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Whereas some manufacturers (like Ford) offer financial incentives and extra recognition to dealers with outstanding feedback from customers many dealers do not attempt to qualify.
Look for a dealer with with a high ranking to get your vehicle serviced at, it doesn't matter whether you purchased the vehicle from them.
You mention great experience with Volkswagen - I can tell you that I went through three dealers in Northern NJ and all were incompetent and overpriced - couldn't wait to get rid of the VW and will not buy another.
Ditto for me. As my name would suggest, I once owned a 2002 Passat that was a maintenance nightmare from day one. The VW dealership involved in this mess treated me like I should have felt privileged to do business with them. The happiest day in my life was when I traded that POS in for my '05 Freestyle. My experience with both the Freestyle and my Ford dealership have been night & day different. Lesson learned.
We are now above 30,000 miles (15k on the new transmission).
I had to replace the brakes recently though. Not happy with that since my '01 Civic's brakes were still original at 84k when I traded it.
I really like the FS design, it is just a shame Ford messed up the execution.
I had my check engine light on and acceleration problems and it turned out to be the electromechanical dohickey on the transmission. It was not running roughly or hard starting though. I would think running rough, hard starting would not be transmission related. I would tend to think that it is electrical/computer related? But - just a guess obviously.
I have 100,000 km on my 06 with zero engine problems.
Are those the actual names?
Did the dealer provide any warranty when they did the $2000 repair? These kind of things generally have some warranty period. If the replaced parts contributed to the failure, you may have some justification to ask Ford for some compensation.
So that is where we are at....I'm aware of the Lemon law but it's 2 days short of being in for 15 days and we were told the car had to be in three times for the same problem. It was the same problem on our end but ford turned it into a different problem everytime--I don't think they even mentioned the word transmission.
We did pay extra for the extended warranty and even went into the dealership to have them buyback the car and put us into another ford or my same car without the CVT and after they ran the numbers, we would have been screwed.
I know this is long, BUT I called another Ford dealership to see if they would offer me more than our local dealership for a buy back and after I gave him the info and VIN he told me my car is a liability and he could only auction it off, not resell it on his lot.
So my question is, do I have any other recourse? For us, this is a safety issue. I drive my children around (all under 9) and I cringe everytime I get into the car. The dealership claims the've "never heard of these problems".
I owe $20,000 on the car (bought it new for $32,000). I'm not asking for everything back....I did drive the car for two years before this started. However, I need to get out of this car for our safety but can't do so with the $20g hanging over our head.
Any ideas??
Thanks!! :confuse:
http://www.lemonauto.com/index.htm
They only assist in some states so you will have to see if your state is listed, if not, you might still want to call and see if they can refer you to someone else, the consultation is free. They were great, they explained the whole process, and everything went as they told me it would. They were able to get me a cash settlement pretty fast. Also, contact Ford and complain, they will probably assign an engineer to look over your car, you can use that diagnosis as the 4th visit and another day the car was out of commission. They do not have to say the word transmission, you just have to provide all the repair statements to the lemon law lawyers and they make the determination if it belongs under "transmission"
Hope this helps, let me know if it does. By the way, took the cash settlement, paid down the loan and got rid of the car. I took a hit on the trade in, but at least now I feel safe driving again.
Any car can have a failure, and if it out of warranty then the onus is on you. It seems you are highly sensitive to such events, so perhaps next time you buy a car you should buy an extended warranty. The thought of suing any automaker for an out of warranty failure seems ridiculous to me. You bought the car and knew how long the warranty lasted, so why is this Ford's problem?
I gotta agree with saabturboid on this one. If the Freestyle had a high rate of failures over the entire population of vehicles, then there might be a class action lawsuit, similar to the one Toyota recently faced with their poor engineering of their V6 engines (sludge issue). However, we know Consumer Reports surveyed hundreds of random owners and found the Freestyle is actually MORE reliable than the average '05 vehicle out there. In my one case, my '05 Freestyle at 48,000 miles has had no major trouble, and gets great MPG, etc. I do sympathize with your problem, but understand that owning cars is risky in many ways. I know Honda owners that wish we would start WWII up again they are so mad at their Japanese makers! (Head cracking problems and electrical issues.) Its not rational, but there is the emotion. I am paranoid and got an extended warranty at some cost to my wallet. Also, I might add, I have an '05 F150 with no problems either. Fords are great cars. The Fusion has won JD Powers quality awards, for example.
2.) I had a Limp home mode in my 500 as you described as well. Its not fun!
3.) The transmission's fluid can be checked, but its a pain and you might as well have your fluid changed because when they check it, they have to remove the air filter, battery, etc.. By the way, did you do that at 60k, per the owner's manual?
4.) The transmission in this car is fairly noisy - its a noisy chain! Please describe the car's noise in more detail. Where is it coming from? Is a "whinning" noise? My CVT makes noises when I let off the gas, coasting, or at slow speeds.
There was a TSB about RPM flutter - it doesn't always doit but its not a big deal.
There is a stall speed on your car, and if your spot is slightly inclined in a strange way, it will go backwards. Just my 10 cents...... I think your car is fine but nobody here can diagnose things 100% accurately - check the dealer for that (and some dealers are lousy!)
I sure would like to know if more CVT's croak than others. I understand that so far there has been no evidence that they are any worse than any other car for tranny failure. At least mine was still driving fine. This car has been less than perfect. I went through a set of the 18" Pirelli's very fast, along with brakes and rear rotors. My rotors didn't count for the recall, as they had too many miles, something like 24k instead of under 15k. I also went through a main engine ecu (computer) under warrantee. Overall, I love the car. I'm definitely considering buying the Ford extended warrantee. I think I can get it up to 7 years /100k miles with $200 deductible for $865. That way, I wouldn't be out the $3,500 to $7,000 I've heard a cvt replacement costs. If the tranny goes again, I can't afford to cough up $5k in a moment's notice.
Any thoughts re. Ford's extended warrantee? I'm seriously considering it.
I'll keep you posted as to what happens with my repair.
2006 Limited AWD with everything.
I have been driving Fords for years (5 SHO's) and this is the 3rd Ford tranny I have had problems with (88, 93 and 96). I was hoping a 05 would be of better quality.I long for the days of my first SHO's with a 5 speed manual.
tidester, host
SUVs and Smart Shopper
It took me some effort to replicate the issue. At first, I was unable to replicate the problem. So my Ford service dealer (Quality Ford in East Rutherford, NJ) was interested in helping. They looked at the car's computer and found nothing. So they installed a "flight recorder" for 4 weeks so that if the lights came-on again, I could hit the button and it would record what the car's computer was getting.
Unfortunately, I didn't know at the time that the problem occurred only when the cruise control was engaged, so nothing got recorded. Then about 2 weeks ago, I went on a road-trip with the family and engaged the cruise control. BINGO! After 2 minutes, on came the check trans light, then the traction control light. Had to pull-over, shut off the car, then everything was fine (as long as i didn't use the cruise control). And I thought you only had to "reboot" Microsoft products! :P
So I brought the car back to Ford last week and gave them the exact steps to replicate the lights. They did, and found that the "output shaft transmission sensor" was malfunctioning. They're replacing it, and I get the car back later this week. Hope it fixes the issue . . . and helps you with yours.
Now I've see quite a few other vehicles with black circles for their transmission and I doubt if there were class action lawsuits against all of them, but I could be wrong. I just seems hard to imagine how a transmission with average reliability would quality.
That means that non-CVT, conventional automatic transmissions in 2005, 2006, and 2007 models are failing at a higher rate overall. It matches my experience spanning the last 40 years being around conventional automatics in that the old-style automatic transmissions do fail. At least our CVT fails less often.
That means that non-CVT, conventional automatic transmissions in 2005, 2006, and 2007 models are failing at a higher rate overall. It matches my experience spanning the last 40 years being around conventional automatics in that the old-style automatic transmissions do fail. At least our CVT fails less often."
Bob-
I understand your point of view, but unfortunately this isn't much consolation to those who had the failures. I think that part of the issue is that even the owners don't understand the CVT and it's unique design.
And to be fair, I'm not sure that there wasn't some pattern of failures in the early model. I don't think anyone has correlated manufacture dates and failures.
So after a week of not being able to replicate the transmission "freak-out" and lights, they gave me the car back with a "flight recorder" installed (this records everything the computer is reading and car is doing 30 seconds prior and 30 seconds after pressing the trigger button). I pulled-out of their lot, immediately followed my own instructions, and BINGO . . . transmission "freak-out". I pressed the trigger button on the flight recorder, pulled the car over, shut it down, restarted it and drove right back to the dealership.
Once I got there, the manager wanted me to take him for a ride so I can show him, and I did, and I replicated the "freak-out" on que. So he drove me home and took the car back to the dealership. After another week of consultation with Ford's hotline, the transmission was removed to inspect the CONVERTER and TURBINE SHAFT O RING ON INPUT. They discovered the O-Ring was damaged/defective/broken, and replaced it. They also replaced a whole list of items which I’ll list later. One thing to note here is that the part number for the new O-Ring was different from the old one. The dealer said that this might indicate that the original (old) O-Ring might have been a defective design, and the new O-Ring was probably a redesigned version.
Here is a list of parts they replaced . . .
QTY Part # Description
1 5F9Z-7N519-B Ring
1 5F9Z-7902-BRM Convert
1 5F9Z-7H497-EA Seal
1 5F9Z-7B325-AA Cover
1 5F9Z-7F401-AA Seal
6 XT-7QCFT Fluid
1 TA-25 Adhesive
I'm lucky that all of this work was covered under my premium 5-year extended warranty, which ends in April 2010, and which by the way, I made Ford give it to me free since they had to replace my transmission only months after I purchased it! The parts above are under their own warranty, which is 12 months or 12,000 miles. So if this issue happens again within the next 12 months or 12k miles, and they find that it was the O-Ring or other parts listed, the new parts and labor are free.
Another note, upon inspection of my transmission, they also found that my engine mount bracket was broken/damaged, so they replaced that (Part # 5F9Z-6F055-CB). Weather that allowed the engine/transmission to move enough to create the seal damage in the first place is something only a CVT-certified mechanic or engineer could tell me.
So far, so good. Car performs without any issues, and I am very happy to have my Freestyle back . . . especially after borrowing my Mom’s recalled Toyota Camry for three weeks!
Thanks for reading all of this. I did it so that it can hopefully help others experiencing the same issue.
That is the upper (very visible on top of the engine) "roll resistor' torque engine mount. That thing is a known weak spot on the Freestyle/500/Montego. There was anothe forum that posted pictures of bad ones, with deteriorating rubber in there. Mine has minor cracks, but is still OK.
At 20527 it happened again took it to the Dealer (Error code P2765 & 2766) upgraded software.
At 21150 it happened again took it to the Dealer (Error code P2765 & 2766) upgraded software again.
At 22528 it happened again took it to the Dealer (Error code P2765 & 2766) Cleaned electrical connections.
At 23859 it happened again took it to the Dealer (Error code P2765 & 2766) Just reset codes drove it a while and returned it to me.
At 24391 it happened again took it to the Dealer (Error code P2765 & 2766) Just reset codes drove it a while and returned it to me again.
Called Ford customer service (That is an oxymoron) and now am talking to the Attorney Generals office.
Any other suggestions?
I am interested to know if you have discovered any pending legal action. It is obvious to me from reading a slew of posts on several websites and from the fact that Ford discontinued the use of this transmission, that there is an inherent problem. Our 2006 Freestyle started acting up last fall. The wrench light would come on and the rpms would shoot up (I was told by a non Ford mechanic that at the sign of problems the transmission would go into second gear to prevent any catastrophic incident). When you turned off the vehicle and then restarted it it would drive fine. We eventually determined that the instigating factor was the resume function in cruise control. It would drive fine until you needed to brake and then as soon as you hit resume the problem would reoccur. The dealer we bought it from told us we would need a new transmission (about $ 6,000) and we would be responsible for paying it. I took the vehicle to our normal mechanic, who was not able to duplicate the problem but did get an error message from the computer indicating a problem in the transmission. We decided that no more harm (than replacing the transmission) could be done by continuing to drive the vehicle (without using the cruise control), until the problem reoccurred. My son drove the vehicle without incident for about six months. Then over the weekend the problem reappeared, this time without using the cruise control. And because it happened several times in one day, we took it to our mechanic. Our mechanic came to the determination this time that it was the engine computer causing the problem (not the transmission), but that is a repair only Ford can perform. I am not interested in going back to Ford, because they acted like this was an isolated incident, where all of these posts would indicate otherwise (not exactly making me trust them). I would appreciate any suggestions as to who to go to and how to deal with this issue.
Ford discontinued the transmission due to cost...the 6spd was cheaper. Reliability of the CVT is average or above average according to JD Power and Consumer Reports, so it's hard to imagine a class action lawsuit. If there were, then you'd think every car with poor and below average reliability stats would also have class action lawsuits against them.
It's not that the CVT is unreliable, but when there are problems they seem harder & more costly to repair.