Ford faces $1.3 billion lawsuit over EcoBoost engine

BenK wrote:
It has to do with the design architecture and the biggie duty cycle employed by those Ford Engine engineers...

Yup, a hose, but it says something to a techie like me...

The thermal dynamics of the design has it very close to the thermal rejection design. Not much is left for it to go into a shallow hysteresis curve to allow the thermal sensors to come up to speed and set any one of the limp modes (most limp mode set points (both hardware and software) are based on thermal...both rate of change and ultimate temp)

Meaning that the thermal rejection systems was balls to the wall most of the time...maybe all the time and once the hose let go...no time for the system to warn...go into limp mode...shut down...

Duty cycle and is what Turtle talks to all the time when someone says why don't they put the F150 EcoBoost into the higher class trucks...LOL when he says that 2.x liter is really a 7L-8L when at full boost...lost to most that fine, but biggie point...

Thanks for explaining the technical side Ben.

Having a turbocharger on an engine is something that lately has an appeal for me. This appeal was largely developed due to the introduction of new Chevy truck 2.7 liter, 4 cylinder turbo gas engine ...310 hp, 348 lbs. ft. of torque with full torque from 1500-5500 rpm...sounds very good to me...well it will hinge on two things...MPG...both city and highway and reliability/durability.

For a number of years I had concerns about turbocharger unit lacking engine lifetime durability...being more like a service item that may need to be replaced/repaired ...every so often during the life of the engine.

However the Ford ecoboost V6 engine had me rethinking. I hadn't heard about issues in the area of poor durability/reliability...and particularly not about catastrophic failure of turbo and engine.

But now this. This problem with the Ford 1 liter turbo gas engine maybe restricted to only this engine and not the larger Ford Turbo V6 gassers. Which would be fine, but if it is a pattern problem throughout the Ford turbo gas engine design that of course would be a concern.

A quote from your text, discusses concerns I have in general about turbocharged engines.

" Duty cycle and is what Turtle talks to all the time when someone says why don't they put the F150 EcoBoost into the higher class trucks...LOL when he says that 2.x liter is really a 7L-8L when at full boost...lost to most that fine, but biggie point. "

I have had more than a passing interest in hot rodded (factory and non factory efforts) vehicles since the early 1960's. Car, trucks, motorcycles...all hold my interest.

The thing that I have learned that when it comes to building more power out of an engine, there is no free lunch.

More power means more heat, more stress on ancillary components (drivetrain, cooling parts, etc.) and if...all.. the ancillary components are not upgraded then eventually the weakest link will break down.
So case in point...even a relatively minor part like a cooling system hose (ie; Ford ecoboost 1 liter) is insufficiently specified...disaster can result. The fact that this has happened to a Ford product surprises me on one hand, but doesn't on the other hand. Read Bob Lutz's book regarding 'soft' specified cams in Escorts number of years ago.

Having said that, I'm still interested in the GM 2.7 liter turbo truck four cylinder, but will let other customers do the 'guinea pig' day to day consumer testing, for a couple of years , before proceeding.

The other issue with turbos that I wonder about. Should you let the turbo engine idle for a few minutes after a prolonged run...to bring down turbo speed and allow for cool down of turbo components ?