I was on a road trip and fog came out my vents and bad smell. Took to nearest mechanic, told gasket or something near where coolant system goes to the heater core. No shops in 100 miles of where I got stuck could help. All had no availability and no part to fix it. We had to drive 2,000 miles back home with no heat and add coolant many times along the way to get home. I'm so pissed at Ford right now. My 2016 escape has less than 50k miles. Anyone else had this issue? Will Ford help me with this? Of course it's outside of my extended warranty. Feel like this car is too low miles to have this issue. So mad.

 

This is very unfortunate and we try to prevent this type thing from happening.

Can you tell us what kind of cooling system maintenance your vehicle has had?
Maybe there could be an explanation for this.

 

No work was done to the coolant system since new other than regular maint (topping up the level I think). There was one occassion where ford service left the coolant cap off the tank and we lost all the coolant going up a hill, and brought it back to service to put the cap back and refill/check for damage. We didn't drive it like that and stopped as soon as we got a warning, that was at least two years ago and had been fine since until recently. I got an appointment for them to look at it in the morning. Hoping they can take care of me and this issue and hopefully work with me on the cost if it's a defect with the way its built, or if its related to the time they left off the cap.

 

Excessive pressure could cause a heater core to leak, other than that coolant should be checked on a regular basis.

It does lose some of it's corrosion protection over time. Not knowing everything that was done , not fair to speculate.

It can get a little expensive to replace a leaking heater core depending on how much work is involved.
It is after all 7 years in use. Maybe someone else can add to why this took place.