Ford's answers to the NHTSA 6.7 Investigation

NewsW wrote:
Niner / anyone who want to volunteer:

Need a bit of housekeeping done here.

We are at a point where we need a poster display (in physical terms, not online) of the information gathered:

But since we are all online, we have to do it here.



Roughly, in columns,

- Symptoms, diagnostics information, early warnings
Hard starting..., vehicle may go into "limp" mode shortly several times or several restarts, before complete failure /motor shut off. Check engine light comes on.


- hypothesis, about failure modes (single vs. multiple)

Chicken or egg which comes first... Bore material failure (aluminum) creates swarf, from steel piston in aluminum treated or coated bore, has failure, of coating? Gets into the aluminum bore on thrust side of bore, relative to cam, contaminates fuel system... gets picked up in HPFP inlet side (low pressure side) and gets run through cam /roller, causing skidding, binding, tears up the DHC coating on the shoe also, now steel /iron based swarf enters the fuel contamination chain of events. As more contamination enters the continous (sp)recycle loop, the whole fuel system ends up contaminated by swarf, tiny metal bits of aluminum and steel and slight traces of DLC.

- root cause / initial failure

Load, inadequate material for the job, high rpms square the load on the parts, more material needed, cam width wider, roller diameter larger, bore diameter larger to lighten the load for materials used, or less rpms needed (half cranks speed rpm 2x larger pulley)with more rollers. Metal contaminates the whole fuel system. See the tops of VW fuel filters when doing changes and metal is everywhere, long before failure occurs of the HPFP.

- causal mechanisms

Filtering of fuel 10 micron standard for fuel filter, 65 to 95% pass rate /trapping? dirty fuel? dust in nozzle at fuel station? Not fine enough effective enough filtering S/B 2mm spec? Out of spec fuel, water, heated fuel draws moisture out of the atmospere as fuel tank emptys.
Lack of fuel lubrication? Heat,reduces viscosity of lube in fuel, less centistokes, less barrier protection? Critical parts need lube by motor oil, not fuel?
- cognate field (fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, simulation modeling, etc.)

Huh? I'm lost here... this is the engineering side, computer modelling

- sources of knowledge (field reports, SAE docs, OEM docs, hiring specs, ...)

need industry inside knowledge for this.


From this, a "most probable" leads is generated

Then this leads us to asking "how do we seek additional information"

Where to find failure cause evidence?

Where to find additional literature?

Where to find more?

Need this posted --- the best people to do it are not those doing the front line -- but a new person like biker.

Give us perspective.