Ford Announces Recall of 143,000 Lincoln MKCs To Repair Potential Fire Hazard

When an automaker announces that you have to either 1. park your car and not drive or 2. park it outside away from buildings, you know a recall is serious. This is the story this weekend at Ford where about 143,000 Lincoln MKCs face an order to park them away from buildings due to a fire hazard.

In an automotive recall, it takes a bit for an automaker to ask its customers to do something as drastic as parking a vehicle clear of buildings. Or, on another note, it takes a great deal for an automaker to ask its longtime customers to park their vehicles and halt driving them until they can get the vehicles into various dealerships for repairs. In these cases, the automaker usually arranges a pickup and drop at the dealership. It makes excellent business sense, especially if the recall could be for something significant. When it asked the drivers of about 90,000 2003-2006 models to park them and wait until they could be towed into dealerships for repair, BMW did this recently.

Owners Advised To Park Outdoors

Ford has advised owners of some 2015-2019 model-year Lincoln MKC vehicles to park outdoors and away from structures while the company supplies Ford dealers and Lincoln retailers with parts and repair instructions to resolve the issue where the vehicle could catch fire due to a potentially bad sensor.

On the affected vehicles, the location of the battery monitor sensor may make the sensor susceptible to damage when the battery or related electrical components are serviced. In the event of battery monitor sensor housing damage, an electrical short may develop in the sensor’s printed circuit board. If this happens, a lack of fusing in the sensor power circuit may cause the surrounding materials to overheat.

Affected vehicles will have an in-line fuse added to the battery monitor sensor power circuit to prevent electrical current load, due to shorting, from overheating surrounding material.

Ford is aware of 19 potentially related reports of under-hood fires, including some reports when the vehicle was parked and off. Ford has not issued instructions to stop driving vehicles under this recall and is not aware of any accidents or physical injuries related to this issue.

Customer Service Information

Customers unable to park their vehicle outside should contact a local retailer or Ford’s Customer Service Center at 1-833-807-3673 for additional assistance.

This recall affects 142,522 vehicles in the United States and United States Federal Territories. Customers can determine if their vehicle is included in this recall by entering the vehicle’s identification number(VIN) Number here.

Ford Motor Photo

Marc Stern has been an automotive writer since 1971 when an otherwise normal news editor said, “You're our new car editor," and dumped about 27 pounds of auto stuff on my desk. I was in heaven as I have been a gearhead from my early days. As a teen, I spent many misspent hours hanging out at gas stations (a big thing in my youth) and working on cars. From there on, it was a straight line to my first column for the paper "You Auto Know," an enterprise I handled faithfully for 32 years. Only a few people know that I also handled computer documentation for most of my earnings while writing YAN. My best writing, though, was always in cars. My work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Mechanix Illustrated, AutoWeek, SuperStock, Trailer Life, Old Cars Weekly, Special Interest Autos, etc. You can follow me on: Twitter or Facebook.