THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
After adding an infant, car seat, and stroller to our four-door Saturn L300 we discovered that we needed more room. Although we had primarily driven GM cars (she had a Corsica and Cavalier, while I drove a slew of Saturns) we unanimously decided to look at Ford SUVs. I was partial to the popular Explorer, but on that Sunday afternoon at Coastal Ford, she spotted a new model called the Freestyle. While comparably priced with Ford’s larger SUV, the Freestyle was sleeker and looked like an Explorer that had been sculpted in a wind-tunnel. Since Coastal was closed, we ended up at Treadwell Ford where I had worked during the summer of ‘92. There we took back-to-back test drives in both the Explorer and Freestyle. The decision was undisputed given the Freestyle’s rigid unibody construction. It rode and handled like a midsize sedan, while the clunky body-on-frame Explorer bounced and crashed over bumps and pot-holes. And with post-Katrina gas prices skyrocketing, I was pleased the Freestyle used a V6 instead of a thirsty V8. So, on March 22, 2006 we picked up our new Ford Freestyle with just 4 miles on the odometer.
As with any new car, the first year with the Freestyle was a real honeymoon. We took multiple trips to New Orleans and Florida without so much as a hiccup, racking up over 1,000 miles per month. And despite recent warnings of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and health hazards, I enjoyed that new car smell, which my brother-in-law described as “the most expensive fragrance on earth”. Still, there were a couple small complaints early on which centered around the gas mileage and the brake dust. The window sticker stated that the EPA ratings were 20 MPG City and 27 MPG Highway, and I’ve never owned a vehicle that didn’t at least reach (or exceed) the highway mileage. So when numerous fill-ups averaged a disappointing 22 MPG, I wrote it off as the new engine still breaking-in. However, I was more puzzled by the rear wheels which kept accumulating tons of brake dust. In reality, the fronts should have been dirty and the rear ones clean. At the 12,000-mile service, I asked Treadwell to have the rear brakes inspected, as was subsequently informed that they tested fine.
Roughly six-months later in September 2007, we were getting ready to pull out of our driveway when the Freestyle failed to move. Granted, it was a bizarre experience as it felt like the parking brake was stuck. No amount of throttle would budge it and with no other option, we called Ford’s Roadside Assistance. Then we waited for them to pick the vehicle up. And waited. And waited. And waited some more, until nearly five hours later the tow truck finally showed up. I didn’t know it then, but that was the first experience we had dealing with Ford’s terrible customer service and it wasn’t going to get any better. Not surprisingly, the culprit turned out to be the very brakes which I had asked them to check. They were seized up and replaced under warranty and I discovered it was an engineering fault that affected all the Freestyles produced up until that date.
Our Freestyle soldered on through 2008 and 2009 with no mechanical maladies, but even with some 40,000 miles under its belt, the fuel economy didn’t improve. Despite mostly highway mileage, we never saw more than a paltry 22 MPG, which lead me to surmise that I could have gotten an eight-cylinder Explorer and been no worse off.
Then, during a scorching July afternoon in 2010, the Freestyle suddenly lunged in the McDonald’s drive-thru like a great white after a seal, nearly rear-ending the poor Prius in front of it. My wife was puzzled and concerned as her foot had been firmly on the brake the entire time. I told her I would look into the “unintended acceleration” and see what I could determine. By this time, Ford had already discontinued the Freestyle under the excuse of poor sales. The truth was, it had class-leading sales in its segment but Ford had uncovered a much more serious engineering defect that it didn’t want being brought to light.
THE AMITYVILLE SUV
As I perused the online Freestyle forums in search of an answer to a problem I had never seen before, a common thread emerged. With the Freestyle being produced from 2005-2007, initial problems were few and far between during those early years. However, by 2010 more and more complaints began surfacing as these vehicles accumulated age and mileage. Terms such as “lurching” and “surging” were popping up an inordinate amount of times and they seemed to point to an issue with the Freestyle’s fancy drive-by-wire throttle. Basically, the Freestyle uses an electronic signal rather than a conventional cable or spring to tell the computer how much the throttle is open. Granted, this sounds great on paper but things don’t work like that 100% in the real world. It’s also unclear what was causing the throttle body to accrue carbon at such an accelerated rate, but our Freestyle’s throttle body looked like it had been sprayed with sticky black tar when I removed it at 49,000 miles. Furthermore, this wasn’t something that could be blamed on cheap gas—from the day we bought it, we only fueled up with Chevron or Exxon and every oil change I used a bottle of fuel system cleaner. I scrubbed the throttle body as best I could, but a lot of the carbon was literally burned on and no amount of carburetor cleaner or elbow grease was going to remove it. Regardless, the cool fall weather was approaching and the erratic behavior seemed to have stopped.
We naively forgot about the previous year’s problems for six-months until the 2011 Spring temperatures arrived and the frustrating problems returned. Other forum members had reported that a new throttle body fixed their same issue so I broke down and ordered a new $350 throttle body. There had been talk of a new non-heated design, so I was somewhat dismayed when I opened the box and realized that I already had the non-heated throttle body. This was my first hint that maybe a larger issue than just the throttle body was the culprit. Still, I dutifully installed the new unit hoping that it would correct the dangerous behavior.
A week went by before the problems returned and then it was clear that the throttle body was not the main offender. Since it was largely undriveable, we decided to take it to Coastal Ford in Mobile which was a lot closer than Treadwell. Once there, the technician diagnosed the problem as a faulty Mass Air Flow (MAF) Sensor. He claimed that using the free-flowing K&N air filter for the past five years and 50,000 miles had allowed so much grit to come in that it had basically sand-blasted the sensor rendering it unable to provide the correct air/fuel ratio thus causing the unreliable behavior. It certainly sounded plausible, but I wasn’t going to pay them $700 for the parts and labor when I had just shelled out $350 on a new throttle body. Instead, I paid the $100 diagnostic fee and then another $100 for the MAF sensor at AutoZone and replaced it myself.
Amanda was positive that the problem was corrected, but by this point I was still a little skeptical. Despite that, we set off for Spring Break and everything went great until our third day when the surging began again. Apparently angry that we had tried and failed to exorcise the mechanical demon, it returned with a vengeance. The instrument panel lit up like a Christmas tree which threw the Freestyle into a “Fail-Safe” mode and it wouldn’t accelerate above 40 mph. We limped the Freestyle back to Treadwell and picked up a rental car while they examined it.
SECRETS, LIES AND CVTs
The next day I received a call from the technician at Treadwell, and while he couldn’t tell me what the problem was, he did tell me what it needed: A new $7000 transmission.
Naturally, I was a little numb and also angry from the gravity of the statement. We had specifically bought the Freestyle new so we would not have to worry about repairs. But the 3 year/36,000 mile warranty was up and the transmission had died before even its first scheduled maintenance at 60,000. Something just didn’t add up. Granted, I’ve abused a lot of transmissions in my life and never had one fail, some with more than 200,000 miles on them. And here I was to believe that our five year-old Freestyle with just 58,000 miles on it suddenly needed a whole new transmission? That was ridiculous!
Since it was worthless without a transmission, my first thought was to tell Treadwell just to keep it. We still owed Ford Motor Credit almost $7000 on it, so they could have it back and we would just break-even and walk away. But cooler heads prevailed and I paid them $100 for yet another “diagnostic fee” and had it towed to a different Ford dealership, Estabrook in Pascagoula, MS. I had met a local Ford Master Mechanic online and he was willing to take a look it it for me. At this point, my hope was that the transmission could be salvaged and would not require a complete replacement.
Once at Estabrook, they started it up and were amazed to watch the Freestyle continue to lurch and surge when locked in park. Even the service manager came out to witness the eerie phenomenon and volunteered that he had never seen anything like that in his life. Soon thereafter, the technician, Matt, began tearing the transmission down and was optimistic about getting us back on the road. However, after several trouble-shooting phone calls with the actual Ford engineers in Dearborn, Michigan, he wasn’t quite so hopeful.
After sitting at three different Ford dealers, countless hours, and hundreds of dollars later, the problem was finally pinpointed as the Mechatronics unit in the transmission. This computer “brain” of the transmission was on the fritz and during warm weather would overheat sending conflicting signals that would cause the vehicle to react violently. One of the chief selling points of the Freestyle was the Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) that promised to be quieter, smoother, and more fuel-efficient than a standard automatic transmission. And I’ll admit that the operation was pretty slick too– with an infinitely-adjustable range of gears, you just press the gas and it goes with no bumpy upshifts or downshifts. Given the quick and seamless power, I hit 90 mph during our test drive of a white Freestyle without even trying. But none of that matters if it’s not reliable.
Matt said the good news was that the Mechatronics unit could be replaced for around $1800, but because the problem went undiagnosed so long, there was substantial damage from the gears slamming back and forth. As such, he couldn’t guarantee that it would even work with a new Mechatronics unit in it. He prognosis was to simply replace the whole transmission. I thanked him and left Estabrook $400 lighter, the cost for tearing down the transmission. I then paid $100 to have the Freestyle towed to my personal mechanic’s shop while I looked for a new CVT.
Finally, my luck seemed to be improving as I found a low-mileage CVT from a wrecked Freestyle near Dallas, Texas. The CVT only had 21,000 miles on it and was from a 2007 model so I jumped on it for $2400. Within a couple days it was drop-shipped on my mechanic’s door, and after another $1000 in parts and labor, the Freestyle was on the road again. With that behind me, it was time to turn my attention to how and why the CVT failed with just 58,000 miles on it.
As I began inquiring on the Freestyle message boards, a lot more owners came forward with similar CVT problems. A lucky few were fortunate and had paid for extended warranties that covered their CVTs, but the majority like myself were left to either fix or forfeit their Freestyles. In my defense, I shouldn’t have to pay a couple thousand dollars for an extended warranty on a new vehicle that doesn’t even require the spark plugs or antifreeze changed until 100,000 miles. My father drove cars for 70 years and never had a transmission fail. And given the complexity and scarceness of the CVT, not just any one could work on them. It quickly became evident that there was a genuine problem with the long-term reliability of Ford’s CVT and mine wasn’t just a fluke. Of that camp, two prevailing scenarios emerged: Owners were either experiencing issues with the Mechatronics Unit (like mine) whereby the gears were shredded like metal cole slaw, or a foundry issue that scored the input shaft thereby hand-grenading the internal components after a random amount of miles.
Naturally, Ford absolved themselves of any responsibility for this and have done their very level best to sweep it under the rug. Initially, I don’t believe Ford was aware of the CVT’s quality-control issues when it went on sale in late 2004 as a 2005 model. But as the CVT problems came to the forefront over the next 24 months, Ford attempted to quickly distance themselves from it by dropping the troublesome CVT for a conventional automatic in the 2008 Freestyle (which was strangely renamed the Taurus X). By 2009, Ford was washing its hands of prior Freestyle owners so it could focus on rebadging the Freestyle as the 2011 Explorer, which coincidentally does not have a CVT either. Despite two unsuccessful class-action lawsuits over the CVT, Ford has vehemently denied any wrongdoing with the Freestyle. However, multiple class-action lawsuits over the throttle body have forced Ford to issue a retroactive recall on them. So does that mean I got reimbursed for the $350 throttle body I bought three years ago? Absolutely not! My warranty claim was refused because I replaced the throttle body myself and did not have the procedure done at an authorized dealer.
THE AFTERMATH
Two years and 42,000-miles later, the Freestyle is still chugging along only slightly worse for the wear. Shortly after the CVT was swapped in 2011, the original Continental tires were down to the wear bars and had to be replaced. Regardless, 65,000 on the factory tires is a new record for the Adams’ household so I can’t complain. The same can be said for the original battery which also expired shortly thereafter. I replaced the tires with B.F. Goodrich Touring T/As and the battery with a new Motorcraft Premium unit. With the tires warrantied for 85,000 miles and the battery pro-rated for 8 years, neither should have to be changed under our care again.
And not surprisingly, a few minor problems have cropped up: The intake manifold gasket has started to leak periodically, dripping hot oil onto the exhaust pipe. It’s too small to notice a visible leak so I’ve declined the $450 to fix it. Another $400 repair is the fuel sender unit in the gas tank. Once or twice a year it sticks, making the gas gauge drop to empty. But since thankfully neither affect the drivability like the CVT did, I’m in no rush to throw more money at them.
However, a current expense has been for the air-conditioning compressor which was blowing only warm air. The dealer quoted us a price of $2,000 for a new compressor and to recharge the system, but I managed to replace the scroll-valve in the compressor for $30 and completely fix the problem. The take-away lesson from this is that the stealership would rather sell you a new part than fix an existing one.
Over the summer we spent a week with a 2013 Chrysler Town & Country minivan driving it 2,500 miles round-trip to Washington D.C. and it gave me a new appreciation for the Freestyle. Over the hilly sections of North Carolina and Virginia, the constant upshifts and downshifts of the Chrysler’s conventional automatic really emphasized how smooth a CVT can be when it’s working properly.
Finally, as I was wrapping this article up, it was brought to my attention that the Freestyle needed new brake pads and rotors, a not-insignificant amount that totaled $500. But unlike the fuel sender unit or intake manifold gasket, it’s not a repair that could be postponed. And with news of the Freestyle’s transmission woes torpedoing resale values (a dealer recently offered us just $3600) it’s worth more to keep it than trade it for such an insulting pittance.
Looking back over the past 100,000-miles of ownership, it’s a real shame about the rear brakes and CVT which were clearly faulty from the factory. And given the whole CVT ordeal, I’ve understandably lost all faith in Ford as a company, as have the majority of Freestyle customers. After owning a 1986 Bronco II, 1990 Mustang GT and now the Freestyle, this is the end of the road for my loyalty to Ford.
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