Friday, Feb 16, 2018 at 09:49
Tony - Unfortunately, Ford have a major problem with a constant drive for cheapness, led by their beancounters.
As soon as Ford produce a reasonable product, the beancounters are driving down the cost of every single component ruthlessly, thereby making the product unreliable.
If you ever get the chance, compare a stripped-down Ford 7.3L Powerstroke V8 diesel against the original product - the Navistar 7.3L V8 diesel.
The Navistar engine is the original design, the Powerstroke is the Navistar built under licence by Ford.
The difference in build quality with the components is eye-opening. Typical of the differences, Navistar use cast rocker arms, Ford use stamped sheet metal rocker arms. The differences are too large to go into detail here, but they are extensive, and everywhere on the Powerstroke, you can see Ford beancounters at work shaving 50c off here and 20c off there.
The St John Ambulance in W.A. gave up on using F250's with Powerstroke engines due to their poor levels of reliability and their horrendous maintenance and parts costs.
Mercedes now provide all of W.A.'s ambulances - at far lower cost, both in purchase cost and maintenance costs.
This constant chiselling to produce parts and components at ever-cheaper levels, eventually leads to lower levels of reliability.
Typical is the EA Falcon Ghia wagon I bought new in 1990 - for over $40,000.
Beautiful car to drive - but typically, the power windows stopped working after 18 mths.
Ripping them apart, I found Ford had cheapened the window regulator gearbox by utilising plastic gears instead of metal ones.
But you couldn't buy the stripped plastic gears, you couldn't even buy the gearbox, you had to buy the WHOLE window regulator mechanism, including the electric motor - at around $200, from memory. That was serious money for parts in 1992.
Then when I came to trade the Ghia in 1992, at 70,000kms and in mint condition - I got offered $16,500 for it!!
I eventually sold it privately for $18,000 - but that was a major depreciation from the $40,000 I paid for it just 2 years previously.
Another example is comparing the original ZF automatic transmissions, with the ZF transmissions built under licence by Ford.
Ford brag about "ZF transmissions fitted" to their products - but they aren't original German ZF's - they're cheap copies, built by Ford, at far lower cost than the original ZF's.
My Ford experiences go back to the first Ford 4WD I bought in 1977 - a new F100 4WD that cost me $11,000 - nearly twice the cost of a Statesman or Fairlane at that time.
The F100 gave me constant grief - from the dangerous non-power-assist steering that meant the F100 was all over the road - through to the crappy crossply 10.00 x 15 Goodyear tyres - and right through to the lousy assembly where even major
suspension components regularly came loose where they bolted to the chassis.
The last problem was found to be oversize holes fitted with undersize bolts. Redrilling the holes and refitting the correct, snug-fitting larger size bolts eventually cured the problem.
The long front axle radius-rod design of the F100, where the radius rods were bolted to the chassis under the centre of the cab, meant that F100 was a real handful in the handling stakes on gravel, when empty.
It wasn't the first time I would be travelling along a gravel road, empty, and hitting a series of wide corrugations, and finding the F100 going sideways instantly at 110kmh - due to that poor front end design, that exerted extensive leverage on the chassis.
This poor design was purely a lack of testing and engineering on Fords behalf - yet they were happy to ask outrageous prices for F-series trucks and F-series parts. $600 just for a grille in 1980 was typical of the F100 pricing.
So, you may be happy with your Ranger - but I can tell you it will be a cold day in hell before I buy another Ford.
I bought a Landcruiser HDJ80 (turbo auto diesel) new in 1990 for $50,000, did a faultless and highly enjoyable 170,000kms with it in three years - and sold it in 1995 for $40,000 - and I was knocking back buyers with a stick.
That's the difference between vehicle makes with a reputation for solid build quality and high resale values - and those with varying build quality, varying reliability, and lower resale values. I know what I prefer.
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