Nobody wants to glance into their rearview mirror and see that part of their car is flying away, but that’s exactly what may happen to nearly 175,000 Ford owners. A new recall issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reveals that some Ford SUVs and trucks may have been delivered with inadequately attached clips that could lead to detaching trim, something that affected the Ford Flex earlier this year. In that case, the B-pillar masks would come off, but in this case, it’s the moonroof wind deflector that isn’t properly fastened.
SUVs And Trucks From Ford And Lincoln Affected
Ford
The recall potentially impacts 174,853 examples of the 2021-2022 Ford Expedition (34,573 vehicles) and Lincoln Navigator (8,969 vehicles), as well as the 2021-2023 Ford F-150 (91,850 vehicles). Super Duty pickups are also affected, with the Ford F-250 SD, F-350 SD, and F-450 SD named in the recall (39,461 vehicles). According to the NHTSA, the clips on the Webasto-supplied moonroof wind deflector’s lower attachment strip may be inadequately attached to the moonroof frame’s retention tabs, which can result in the wind deflector detaching from the vehicle, causing a hazard to other vehicles and potentially resulting in a crash. The issue was first noticed in May of this year when Ford was addressing B-pillar trim detachments on Explorers, at which time the automaker decided to check other areas of its vehicles that may suffer from similar problems. Notifications will go out to dealers from tomorrow, 30 October, at which time owners will be able to use their VIN to check if their vehicles are part of the recall.
A Fix Is Coming Soon
Ford
Fortunately, this recall won’t take too long to address, as Ford expects to begin notifying owners of a remedy from November 3-7. As always with a recall, dealers will inspect affected vehicles and replace the faulty clips and, if necessary, repair the moonroof wind deflector at no cost to owners. This recall comes after Ford just announced a new 15-year backdated warranty for analog backup cameras after 1.5 million vehicles were recalled over failing to clearly show imagery when reversing, a problem that already led to a recall of 1.9 million vehicles worldwide last month. The Blue Oval’s quality issues even extend to aftermarket supercharger kits that could cause unintended acceleration, but to be fair, CEO Jim Farley has been saying that Ford’s quality issues will take several years to fix, and these slightly older cars will continue to be plagued by problems until new processes and methods of manufacturing have been applied across the range.
