Worst possible place for the ECU

[92saturnsl2]

Which is why I’ll never, ever go with Geico, Progressive, Allstate, The General or other insurance companies in that grain.

I've posted about this before-- you have the mistaken belief that an expensive or "reputable" insurance company (i.e State Farm and others) will provide OEM parts while others will not. Absolutely not true. Unless you have a rider for OEM parts, or you have some boutique insurance I'm not aware of (correct me if you do), they will use CAPA certified aftermarket parts. If CAPA certified parts are not available, they will use OEM.

This questions the integrity of the shop, not the insurance company. The insurance company and customer thought they were getting OEM when they got swapped for used and aftermarket LKQ parts.

I agree with this-- If the shop is quoting OEM parts to the insurance company and using non-OEM parts, that's fraud. But insurance companies are no dummies, they're wise to this. They typically specify parts cost to the near dollar and expect CAPA certified parts when available. This is especially true if you use one of the insurance company's "in-network" repair shops. Any overage (aftermarket parts not available) would require a supplement, same as any hidden damage they didn't see; they have to approve any overages.

 

[Skippy722]

I've posted about this before-- you have the mistaken belief that an expensive or "reputable" insurance company (i.e State Farm and others) will provide OEM parts while others will not. Absolutely not true. Unless you have a rider for OEM parts, or you have some boutique insurance I'm not aware of (correct me if you do), they will use CAPA certified aftermarket parts. If CAPA certified parts are not available, they will use OEM.



I agree with this-- If the shop is quoting OEM parts to the insurance company and using non-OEM parts, that's fraud. But insurance companies are no dummies, they're wise to this. They typically specify parts cost to the near dollar and expect CAPA certified parts when available. This is especially true if you use one of the insurance company's "in-network" repair shops. Any overage (aftermarket parts not available) would require a supplement, same as any hidden damage they didn't see; they have to approve any overages.

Yep. My 300 was repaired with OEM parts through Allstate. My state has a law that allows us to chose OEM, aftermarket, or used/salvage parts on vehicles up to 5 model years old. After that, they default to aftermarket.

 

[Bailes1992]

This isn't new. Ford have been putting their ECU's in that location (certainly in their European cars) since 2004/2005.

 

[Kurtatron]

Empirical evidence is needed before scrapping the design as inherently less reliable. Labor cost for replacement is a con of that placement, but how often are ECUs failing? I don’t believe they are a common failure mode for any car.

I do agree with others here. It is placed there probably for cost cutting. The ideal location for an ECU seems to be the cabin, but from a market perspective, I see Ford’s design decision as suitable. A car company sells thousands of vehicles. How many of those customers are bitogres? How many really care about the location of an ECU? As long as the car gets to 200k, no one really cares.

 

[WylieCoyote]

I was a little horrified to find my Focus ST ECU in this location. The box it was in was very dirty and didn't look like it was snapped together completely. I'd much prefer it on a small pedestal under the passenger seat.

 

[zray1]

The ECU on my ‘02 Jag XKR is in the engine bay sealed-mounted inside two boxes on the bulkhead / firewall. It has a cooling fan that draws air from inside the passenger compartment.

When the weather was pretty cold, under 30 F, the fan started making wailing noises (after 20 years of service). When I replaced it the ECU area looked as new, not even a dust coating.

Z

 

[PF52]

The insurance companies will go bonkers over this. Imagine pulling into a parking spot with the Maverick and the front end bottoms out on a divider or sidewalk? Then you put it into reverse to back off the obstruction.

Or a snowbank.

The older Ford Rangers had a metal front bumper with a much larger and deeper plastic "skirt" below it. I think the metal part was just the crash beam and the plastic was there to make it look complete. For years, my employer would buy Rangers for our guys to use... In the winter, the plowing service would leave the usual piles of snow at the edges of the lot. If you bumped one of those piles - even if every so gently! - with your Ranger it would break off all the plastic tabs that held on the plastic bumper, and it would dangle or drag on the ground. It wasn't even held on by replaceable clips; they were molded-in tabs if I remember right. Stupid.

 

[HemiBenny]

Working in parts, I love to sell modules. What I hate is selling the 5000 pieces of bling and trinkets on modern bumpers. Nobody even knows what stuff is called anymore because there's so much of it..."uhhh, I need the weird shaped boomerang eyebrow thing, it's not the fog cover but it kind of goes around it, it's uh, I don't know..." I hate estimates that are just pages of bling.

Preach!! When they start throwing out the random names I toss a diagram at them and say to highlight what they want. I hate body orders, tons of lost time only to have half of it sent back because they just wanted the Ford parts to show insurance an invoice to get paid, then install LKQ stuff.

I have learned that life is easier for myself and the parts guys when I send them a picture of those weird parts via text or email and let them get back to me at their earliest convenience. As for LKQ / Keystone, I've lost so much time on them because their parts pullers/warehouse personnel can't seem to pull the correct part the first two times.