engines. Particulate filters would be the usual problem area, but there could well be other issues around clagging up through lack of use. And that's always assuming that the problem wasn't in some way user-exacerbated, such as failure to check fluid levels.

Just because a product is broadly well engineered, you can't assume 100% reliability - if you could, nobody would offer a warranty, since it wouldn't be required. Warranties go way beyond legal requirements - you would need to prove that the problem was inherent in the engine, and caused by manufacturing or component failure that arose from manufacture.

colino

Has this engine actually catastrophically failed or is it a persistent engine malfunction warning? If the latter, Ford have a problem with these engines and low mileage. Don't let them fob you off get the complaint escalated up the line.

arcon5

I bet the 4k they're asking from you would get you a decent used engine and you'd be able to have it fitted with plenty of change left over. Their offer is abysmal, I wouldn't expect you to pay a penny unless you've damaged it yourself.

How it happened is cruical though, you don't want it happening again in a few months because nobody diagnosed the cause

chrisw

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

Although I can't offer any advice in general, this is another example of a very low mileage diesel demonstrating just why diesel cars should not be bought unless they're going to be properly used.

It doesn't demonstrate anything of the sort, particularly as we don't know the cause of the failure.

Low mileage MAY cause premature failure of the DPF and ignoring all the warning lights and continuing to drive with it completely blocked MAY damage the engine, but it isn't clear in this case.

BeenThroughItAll

chrisw wrote: »

It doesn't demonstrate anything of the sort, particularly as we don't know the cause of the failure.

Low mileage MAY cause premature failure of the DPF and ignoring all the warning lights and continuing to drive with it completely blocked MAY damage the engine, but it isn't clear in this case.

OK, if you want to be pedantic about it, no it doesn't. But let's be honest, it's a reasonable bet that the problems (bearing in mind that 'engine failed, replace' is the default main dealer response to anything their spotty-faced technicians can't diagnose with the computer) are related to DPF, EGR, manifold congestion or premature turbo failure related to low mileage and cold start cycles.


Bearing in mind the vast number of documented issues with the Ford 2.0TDCi motor I think it's an even better bet.


Mind you, I may be wrong and it may be a catastrophic failure caused by a manufacturing defect or component failure. I just suspect that's incredibly unlikely.