Ford has issued a recall for 222,454 F-150 pickup trucks. The automaker says that the affected vehicles could have windshield wiper arms that may break, which could become a safety hazard.
The recall affects certain 2021 F-150 pickups produced from January 8, 2020, to August 16, 2021. However, some examples built from June 7, 2021, might have been made with a wiper arm with the correct specifications.
Gallery: 2022 Ford F-150 Rattler
According to the Nation Highway Traffic Safety Administration's report, a worn tool at the supplier produced wiper arms without sufficient spline tooth heights. This could cause the attachment to strip and degrade functionality or become inoperable altogether. Symptoms of the problem include erratic or slower wiper speed. The issue could even cause the wiper arm to detach from the vehicle.
Ford will send out notifications to potentially affected customers by the end of the month. The automaker will ask owners to bring their F-150s to an authorized dealer. A service technician will inspect the wiper arm build date and replace it as required at no cost to the customer. Ford told NHTSA that it is aware of 576 reports of inoperative or detached wiper arms worldwide.
This is Ford's second recall involving the F-150's windshield wipers in recent months. In November, the company recalled nearly 500,000 trucks for wiper motors that could fail, affecting the 2021 and 2022 model years. Ford had to use a different motor design in these vehicles due to the pandemic-induced chip shortage, which affected nearly every automaker.
Ford has faced serious quality issues in the last few years as the automaker refreshes its lineup with new and refreshed models, including EVs. The automaker ended 2022 with the most recalls in the US. The Blue Oval led the industry with 65, affecting over 8.6 million vehicles.
Ford's 2023 is off to a somewhat better start, but it leads the year with 12 recalls to second-place BMW, which has 9. Ford has recalled nearly two million vehicles so far through the first three months of the year.
