NHTSA Deepening Probe Into Ford F-150 Brakes

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will look further into claims that 2011-2012 F-150 trucks may have a faulty brake vacuum pump on cold starts that caused seven crashes, including one injury, the Detroit News reported.

According to the report, nearly 253,000 trucks are affected by the investigation. Ford has said that it will comply with the investigation and that a recall shouldn’t be necessary for the trucks because the failing vacuum pump will sufficiently notify drivers before braking distance is significantly impacted.

According to NHTSA, the agency began investigating complaints of ineffective brakes at cold start in June. Ford provided the agency with data from 396 complaints.

According to the automaker, water leaking into the vacuum pump is to blame for the eroding vacuum.

Ford hasn’t yet recalled the trucks, although escalating the investigation into an engineering analysis is a necessary step before NHTSA can order the automaker to recall its vehicles.

One owner said their truck was nearly incapacitated in the morning, and that Ford service technicians were unaware of the problem in September, after the investigation started in June:

The below problem has repeated itself more than 20 times since the first incident. When parked overnight or over a long period of time, upon starting and operating the truck – either reverse or drive – the brakes fail to engage the first one or two times. Had to either hit the brakes very hard or i had to revert the truck to P(parking) position. This just about works to bring the truck to a halt, but even this failed a couple of times when D(driving forward). Thankfully, no one was around for 10 meters. This has led me to only starting the vehicle when there is no person/object either in front or the rear. It is high-risk each time given the damage the truck can do if it collides into something. … The possible issues could be the vacuum pump failing, but Ford technicians claim to have never heard of this problem. Really at a loss and hope Ford sends out a bulletin to fix this ASAP. This is not a joke. It’s life threatening and could cause real damage very soon.