May 16, 2026Transmission & drivetrainElectrical systemEngineFire
On 4/22/2026 while flat towing this vehicle behind my motorhome, it burst into flames. The trip began in [XXX] . Driving south on XXX, I stopped about 120 miles later at a rest stop near XXX. I did a complete walk around inspection. There were no issues, everything looked fine. We continued on and about 20 miles later another vehicle driver was telling me frantically to pull over. I looked at my rear camera and saw the Ford was smoking. This was not due to an improper neutral tow setting. The truck would have burned in the first 20 miles. I have towed this vehicle many times. I know the importance of doing it properly., Thankfully there was a good place to pull over. I tried to extinguish the fire with my extinguisher but it was too hot. I was unable to disconnect from the motorhome. Both are a total loss. I think of all the places this could have happened and how trapped we could have been. By the grace of God, nobody was injured. Yes there is a police report and an insurance claim. There were no warning signs. My braking system runs on its own battery so there was no draw on the Ford battery. Ford did an update on the computer the night prior. INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)
NHTSA ODI 11738319
Aug 20, 2025Transmission & drivetrainEngineFuel systemCrash
The cause of the accident was due to an extremely hard downshift, then extremely hard upshift. Between the speeds of 25-37 mph the truck will do a hard downshift with a 1-3 second loss of power delay. When it finally grabs gear it takes off like a rocket before grabbing the next gear and back to what feels normal. This is something I never experienced in my 2022 Ford F150 with the same motor and transmission. This particular day, I had pulled off to the side of the road to let the mail carrier go through the narrow section of the road first. This particular section, there is a huge tree right next to the road (approximately 12"-14" off the road). After the mail carrier passed, I started to speed up. Upon hitting 34 mph, the transmission shifted hard, pulled me into the ditch, and by the time the gear grabbed, and I had power to control, I hit the tree. As a habit, since this issue happened numerous times, I looked at the speedometer and just prior to impact I was at 43 mph. The transmission is not the only issue that I have been having with this vehicle. There has been a fuel consumption issue, a hard start issue (does not matter time of day), as well as a grinding issue at the front right wheel. This truck is equipped with a 36-gallon fuel tank. At the city driving mpg and a 34-gallon fill-up, I should have been getting 544 miles/tank. However, that was not the case as I was only getting 440-447 miles/tank (did not matter whether normal, eco, or sport mode driving). Each fill up was a 24-28 gallon fill-up leaving 8-10 gallons unaccounted for. A PCM update was done but it only got me to 510 miles with a 30-gallon fill-up. Each complaint I made with the transmission went ignored with me being told "this is normal for the 10 speeds. You will just need to learn to deal with it." After the PCM update with no true fix, I was told "drive it to zero MTE and calculate from there how far you can drive, then you know." This is a horrible and extremely unsafe answer to give.
NHTSA ODI 11681833