I've had my 2013 Ford Explorer Sport for about half a month now and have logged about 1100 miles. Over this time, I have been noticing an issue on cold starts I wanted to check up on. There is a light random shudder at idle & also some power holdback and bucking upon acceleration the first couple minutes. I had first noticed the issue within the first couple days I had
Nox Vidmate VLC it and decided to see if it would go away with a few miles, but there has been no change. I decided to search some of the forums this morning to see if this was normal operation, or a sign of a problem and also, if there might be a fix.
Upon searching, I was not able to find any similar threads on this forum, but I did find a post on the Ecoboost Forum started by Rick at LMS when he noticed the same issue last summer on a 2013 SHO they were putting on the dyno. There were several replies, some saying they've not experienced it and some saying they have, but beyond that, no mentions of a possible TSB or Re-flash to fix the concern.
I'll descibe my issue a little better here. As for the rough idle, it reminds me of the feel of some of the older muscle cars but on a lighter scale, just a random shudder feel in the idle every couple seconds. I really only experience the rough idle when backing out of the garage & driveway when not even touching the throttle, it's not bad, but noticable, just has that older big motor feel to it. That doesn't bother me any, but my real concern is that once in drive on a cold start, there seems to be a noticable hold back of power the first half mile to mile or so, and if you push it past 3500 rpm or better, it starts bucking a bit in it's acceleration, very noticable if you go WOT. When driving through neighborhoods, it's not very noticeable since there is not much effort needed to get to 25-30 mph, but when leaving work, I am pulling out onto a 4 lane highway with traffic moving about 55-60 mph, so you kind of have to dip into the throttle just bit more and thats when I notice the bucking issue the most. But once the engine starts reaching towards normal operating temperatures, it's super smooth running.
But with all that said, I was just mainly curious if anyone else with the Explorer Sport is experiencing this issue and to make sure there is no cause for alarm. If others have experienced this issue, has anyone made an attempt at the dealership for a possible re-flash or TSB service that has cured the issue. In the posting on the Ecoboost thread, Rick from LMS did say the issue seemed to improve with their tune, but not eliminated. I do plan to retune with LMS in about 2 weeks once upto about 2000 miles, but I'd prefer to let the dealer do a Ford authorized service/update before retuning if they have a fix available? This may just be normal operation for the 3.5L Ecoboost, but I wanted to make sure before I just decided to ignore it. Thanks!
