That's exactly what I was saying several posts ago.
Bad Luck = you got the part that came off the assembly line at the exact moment the factory had a lightning strike... earthquake.... change in voltage... moment the tornado siren went off and the worker forgot to torque that one bolt....

Even with modern factories, there's a million variables.
This is "bad luck" if you got that one in 100,000 with a material flaw.
It was equally bad luck that it took so long to fail, and failed outside of the warranty period.

 

As you are reviewing your receipts from the lube shop, look to see if they ever did an oil flush service. If they have, there are another few issues to research and discuss.

 

In my post I mentioned not only 30 years work in propulsion plants but my share of root cause investigations into failures.

I don't buy the "bad luck" thinking.

Across 30 years I saw one, precisely one case of "bad luck" where a very highly qualified diesel engine tech installed the wrong kind of piston in a diesel and that was really operator error, too.

Everything we have discussed is just speculation until some info is forthcoming. I await information from the more detailed review of events leading up to this. I have my suspicions, but who knows, we'll see.

 

Did I miss it, or did the OP ever say when the last oil change was done? Was it just before this vacation? That could be a source: wrong/leaky filter, loose plug, etc...

Does anyone else remember the comercial from a while back advertising some new oil, placed to cars (like a charger??) on a dyno, drained the oil and let them run. The 'normal' oil seised up shortly, the 'miracle' oil kept on going until the end of the commercial. Just guessing, wht if the oild was just changed beore vacation (I tend to schedule this way) and the plug was loose/never installed. failure could have happened a long time later.

I'm also curious tho, all this talk about oil, w/o an oil gauge in the FEH, are there any warning/dummy lights to warn of this failure? lack of oil pressure or oil temp? Could these signs or lack there of help point the OP in a direction to look?

 

Unless a wrong filter blocked flow or a leaky filter blocked flow the filter thing won't give the results seen here. You'll just get poorer filtration.

Loose plug could surely have drained the oil over a somewhat long period and could have done this.

This has me thinking about an oil pressure gauge... I had a catastrophic loss of oil in my Suburban some 97k mies ago. A serpentine belt idler pulley seized shredding the belt. The pieces whipped around and severed an oil hose. The engine pumped itself down and oil pressure failed.

Oddly, you'd have thought there would have been an engine fire since the leak was in front of and*somewhat above the exhaust manifold, but no, it just made the engine compartment really oily.

I noticed that the oil pressure was odd and wiggly for several minutes before complete loss of pressure (I suppose as the oil level in the pan was dropping). Thus when it went to zero I was forewarned and could shut off the engine immediately (consistent with safely getting to the side of I-64). I never did see the oil light, but then I was busy and may just not have noticed it.

The good news is that oil sampling showed no damage and the temporary road fix was not expensive.

But what I learned, and had had my memory refreshed with this posting, is that if your only indication of trouble is the warning light, you'll likely ruin the engine.

Supposedly the synthetic oils adhere to cylinder walls far longer than dino oils, but in the end unrefreshed and uncooled oil will still result in engine failure. (BTW if you use a synthetic that is not 100% the benefits of this adherence decrease with the percentage of synthetic in the whole mix)

 

You don't "buy" that there could have been a one-time mis-assembly, or a one-time manufacturing defect? My god you have a lot of faith in Ford being 100% perfect all the time!

My 2005 FEH has an oil pressure gauge. It's on the "menu" of items you can display on the message center. The gauge is 8-bit data and has a range from 0-255. Mine runs at 160 to 170. I don't know what the conversion to psi is, but it's right in the middle of the range so I feel good about it. If I suspected something was wrong, I'd monitor it more often.

-John

 

It ain't faith...

I've seen far too many cases where something broke and it looked like parts failure only find out in the investigation that there was operator error.

It's like the aviation world... if you stamped "pilot error" on every accident investigation that came through the door you wouldn't miss much.

If this were a new engine in its first year of production I would more easily accept that, but this engine, and the family its comes from, is well established in production.

I've seen many, many parts come out of the military supply system. Some were better than others, but there were essentially zero that didn't meet minimum specs... and that's the government supply system.

Your faith in happenstance just leads to easy excuses when something is forgotten... and then blamed on "parts failure." As I said, I have my suspicions as to what happened to this guy. The complete absence of info from him just seems odd.

The point of my mention of loss of oil in my Suburban was not that I had chosen to monitor it, but rather that because I saw odd behavior in an always on gauge I was alerted. So when oil pressure did drop to zero I was ready and not mentally somewhere else in the world.

Unless you leave your scangauge on oil pressure continuously and are lucky enough to be able to alert on the changing digits... it won't do you any good at all. If your engine trouble light is your first indication of trouble it will take you a measurable amount of time to react to it, then decide to do something, and then get the engine stopped.

My take is that the scanguage is a wonderful diagnostic tool but won't replace instruments monitoring components continuously. I saw the Navy go through a several year evolution on how to design digital instrumentation. It is a requirement that the instrumentation provide the advantages of a digital readout with the utility of an analog gauge that people can quickly recognize something odd, quickly interpret, and then make time critical decisions based on the information they see.

 

Bill Winney said: "As I said, I have my suspicions as to what happened to this guy. The complete absence of info from him just seems odd."

For pete sake Bill, give the guy a break! Have some patience!

Only 4 days ago on the previous page he posted:
Folks, credible information has not come forth because there is no new information available. The vehicle is 170 miles from home and, for me, arranging to pay for a $6500 repair is not something I can accomplish in a day or two. Please forgive me: Concluding "operator error" without facts sounds like speculation."

Geeezz.

 

For Pete's sake, this guy knows enough to assert that he is initiating legal action against Ford.

What does he know? He has to know something about the failure. What was the condition of the car right after the failure?

Do you really believe he just walked away from his FEH and let the tow truck guy take it to any nearby dealer, just throwing the keys to the driver? Its as if he didn't even go with the tow truck to the dealer doing the work but just called them up and asked the cost of repairs.

Why didn't he check the engine oil dipstick (sometimes metal flakes will stick to the dipstick)? Was there an oil puddle under the engine when the truck pulled away or maybe an oil trail leading to the failure location?

Unless there is something that truly indicates an unusual part or component failure beyond the pale of the guaranty period, but so unusual as to warrant legal action, there is no case (as noted by gpsman1 in making his "bad luck" pitch).

So what does he know? And why doesn't he post it? (I accept that there may be a legal basis for keeping quiet - so say just say so, for Pete's sake!)

Geez!

 

OK, folks, settle down. I have ignored this forum since my last post because I did not have new facts to share. I picked the vehicle up today. Here are more facts, and a couple of opinions from both the service manager of the repairing dealership and the service technician who replaced the engine.

* The bearing on the connecting rod for cylinder #3 was gone. Not 'spun'. Nothing left. As in bare connecting rod clanking around on the crankshaft.
* Lots of metal - in the oil pan, of course, but also in the filter, on the top of the engine, and everywhere else he looked. He believes this is the remains of the bearing. I have the remains, and will post pictures for the curious.
* No oil leakage. Not around the filter. Not around the dipstick. Not around the pan. Not around the filler tube.
* The engine had the correct amount of oil.
* There is no evidence of a disintegrating oil filter. No evidence of any clogged oil passages, other than the previously mentioned metal.
* There is no evidence of sludge. The technician remarked that the oil and inside the engine was 'remarkably clean'.
* There is no evidence of wear or damage on the remaining three connecting rod bearings.

The technician believes the bearing was abnormally wearing for 'a while', although he could not define 'a while', due to the distribution of metal. My only indication of trouble was the (I now realize) connecting rod clanking around the crank less than... 15? 20? seconds before the engine shut down. Prior to this event, I had no indication. Normal temp. Normal engine sounds. Normal RPM. Vehicle behaving like it had for the previous 65,000 miles.

I suppose you could tear the engine down, clean everything out, replace the crank, bearings and a connecting rod, and put Humpty Dumpty together again. I believe the dealership made the right choice to replace the engine. The better question: Why did the bearing fail?

Both the service manager AND the technician have the opinion that this vehicle was "well cared for". They had NO issues with the brand of oil, the frequency of oil changes ("Why are you wasting money by changing it so often?"), or the brand of oil filter.

The last oil change was performed on 7/30/09 at 65,029 miles, or 10 days before I left for vacation. I drove the vehicle around town for ten days before we left. No issues. No noises. I checked the oil before we pulled out. All was well. The engine failed at 65,694 miles. Quite honestly, I did not post this after the tangential dirt road "Non-Ford Oil Changes? Shame on You! You Deserve it!" discussions. I wanted to wait for more facts.

FYI, I have used this same Jiffy Lube for... 15? years and at least 5 vehicles. No issues.

This is a tough one: Go on vacation on a Sunday, break down in the middle of nowhere, get the vehicle towed to a closed Ford dealership while leaving your family where the vehicle broke down because the tow truck does not have seating for five, then wait for friends to rescue you 170 miles from home because, literally, all of the rental car companies are closed on Sunday afternoon in a small town. Will this forum forgive me for not checking the dipstick for oil before it was towed?

So. Back to my original question. Does anyone have any strategies for getting Ford's attention? The repairing dealership is on record: "This is not your fault. There is nothing you could have done. This is an extraordinary event."