My Car has turbo issues and there may be a Legal Battle

No, there is no sensationalizing with that headline.

It was a Sunday morning when I was driving a 2010 Lincoln MKT EcoBoost with my family on a US Interstate at about 63 MPH (roughly 101 km/h). All was going well. But then I tapped on the throttle, and I got nothing but a high pitched whirring noise.. So I exited the highway and pull into the back of a parking lot. While exiting, I noticed I had power at around 20 MPH or so. After testing the car for a few minutes, we pressed on to our destination, about 1.5 miles away. During that drive, we noticed something seem to snap, and the car was behaving normally again. That was a bit unsettling, but possibly a good sign. Maybe something temporarily went wrong?

Unfortunately, on our way back home, I noticed the problem arise again while going up a hill. The sound was not as loud, and I was already using the brakes anyway, but it was slightly back. A few days later, we took the car to a Lincoln dealership.

The dealer’s diagnosis: a bad turbo.

Upon that diagnosis, here were my family’s thoughts: A repair is definitely possible, but it will cost a few thousand dollars for the part and labor. That’s not very great to hear. But the frustrating thing was the timing of the issue. The car is currently under 99,000 miles. A turbo is not supposed to fail around that mileage. In fact, I read somewhere that the turbo should last about 10 years or 150,000. So this failure is a little premature.

As it turned out, however, the problem may not be with a turbo itself, but with a bad seal for it. While conditions may vary, I noticed when driving it that when accelerating above 3,000 RPM, a lot of smoke would come from the tailpipes (and yes, it is obvious that it is smoke and not hot exhaust hitting cold air). So it is quite possible that something from the seals is leaking.

I did more research and discovered that there was once a lawsuit filed against Ford for the 3.5L EcoBoost V6 - the same kind in my MKT EcoBoost. The lawsuit alleged similar issues of power loss at highway speeds. On a relatively empty highway, losing speed due to a lack of power may not be too scary. However, if that were rush hour, or if the flow of traffic were much faster, that would be a genuine safety concern. To be going much slower than the flow of traffic really increases one’s chances of getting rear-ended. Keep watching this space, as I will be researching if I could possibly get an NHTSA complaint filed. Maybe that would even lead to a recall! Though that would be far-fetched.

Written by: EA40

#blogpost #carproblems #blownturbo