Direly need advice!!

[bigdude2468]

If you told Ford you are "burning" a quart of oil every 5000 miles, "fix it" they would tell you to go pound sand. If you told them a quart every 3000 miles they would say that is also normal.

 

[NiteCharger]

Find a different dealership. There are plenty around st.louis (McMahon, Sunset, Sinclair off the top of my head). For the service advisor to tell you that oil leaking on a motor with 12k miles is normal because the "turbos are under pressure" is absolutely asinine.

 

[peterk9]

Find a different dealership. There are plenty around st.louis (McMahon, Sunset, Sinclair off the top of my head). For the service advisor to tell you that oil leaking on a motor with 12k miles is normal because the "turbos are under pressure" is absolutely asinine.

Welcome to the Forum.

Peter

 

[bdginmo]

Shame on Ford! If anyone is in the St. Louis area I'd advise you to AVOID Pundmann Ford. They are a hometown dealer but their actions are disgraceful!

uh oh...That's who we just bought our Explorer from. I'll keep this in mind.

 

[1995E]

That's stupid. They will not and should not charge for the work. Oil leakage needs to be fixed. Wtf is wrong with that dealership? Call Ford Customer Service. Tell them what an idiot your dealership that you are dealing with is.

 

[Wibb]

Find a different dealership. There are plenty around st.louis (McMahon, Sunset, Sinclair off the top of my head). For the service advisor to tell you that oil leaking on a motor with 12k miles is normal because the "turbos are under pressure" is absolutely asinine.

Pretty clear that their service advisor doesn't know how seals in turbos work. He had nothing to say because I pointed to my 6.7 Dodge outside and told him I own 2 diesel trucks, neither turbo leaks a drop (one is a 7.3 Powerstroke). I'm going to throw a UV light on it tomorrow and try to find the dye. I've got a friend who is a local BMW mechanic coming over with a good inspection camera too. Hopefully I'll have some better info and photos.

 

[Wibb]

I wanted to thank you all for your advice. I didn't win this one, and ended up trading this vehicle in. I am losing sleep over this because I have a conscience and there is a good chance someone is going to pick this up off of a lot and end up with a problem.

I called Ford customer service directly and they did put in a negative feedback which they said would be reviewed by Ford and the dealer. This whole ordeal has really left a bad taste in my mouth and it will probably be a long while before I end up considering another Ford. What really got me here was the service advisor and his condescending demeanor. He was 100% against me before the problem was even looked at. On top of that it's obvious he's used his misinformation on unsuspecting folks before and that is downright WRONG. A large amount of people depend on those folks for their expertise and to mislead them for the sole purpose of the $$$ is just crooked. The salesman (Tim Pundmann) has been one of the best I've ever worked with, but at the end of the day he didn't help much either.

Just in case anyone ever comes across this again I thought I'd share what I found. I spent a large amount of time over the weekend with a blacklight looking over the engine and trying to track down the dye. I was able to clearly find it and the path it was taking down to the bell housing. Everything is very tight in there, so it is difficult to say exactly where the source is, but it appears that it was coming from the head gasket itself. I'm going to try to snag some screen shots from the Ford Parts website and highlight it, but I believe that it was leaking on the upper corner of the rear head (as you are facing the engine). When you are under the vehicle, there is only a small window where you can see the back side of the cylinder head right above where the bell housing begins. I was able to get a Q-Tip up there and take a swab of what I believe was the dye. Once I was able to get my hand back out, I was able to put the Q-Tip under the black light and confirm that it was. I could clearly see with the blacklight where it was running down the curved edge inside of the bell housing with the inspection plate off. I am almost certain that it wasn't from the main. The rear valve cover was also seeping all the way around as well.

 

[bigdude2468]

So you traded it in without going to a different Ford dealer? Head gaskets oil leaks are not common in any vehicle. Coolant leaks from head gaskets are but not oil. Maybe someone else can chime in but I do believe that this is the first incident of a head gasket leak of any kind on this board. Plenty of vehicles over the years have had problems with head gaskets. V6 Mitsubishi engine used in the Chrysler minivans. GM 3800 engine with plastic intake manifold had head gaskets failures. Google Subaru head gasket failures and there are hundreds of threads. Ford 3.5 liter V6 engine.... not so much.

 

[blwnsmoke]

This is a prime example of a dealer making or breaking it for a customer and nothing to do with Ford as a whole. It is unfortunate that you had to deal with this situation.

What I will say is I can't believe you didn't try any other dealers and instead rather take a hit on a trade as well as pass this vehicle on to someone else. I would hsve went to another dealer and politely went up to the service manager and explain your whole situation and ask for their help. You mentioned your conscience but my bet is you didn't tell your trade in dealer about the known issue?

Anyways, thats my $0.02 thrown in.

 

[Wibb]

This is a prime example of a dealer making or breaking it for a customer and nothing to do with Ford as a whole. It is unfortunate that you had to deal with this situation.

What I will say is I can't believe you didn't try any other dealers and instead rather take a hit on a trade as well as pass this vehicle on to someone else. I would hsve went to another dealer and politely went up to the service manager and explain your whole situation and ask for their help. You mentioned your conscience but my bet is you didn't tell your trade in dealer about the known issue?

Anyways, thats my $0.02 thrown in.

Actually I did end up telling them and took a $5000 hit for it. I didn't go into details about my own findings/suspicions, but told them that it had been to the dealer for the leaks and that Ford deemed everything as seepage. They drove it with me in the car, and inspected it. I ended up getting the 'Fair' KBB value in lieu of what the car was actually worth (much closer to Excellent). At the end of the day I didn't feel like spending any more of my time was going to get me anywhere. I can't stand here and tell you what another dealer would say, but I have a hard time believing one is going to go to the other end of the spectrum and do the right thing, especially if they are all focused on getting back-charged from Ford.

 

[Wibb]

So you traded it in without going to a different Ford dealer? Head gaskets oil leaks are not common in any vehicle. Coolant leaks from head gaskets are but not oil. Maybe someone else can chime in but I do believe that this is the first incident of a head gasket leak of any kind on this board. Plenty of vehicles over the years have had problems with head gaskets. V6 Mitsubishi engine used in the Chrysler minivans. GM 3800 engine with plastic intake manifold had head gaskets failures. Google Subaru head gasket failures and there are hundreds of threads. Ford 3.5 liter V6 engine.... not so much.

I'm making an educated guess only that it was from the head gasket. It is very difficult to see anything under there, especially when the car is on jack stands. Everything is very tight. What I can tell you is that I do not think this was from the main. Gravity still applies and there wasn't a single drop/run of oil coming down behind the flywheel on this car. I also couldn't see any dye in that vicinity. The oil that was running down was clearly on the side of the block/head and right above where the bell housing mates to the block. It was coming through that mating surface and down the inside of the bell housing to the inspection plate.

For all I know my Ex was built on Friday at 3:30. Any time you have a turbo-charged engine you are at an increased risk of lifting a head. There are a lot of other factors that come into play, but that's very common. All you have to do is look at a diesel pickup. Many of those are well known for head gasket issues. And before anyone asks, NO, I did not do any custom tuning whatsoever to my Ex. It was a bone stock vehicle.

Either way, I appreciate everyone's input. At the end of the day, I work out of town too much to be dealing with this and if I sent my wife in she'd get taken advantage of very quickly. We bought a new Acadia Denali and I will tell you I already miss my Explorer

 

[bdginmo]

For the most part our experience with this dealer has been positive. We have bought several vehicles from one of their salesman named Eliot who has been great for us. Their finance guy has actually been pretty good to work with as well. However, I will say their service advisors do leave a lot to be desired sometimes and their service scheduling is ridiculous. The heat went out on my Fusion Energi in January and it took more than 2 weeks to fix; not because it took that long to troubleshoot, but because their earliest opening was 15 days out. Though to be fair it was their hybrid techs that were booked up, but still. And to see that they didn't work with you to find and fix the oil leak is not going unnoticed by me. I will be keeping this mind