Hi folks, I'm and old retired Toytoa Tech, but a loyal ford owner. My first car was a 56 Ford Victoria, had the 292 Y block in it until Dad and I stuck a 402 in it.
Reason I'm on the forum is I received a letter regarding my 2012 Escape from some lawyers. It is in regards to Transmission failures. My Escape only had 179000.0 miles on it, and I just had my first problem. #2 cylinder misfire. I went ahead and ordered four new coils and plugs.
I also own a 2016 F150 and absolutely love it. My daughter has a 07 Mustang GT
I have heard ford has had some issues with the Escape transmission, mine has worked flawlessly.
Want to make a vehicle last, you must take care of it, one of the main causes of transmission failures is not being serviced.

Little story along with my introduction, some years ago customer brought in a Camry, V6, automatic, with 57k miles and transmission failure. When I opened up the transmission it was fried. So what do I mean by fried. It had been exposed to server heat, and the damage was extensive. The car had an extended warranty on it.
I'm a person that always wants to know why something fails. I looked at his service records, and also noticed he had a receipt for tires in the glove compartment. I looked at the tire wear verse and they were getting close to replacement but only had 31,000 miles on them.
I asked the service writer if I could talk to the owner. Later that day he came in. I asked him about his tires. "Oh I'll never by those tires again, they wore out way too fast"
I asked him if he has any teenagers or young drivers that drive this car. "Yes, my seventeen year old son."
Bottom line is transmission failure was caused by drag racing, or parking lot exhibitions, or a combination of the two, as was the excessive tire wear. I attempted to show him the damage to the transmission but he was convinced we were just trying to get out of honoring the warranty. He called BAR in and they sided with us.

My daughter on the other hand had taken out the rear end in the mustang, and the transmission. Actually the rear end was just a pinion shaft seal, but she drives that mustang hard. I rebuilt her transmission and fixed the pinion shaft seal, and installed new U joints.

You play hard, you pay for it.

I'm not saying ford doesn't have issues with their transmissions, if mine fails I'll tear it down and find out why. In the mean time I drive like I have an egg between the throttle and my foot, I make sure they are serviced properly.

I might be an old retired Toyota Tech, but I do love my Fords.

 

You realize you gave away a trade secret ! Construction transmissions use brass instead of fiber on the clutch pack plates , and they last a lot longer with all sorts of forward and reverse abuse. But cars are not intended or meant to be abused like that, so that is what keeps a lot of mechanics/technicians working. When a piece of construction equipment sits idle it doesn't make money and costs a lot of money to repair so service is not normally ignored. But the car , they're supposed to last forever with no service . I believe you hit the nail on the head at least twice !

 

Thank you for your response, at the tech schools Toyota puts on down in the Long Beach area one of the things that comes up is, "engineered failure" and there once was a lot of that going on. In the 60s if you got 100k out of an engine you were doing good. Ford, Chrysler, and finally GM finally figured out if they didn't want to keep losing customers, they needed to build better cars and trucks, and they have. In general the reliability of our cars today may have brought on the false sense that a car should last forever, but we all know that isn't reality.
I am wondering how long the turbos will last on my pickup. On my old 2001 F150 with the Triton engine it went 220000 before blowing a spark plug out of #7 cylinder, I put heicoils in every hole.
I had decided if I had to ever pull the heads on that thing I would pull the engine, it was truly a pain to work on.

 

Welcome to the site..