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At the time of the recall, Ford had assembled 448 cars.

Ford loses bet on GT part; difficult casting on control arm led to pricey recall

AMY WILSON | Automotive News and ROBERT SHEREFKIN | Automotive News
Posted Date: 2/21/05

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co.'s gamble on a tricky casting method backfired, triggering a pricey and embarrassing recall of its GT sports car.

On Dec. 16, Ford pulled the GT off the market and asked its 111 owners not to drive the car. A crack appeared in an aluminum suspension control arm during routine inspection of a test GT.

Though no accidents have been reported, a broken control arm could cause a catastrophic crash in a car capable of speeds faster than 200 mph. A control arm connects the chassis to the wheel assembly and controls the wheel's camber.

Ford is scrambling to replace eight original control arms per car. Limited GT production using the new control arms began the week of Feb. 7. Ford aims to get existing GTs repaired and back on the road by the first week of March.

"The problem is we're changing from castings to forgings," Ford Division President Steve Lyons says. "It's not like the supplier just makes new parts. We're actually changing the way they're made."

Ford turned to longtime performance partner Roush Industries Inc. of Livonia, Mich., to supply forged aluminum for the new arm. Citation Corp. of Birmingham, Ala., which had supplied the original cast arm, is machining the forged parts into finished control arms.

"We are still working cooperatively on this," says Ed Buker, Citation CEO. He declined further comment.

One source at Ford blamed the recall on quality problems at Citation. The supplier is restructuring under Chapter 11 of federal bankruptcy law.

But Ford selected an unseasoned manufacturing process from the start.

Suppliers are still working out kinks in the semisolid casting technology used for the original part, automotive metal industry sources say.

Ford touted the original process as a technological advancement when it unveiled the production GT in June 2003. It was the first time that Ford used semisolid casting for a control arm, the company says.

In the process, aluminum is heated to just below its melting point. At the consistency of butter, it is injected into a mold at high pressure. The resulting part has "the complexity of form associated with casting while retaining the strength of forging," Ford said at the time.

Forged parts are shaped by high pressure.

Casting cheaper

Experts say casting is cheaper than forging. But Ford's promise of greater strength proved wrong.

"There was a buildup of debris in the casting process, which caused a stress point" in the original part, Ford spokeswoman Kristen Kinley says.

Deposits are a known risk in semisolid casting, sources say.

"We gave up on it because of this very problem," one automotive metal expert says. "You get oxides, which can be an impurity in there that weakens the part."

Other experts say the technology has promise. It is used more widely for small parts, such as fuel rails weighing less than a pound, than for control arms that can weigh 15 pounds, according to two metal specialists.

European auto designers are more aggressive in using semisolid casting, says Steve Udvardy, director of research, education and technology for the North American Die Casting Association in Wheeling, Ill. Alfa Romeo uses it for a suspension part, Porsche for control arms and Fiat for an engine cradle, he says.

North American companies prefer forged parts for high-performance applications.

North Americans are "less willing to take a risk on newer materials or processes," Udvardy says. "Designers want a higher degree of certainty and a higher degree of safety."

Ford isn't ruling out semisolid castings in the future. "We don't think it's a bad process or technology because it's been successful in other applications," Kinley says. "It was just in this instance we noticed an issue."

Cost savings

Compared with conventional casting, semisolid casting costs less, is faster and saves wear and tear on tooling, one metal industry source says. The metal also is stronger because it has a more consistent grain structure than conventional casting.

Forgings generally are stronger than castings, but they cost 30 percent to 40 percent more, experts say.

Any cost advantage Ford gained with the semisolid casting will be erased by the recall, though. The new control arms are costing Ford as much as $5,000 a car, said a source close to the project.

That number sounds huge, but Ford must use two suppliers, pay for two new sets of tooling and use a higher-cost process. With the GT's limited run, the automaker has little time and a small number of vehicles to amortize the higher expense.

Ford plans to make 3,000 GTs during the 2005 and 2006 model years. At the time of the recall, it had assembled 448 cars, including 111 that were in the hands of private owners. Ford has replaced the control arms of 15 customer vehicles. The company plans to pick up the rest from owners' homes and take them to the nearest qualified dealership for new control arms, Kinley says.

Ford won't increase the GT's price to cover the added cost, she says.

Before the recall, Ford Motor CEO Bill Ford had said the GT program would not lose money. It's unclear whether the recall changes that. The GT's base sticker price is $143,845, including destination and gas-guzzler tax.

Although the gamble on the process backfired, one metal industry source didn't fault the automaker for taking the chance.

Says the source: "It's always a risk being the first one out there because you're either going to be the hero or you're going to have reporters digging into your shorts and finding out what's there."

Excerpt from AutoWeek.com

For a 143k they better pick up my car and fix it for free!

And a complimentary reach around!

Sounds like ford is doing a great job building these cars and their trucks....first the trucks were catching on fire and now this....you couldn't pay me enough to buy a ford truck

GREAT JOB BY FORD!!!

Sounds like they were trying to cut production cost to gain a bigger profit, I guess it came back and bit them in the ass. Oh well I still have blue in my blood, and this doesnt change that, they just need to get their act together.

Jeremy

They weren't actually trying to cut costs. They were trying out an innovative technology on manufacturing those parts. The scientific part of the manufacturing process says that type of casting should produce a stronger part, but in reality, the impurities in the metals caused weaknesses in the final product. O well... back to the drawing board

Science also says tha the flux capacitor will take you back to 1955. Reality is you need plutonium to do it.

Its is a pretty cool process that they were trying to do. But once you melt something down and inject it into something else haven't you changed its chemical properties to make it weaker? I am sure that Josh is going to jump in with some crazy carbon-chain drawings or something!

I will have to make him aware of this thread I want to see what sort of rediculous answer he comes up with. I love it when he goes off on his chemistry tangents... I am always like you lost me back on word one, but I am sure he is the same way when i go off on computer tangents.... To each thier own...

Jeremy

Looks like more fighting going on between the build teams...
http://www.autoweek.com/news.cms?newsId=101937

CAT FIGHT!