Ford was forced to halt production at seven assembly plants after finding a quality problem with a
transmission component, but all seven plants affected by the stoppage should be up and running again today.
A supplied component, described as “a clutch mechanism that helps make the transmission shift smoothly between
first and second gears” (sounds to us like the overrunning clutch), was found to be problematic, but the
defect was caught before any suspect vehicles were delivered to customers. The supplier isn’t being
identified.
More than 4,000 units of light truck, van, and Lincoln Town Car production were lost, costing Ford somewhere
in the neighborhood of $35M. The automaker says that making up for the stoppage won’t be a problem, as they seem to
have a bit of extra capacity to put towards the effort, and F-150 inventories are current running at about 107 days of
sales.
[Source: Detroit News]