We purchased it used back in July of 24 with only 21k miles on it, and soon after found it had a weird clunk when the auto stop start restarted the motor. Took it back to the dealer and they replaced the flywheel and starter after about a month, but said the electric transmission fluid pump was fine.... It still did the clunk after we got it back, so it wasn't fixed, but whatever.. it ran and we needed it to haul kids.
In early February I noticed it started having some smoke for a couple seconds at startup after it sat all night with it nose-up on an incline. I did some digging here and found the posts about the turbos in the 21s having problems, so I sent that to the service guy I normally dealt with. I also found the FADA was leaking, and so was the oil pan. It needed an oil change anyway, so in went 6 quarts of Amsoil and I waited for my dealer to call and say they had a loaner for us. A month later they still didn't have a loaner, but now it's used/lost 24 ounces of oil in 1007 miles, so I dropped it off on March 11 and asked for a loaner when they could provide one.
Then the saga began... Fortunately they got us a loaner pretty quickly, a new f150 power boost. That's fine, but it didn't hold enough people (ours holds 7, *I originally had 8 here because that's how many we still have at the house until Gracen leaves for college, and I probably shouldn't write stuff like this at 1 am) and it didn't have a bedliner, so we couldn't even use the bed to haul anything... Oh well, it's at least a vehicle. Was told around the 3 week mark they got approval to do an oil consumption test and needed my ok to drive it 500 miles. Sure.... Do it. I need our Explorer back. I'm tired of using my Focus ST to haul lumber and dirt from Lowe's. After about 10 days the guy confirmed the smoke (I'd sent him probably 8 or 9 videos of it doing it) and said they were ordering a driver's side turbo. I asked about the FADA and pan leaks and his response was "the techs didn't say anything about that"... I asked if they'd even put it on a rack and opened their eyes. Apparently the service writer ignored the pics and video I sent him of the leaks and the techs were blind (or possibly just not really working on it).
Couple more weeks go by and we get a call: "driver's side turbo is going to be here Monday and we expect to have it swapped on Wednesday. It should be ready to go Thursday.... So I have one of my teens detail the f150 so we can take it back on Thursday and then nothing... No calls, no emails, and no returned messages for almost a week. I can't get ahold of anybody.
It's now the middle of April and we've got my oldest son's wedding to go to in a month. We tell the service writer again we need the vehicle, and he blames the tech and his apprentice for giving him bad info.... Whatever man, fix the vehicle. It's freaking warranty work as its got only 31k miles on it.
Couple more weeks go by and it's now been 55 days, and I was flat-out done with this garbage. I call the dealership and ask for a manager... Any manager, and get ahold of a guy named Chris. I explain the situation to him about how we've been lied to multiple times about it getting fixed, stuff being ignored, and them apparently having a couple techs who apparently aren't doing any work and still getting paid. I tell him either I need my vehicle totally fixed and back by the Monday before the wedding, or if they can't guarantee that, a new ExpST traded straight across for this one and they can pay the taxes/tags costs, or at a bare minimum, an Explorer I can drive out of state and possibly hook a cargo carrier to in the hitch. If they couldn't do any of those, I was getting a lawyer involved and suing the dealership. He asks for any correspondence with the service writer, so I send him the emails, video links, pics, links to posts here describing the same issues I was having along with the fixes, texts with the promised dates of it being fixed, etc.... he tells me he'll call me back in an hour or two as he needed to go talk to some folks.
About 90 minutes later, he calls back and when I answer the phone I hear him take a big breath and say "I don't even know how to start to apologize for how badly this has been handled. I've got 4 guys working on your vehicle in a bay currently trying to find out exactly what's going on." When I asked about the supposed turbo that was ordered to be installed his response was "there was never any parts ordered for this vehicle, so I have no idea why you were told that.". Great..... Techs that lied about the work and parts.
He calls back a couple hours later and his first question is "you bought this used, right? (Yes). Ok.. well, the previous owner seems to have run it REALLY hard... Both turbos are leaking either from bad seals or possibly warped housing from heat, so those are getting replaced. We'll also be replacing the pan since it's leaking, and the plugs have been REALLY hot.". Ok.... Well that's great and all, but we now have my son's wedding to go to in like 4 days, and we need an Explorer that holds 8 to take everybody. I need a loaner I can drive out of state. He says they'll get us one (and they drove one down to the house), and I tell him I'll check with him in a few days on the vehicle status after things calm down.
I get a call on (I think) Tuesday of last week and he says "I hate to tell you this, but the front main, at least, we found was absolutely shredded. We pulled the oil filter housing off and it looked like it had snowed inside it with the amount of bearing material it had, and once we started digging into it we decided to scrap it and get a new motor. I tell him that when we dropped it off the oil was clean and there hadn't been anything in the filter 1000 miles before that, so what did they do in the (now 750 miles) they'd put on it? He still thinks it's from the previous owner damaging things, but that seems odd.... Regardless, they had to order a new motor among other things, so it may not even be fixed by the time we get back from the wedding (5/24). Sure enough, on Friday (5/23) the tech was still in the middle of the engine swap.
I finally get an email from Chris yesterday with the list of what they replaced... New motor, new turbos, new FADA assembly (it was cracked, apparently), and new electric transmission pump. They had put 20 miles on it since it was all changed and everything was going fine, but they wanted to put another 30 on it before giving it back to us. I finally got a call this evening around 5 that it was ready to pickup.
So, I'll finally get our ExpST back from the dealer tomorrow after this particular 81 day stint there. We've owned it for 322 days now, and it's spent over 100 days at the dealership since July. We can't lemon law it because Colorado lemon laws suck, and it took me threatening to get lawyers involved to get them to work on it. The engine will be brand new, and I'm assuming it will be a current Gen and not a "COVID 19 parts build", so I hope it's finally right.
I've never had a negative experience at this dealership until this past few months but dang. Just really hope Jenny can drive her Explorer now and not have to deal with any more of this stuff.
In early February I noticed it started having some smoke for a couple seconds at startup after it sat all night with it nose-up on an incline. I did some digging here and found the posts about the turbos in the 21s having problems, so I sent that to the service guy I normally dealt with. I also found the FADA was leaking, and so was the oil pan. It needed an oil change anyway, so in went 6 quarts of Amsoil and I waited for my dealer to call and say they had a loaner for us. A month later they still didn't have a loaner, but now it's used/lost 24 ounces of oil in 1007 miles, so I dropped it off on March 11 and asked for a loaner when they could provide one.
Then the saga began... Fortunately they got us a loaner pretty quickly, a new f150 power boost. That's fine, but it didn't hold enough people (ours holds 7, *I originally had 8 here because that's how many we still have at the house until Gracen leaves for college, and I probably shouldn't write stuff like this at 1 am) and it didn't have a bedliner, so we couldn't even use the bed to haul anything... Oh well, it's at least a vehicle. Was told around the 3 week mark they got approval to do an oil consumption test and needed my ok to drive it 500 miles. Sure.... Do it. I need our Explorer back. I'm tired of using my Focus ST to haul lumber and dirt from Lowe's. After about 10 days the guy confirmed the smoke (I'd sent him probably 8 or 9 videos of it doing it) and said they were ordering a driver's side turbo. I asked about the FADA and pan leaks and his response was "the techs didn't say anything about that"... I asked if they'd even put it on a rack and opened their eyes. Apparently the service writer ignored the pics and video I sent him of the leaks and the techs were blind (or possibly just not really working on it).
Couple more weeks go by and we get a call: "driver's side turbo is going to be here Monday and we expect to have it swapped on Wednesday. It should be ready to go Thursday.... So I have one of my teens detail the f150 so we can take it back on Thursday and then nothing... No calls, no emails, and no returned messages for almost a week. I can't get ahold of anybody.
It's now the middle of April and we've got my oldest son's wedding to go to in a month. We tell the service writer again we need the vehicle, and he blames the tech and his apprentice for giving him bad info.... Whatever man, fix the vehicle. It's freaking warranty work as its got only 31k miles on it.
Couple more weeks go by and it's now been 55 days, and I was flat-out done with this garbage. I call the dealership and ask for a manager... Any manager, and get ahold of a guy named Chris. I explain the situation to him about how we've been lied to multiple times about it getting fixed, stuff being ignored, and them apparently having a couple techs who apparently aren't doing any work and still getting paid. I tell him either I need my vehicle totally fixed and back by the Monday before the wedding, or if they can't guarantee that, a new ExpST traded straight across for this one and they can pay the taxes/tags costs, or at a bare minimum, an Explorer I can drive out of state and possibly hook a cargo carrier to in the hitch. If they couldn't do any of those, I was getting a lawyer involved and suing the dealership. He asks for any correspondence with the service writer, so I send him the emails, video links, pics, links to posts here describing the same issues I was having along with the fixes, texts with the promised dates of it being fixed, etc.... he tells me he'll call me back in an hour or two as he needed to go talk to some folks.
About 90 minutes later, he calls back and when I answer the phone I hear him take a big breath and say "I don't even know how to start to apologize for how badly this has been handled. I've got 4 guys working on your vehicle in a bay currently trying to find out exactly what's going on." When I asked about the supposed turbo that was ordered to be installed his response was "there was never any parts ordered for this vehicle, so I have no idea why you were told that.". Great..... Techs that lied about the work and parts.
He calls back a couple hours later and his first question is "you bought this used, right? (Yes). Ok.. well, the previous owner seems to have run it REALLY hard... Both turbos are leaking either from bad seals or possibly warped housing from heat, so those are getting replaced. We'll also be replacing the pan since it's leaking, and the plugs have been REALLY hot.". Ok.... Well that's great and all, but we now have my son's wedding to go to in like 4 days, and we need an Explorer that holds 8 to take everybody. I need a loaner I can drive out of state. He says they'll get us one (and they drove one down to the house), and I tell him I'll check with him in a few days on the vehicle status after things calm down.
I get a call on (I think) Tuesday of last week and he says "I hate to tell you this, but the front main, at least, we found was absolutely shredded. We pulled the oil filter housing off and it looked like it had snowed inside it with the amount of bearing material it had, and once we started digging into it we decided to scrap it and get a new motor. I tell him that when we dropped it off the oil was clean and there hadn't been anything in the filter 1000 miles before that, so what did they do in the (now 750 miles) they'd put on it? He still thinks it's from the previous owner damaging things, but that seems odd.... Regardless, they had to order a new motor among other things, so it may not even be fixed by the time we get back from the wedding (5/24). Sure enough, on Friday (5/23) the tech was still in the middle of the engine swap.
I finally get an email from Chris yesterday with the list of what they replaced... New motor, new turbos, new FADA assembly (it was cracked, apparently), and new electric transmission pump. They had put 20 miles on it since it was all changed and everything was going fine, but they wanted to put another 30 on it before giving it back to us. I finally got a call this evening around 5 that it was ready to pickup.
So, I'll finally get our ExpST back from the dealer tomorrow after this particular 81 day stint there. We've owned it for 322 days now, and it's spent over 100 days at the dealership since July. We can't lemon law it because Colorado lemon laws suck, and it took me threatening to get lawyers involved to get them to work on it. The engine will be brand new, and I'm assuming it will be a current Gen and not a "COVID 19 parts build", so I hope it's finally right.
I've never had a negative experience at this dealership until this past few months but dang. Just really hope Jenny can drive her Explorer now and not have to deal with any more of this stuff.
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