Braking Bad: Ford Recalls Mustang for Brake Pedal Problems
Hey, it’s Monday – you can’t blame us for picking that low hanging fruit in the headline. Bad puns aside, owners of certain 2020 model-year Mustangs equipped with a slushbox should visit their dealership post-haste to rectify what could be a terrifying problem.
According to the safety nerds at NHTSA, the brake pedal bracket in certain 2020 Mustangs equipped with an automatic transmission may fracture during sudden stopping. The root cause of this condition, according to NHTSA, is “insufficient design margins for noise factors” within brake pedal engineering specifications. In other words, a supplier changed how they built the thing.
The brake pedal bracket material was apparently changed from nylon to polypropylene at some point leading up to the production run between March 2019 and August of this year. A total of 38,005 Mustangs have been identified as affected by the defect and, to throw a wrench into the mix, the vehicles are not produced in VIN order.
NHTSA docs state that Ford has known about this since last summer. On August 4, 2019, a concern related to three reports of brake-pedal bracket fracturing was brought to Ford’s Critical Concern Review Group for review. Ford analyzed parts returned and determined the brackets failed via brittle overload.
As of September 9, 2020, Ford found there had been four reports in the European market and two reports in the North American market of brake-pedal bracket breaking at pivot location during spike stop braking. With this in hand, the company’s Field Review Committee approved a field action roughly a couple of weeks ago.
Ford says they are not aware of any reports of accident or injury related to this condition which is good because, y’know, brakes. Dealers were notified about this campaign last Thursday so they should know what you’re on about when contacted. Owners can also call Ford at 1-866-436-7332 or use the NHTSA’s lookup tool to see if their car is affected.
[Images: Ford]
Matthew buys, sells, fixes, & races cars. As a human index of auto & auction knowledge, he is fond of making money and offering loud opinions.
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Built Ford Proud! This is a result of the furniture salesman squeezing suppliers to the bone to keep the profit percentage as high as possible. All vehicle programs must be above X% in terms of profit. And to achieve that quality must drop (Explorer, Blazer, Ranger, etc).
Yikes. I can imagine them having to recall all the nylon ones too, at some point in the future. Doesn't seem like the place to save weight and money by avoiding metal.