I took my Mustang into Ford to get a block heater installed.

The car was ordered without a heater in error by the sales manager. I had already bought supplies and was about to install the heater myself. My Dad stopped by the dealership for some oil and mentioned this when they asked about my car, and the manager said that he was sure it had a heater, of course after checking his documents he found he was wrong.

So we get in touch and he offers to have one installed for me free of charge. I drove to the dealership this morning for my 8:00 appointment, hung around for the hour or so it took for the "tech" to:

-Put my car on the lift
-Drain the coolant from the rad into drain pan
-Punch the frost plug into the block with a socket (I suspect this is what he did...), leave it in there. Allow coolant to drain from block all over floor and suspension.
-Replace frost plug with heater in incorrect orientation.
-Install generic cord using a ****ty routing and leave the plug end in my airbox.
-Lower car
-Install coolant from drain pan into system, replace cap.
-Start car and park on curb, done.


I went and got some fuel, picked up some oil for dad (2 short trips in town), wound the car out on the highway for about 2-3 miles, and then pulled onto the shoulder with the idiot light on and the coolant temp gage pegged.

I phoned them, they told me to drive back. I said no **** way. They said they'd send the guy. He pulls up, "I guess I should add coolant after I take it out huh!!?"

I'm pretty pissed off. You guys can spot where he went wrong, right? The car needed about 7 liters of coolant. When I had it pulled over the top rad hose was flowing some super hot coolant once in a while, but I shut the engine off right after I went and looked. The car did not go into fail safe mode...

I asked the tech a bunch of questions when he came out,

Are you out of school? Did you go to some kind of auto tech school? etc... He said he was working at Ford for 7 months and was challenging his journeypersons exam. Which means he was a dumb skid off the street that had no training except for on the job stuff.
Great eh? I had reservations about taking the car into Ford. I had reservations about the "weekend guy" doing it. It was just convenient for me this way. I guess car (edit: ford) ownership and convenience are mutually exclusive.

 

That part about reinstalling coolant from the drain pan has me worried. I would never reinstall fluid from a drain pan and always go with new fluid. Sucks that it happened to you though.

 

........ i didn't think you could factory order a block heater unless it is a Canadian order or a fleet order?

 

It is/was a canadian order.

I don't know about the drain pan thing for sure. The service manager assured me they could not have knocked the frost plug into the block. He also said the element orientation is unimportant, as did one other ford tech I spoke with, so that's good.

I'm sure the car is ok. The fail safe cooling describes its benefit as preventing "incremental engine damage" due to overheating. Fail safe cooling did not have time to activate, I saw the car was hot too soon. I'm so particular about the car, I glance at the gage fairly often during warm-up, so I know when the coolant is up to temp, and subsequently the oil... so I can open the throttle and let that engine RIP!

 

i'd make sure it was checked out, and keep a copy of anything he said to you

I'd also take it back to the dealership, and have it reinstalled, correcty this time

 

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Very funny

 

 

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