Originally Posted By: andyd
Fords are engineered for ease of constuction and sale. They are NOT built to be maintained
As compared to what brand? I don't know of any modern vehicle brand that uniformly prioritizes maintenance over ease of manufacture and sale. Some have excellent support for some of their older models, if there is demand for that support, but none of them are Unicef.
As stated by bdcardinal, parts availability is generally just a matter of simple supply and demand. If it's worthwhile for suppliers to meet the demand, the demand will be met, whether it's through OEM or aftermarket channels, or both. For example, even though I do not have one in stock now, I can have a GM Genuine steering column rack kit for a 1980s C/K truck by noon tomorrow. It won't even have dust on the bag and will be recently manufactured. But, I cannot get a GM Genuine PS cooler/hose assembly for a V8 Colorado no matter how hard I try. I followed up with GM over months trying to get one until one day they called me and pretty much just said it wasn't happening, sorry. I told the customer that there was nothing I could do but sell them an aftermarket section of the assembly from O'Reilly's, but they wanted the whole part. All of those Colorados are out of warranty that would cover the PS, so GM isn't interested in getting a supplier to make a small batch, and there's just not enough demand yet for the aftermarket to cover more than one section of hose. Sucks for the owner of the truck for sure, but the demand just isn't there. If V8 Colorados started catching on fire from power steering cooler leaks, it would be different.
I bought a drum brake backing plate from the Ford dealer for my 1994 Ranger a few months ago. The 1994 backing plate was obsolete, but 1995 was close enough and still available. I had it the next day. Not bad IMO.
That said, their key code policy is pretty nuts. Currently GM has key codes back to about 1991/92 for most vehicles, but it varies. They start dumping RPO info from VINs around the same age in the catalog. It will pull up the basic vehicle, but there will be a message that "no RPO content exists for this VIN" and there will be no build sheet.