One San Diego resident just took to r/AskAMechanic after a suspicious series of events at their local Ford dealership. The driver has a 2019 Ford Escape with less than 50,000 miles. They say that they dropped the SUV off at the dealership for a regular old oil change and tire rotation. Nothing came up. When they drove off, though, the car started shaking, had trouble accelerating, and the engine warning light illuminated.

Five minutes after the oil change, the Ford dealership tells the customer that their engine’s toast…and it’s not the service department’s fault

The customer returned to the dealership. The service department took a couple of hours to look into the problem. The prognosis? Bad engine…and it had nothing to do with the oil change. “Was told there was coolant leaking on a cylinder and that the engine is completely ruined,” the Escape owner writes.

The family is shocked at the news. Everything seemed fine before their service appointment. “There were no problems with the car when I brought it in. Never smelled antifreeze and I’ve always gotten it serviced timely.” What’s going on here?

Ford has an extended warranty for coolant intrusion 

The dealership told their customer that they’d filed a claim with Ford for “coolant intrusion,” a known issue with 2017 to 2019 Ford vehicles equipped with the 1.5L EcoBoost engine. You can read the technical service bulletin, released back in 2022, on the NHTSA’s site.

The symptoms include low coolant level, poor engine performance, and the presence of several fault codes: P0300, P0301-P0304, P0316, P0217, P1285, and/or P1299.

Ford committed to a one-time engine replacement for each model affected.

Strange coincidence or cover-up?

As comments pour into the thread, the Ford Escape owner provides more context. The driver questioned one staffer’s insistence that the check engine light “must have been on for a while.” They said they told the staffer it wasn’t – and didn’t the service department do an inspection on the vehicle while it was in their care? If the engine light was on, and the coolant was low, why didn’t the mechanic flag anything?

“They said “you didn’t come in for a check engine light, so we weren’t looking for it,” the Ford owner recounts. But the customer isn’t convinced. “Can’t go from dropping it off just fine to ‘this vehicle is inoperable and needs to be turned off immediately’ without either them having done/not done something or we literally have the worlds worst luck/timing or something.

The driver says that the Ford dealership went ahead and filed a claim for the coolant intrusion issue, but that they “weren’t confident in how it would go.” Hmm. This also sounds a bit suspect to me, considering the warranty clearly states the vehicle is covered…assuming the coolant problem is clearly present. Well, the SUV’s owners aren’t so sure themselves, since the whole thing just sounds fishy.