- It’ll likely take Ford a full year to develop a remedy for leaky brake hoses.
- While a recall was issued last August, owners are still paying for repairs.
- A Boston man had to pay over $1,800 to get his Edge’s brake hoses replaced.
Ford would like the world to believe it’s tightening up its quality controls to avoid issuing as many recalls. The numbers say otherwise. The automaker is still handing out far more recalls than its rivals, and in at least one case, the lag between announcing a recall and actually sorting it out has left a Boston man staring down a hefty repair bill.
Back in August of last year, Ford issued a recall for 497,624 examples of the 2015-2018 Ford Edge and 2016-2018 Lincoln MKX in the US, warning that the flexible rear brake hoses on these vehicles could rupture and leak fluid.
Read: Ford’s Recalling 420,000 SUVs Whose Seatbelts Can Lock You In For No Reason
Issuing the recall was the right call, but Ford has seemingly been moving at a snail’s pace to come up with the actual fix. In April, Massachusetts resident Paul Lonergan says he discovered fluid leaking from the rear brake hose of his 2017 Ford Edge and took the SUV to his local dealer to be repaired, having been alerted to the recall back in September.
The dealer, however, promptly informed him that no remedy had been released yet. As a result, Lonergan was left to foot the bill himself, an eye-popping $1,854.
Under US rules, automotive recalls require manufacturers to reimburse owners who end up paying out of pocket to address a recall-related issue. According to WCVB, Ford has told Lonergan to submit his receipts for “reimbursement consideration,” but has yet to confirm whether he’ll actually be paid back. And even then, he’ll have to wait until the official repair is available.
“I don’t have $1,800 to loan to a billion-dollar corporation,” he said. “It just irks me that I may not get my money back.”
Ford originally expected to have the repair ready by April, but work now won’t begin until September, more than a year after the recall was announced. It’s not as though the solution should be tough to engineer, either, since Ford ought to be able to source higher-quality brake hoses without much trouble.
