Taking a sledgehammer to a $52,000 truck straight off of the lot sounds like the dumbest idea imaginable…unless you’re Edmunds, who prides themselves on wringing out new vehicles to provide the best information possible for the buying public. Two swings with the B.F.H. was enough to crease the bedside and, inadvertently, break the taillight. Once the fun was over, the truck was hauled back to the dealership for repairs, so that they could determine two questions: how much harder aluminum would be to repair based on time needed, and how much more expensive it would be to repair. We won’t blow the answer for you when it comes to the metalwork, but here’s an interesting tidbit: the Ford’s taillight, which has an LED racetrack light and houses the blind spot monitoring system. It’s cost: $887 for the entire housing. Yikes. Think that’s bad? Click play below to hear the full bill amount…
I’d like to see the actual repair, not the finished results and the BILL (God awful). Do they “glom on” fillers as they do when building top end aluminum boats? Do they work the metal? I’ll keep my good old steel truck for now.
Ok, a little reality check- NO ONE sells the lense only on exterior lamps so let’s just toss that tidbit aside, and YES the high tech systems are expensive but the truck was 52k so who thought repairs would be cheap? My 97 LSC had $800 side view mirrors and $1000 headlamp assemblies so I’m far from shocked. My wife has a 2011 F150 with a lot of equipment, price that rear Ford emblem w/ the backup cam sometime. BTW she got sideswiped in a parking lot and the est was over $1500 w/ NO metal work just a fender lip moulding and the multi stage pearl white paint. Since I was in the car business for years we cashed the check and I spent a few hours and about $80 to buff polish and touch up the edge of the fender moulding and now if you know where to look and look closely you can see the touch up- 3 ft away its invisible. Bottom line- body work is expensive don’t get your car crunched because it will cost if it happens, maybe more w/ aluminum but it’s all $$$$$
I know nothing about working aluminum sheet metal. This leaves me wondering what is different that it takes twice as much labor to straighten out the same damage.
Brilliant, good for Edmunds.
Aluminum stretches. It fatigues, if you bend it and bend it back, it cracks. Anti-corrosion coatings on the backside make welding a pain. Paint doesn’t want to stick. Aluminum does not belong on a pickup truck unless you’re just using it for a BMW and you’re good with having money sucked out of you for a feature of very limited advantage. I seem to only buy ten-year-old pickup trucks, I would not buy any older truck with an aluminum cab due to the expectation of fatigue cracks unless they set them on top of the frame to handle flex like a semi tractor…we would have to have a look under them to see how they’re working that…so resale value may be questionable. Well, good luck Ford (you’ll make good money selling taillights anyhow).
As was said earlier, you can’t buy just the lens cover for any (modern) tail light that I know of. This is a brand new truck with all kinds of gadgets and gizmos. If you buy it without at least considering how much it’s going to be to replace those, then that’s your own stupidity.
Believe it or not the price of the repair doesn’t seem that bad, relatively speaking. Let’s be honest, who is going to be paying for repairs out of pocket on a brand new car? That’s what you have insurance for. Go through a bodyshop for any minor fender bender and pay for it your self. Your wallet will be drained real fast.
News flash for all of you-GM inked a huge deal with Alcoa last year and it wasn’t to make wheels. If you think the use of aluminum is short lived you better stock up on used trucks and head for your bomb shelter!
There are a lot of aluminum compositions. 3003-H14, 5052, 6061-T6 and on and on. The formulation of this material can be adjusted in composition a million ways so to say that aluminum will crack is a broad statement. With all due respect, the aluminum composition in a set of aluminum connecting rods is completely different than the aluminum to fabricate the interior pieces or the rear spoiler on a race car. Ford is not going to use an off the shelf sheet to fab the panels on these trucks. There is a lot of chemistry going on to come up with the ideal aluminum material for this application.
My direct experience is with the aluminum they’re already using for car bodies, so whatever the grade is I can tell you it sucks to repair, and the body shop that brought me such projects now simply replaces the panel nearly all the time. Nobody else could do it either. As far as who winds up paying for it…oh, it ain’t the president…lol
Their first mistake was paying $52,000 for a freaking half ton pickup with a weak suck V8 powering it. In case you’re wondering about the mark up, cost to build to price, 90% of Ford’s car sales profits come from just this truck. That means truck prices are marked up so high that it covers the sale price losses of all of the other models they sell.
I have to agree for paying over $50K for a pickup. I bought my 2002 Silverado 3 yrs ago w/154K for $4500 and still going strong @ 210K miles.
I let the other fools buy them brand new and buy it off them 10 yrs later. This way all the kinks are worked out of them!
It surprises me how many people are opposed to aluminum trucks. News flash, Some of the heaviest, largest and powerful vehicles that roam this earth are made of aluminum. Semi trucks for instance, I’ll just compare the F150 to that: Semi trucks have been using aluminum for the construction of their cabs for decades, don’t know exact year or first truck to utilize this but assuming since the late 60’s. Having experience working on these semi trucks in a collision shop, mainly Peterbuilt/Kenworth, I have yet to experience any long term fatiguing issues with the aluminum cab. In fact, I’ll say that the F150 is built the same as a semi truck! Steel frame, aluminum body that is rivited and glued together. There is nothing wrong with that. Todays semi trucks can be ordered with an aluminum frame as well, think about that… Engineers are comfortable with the material so I don’t know why you guys are so disgruntled about it. Be thankful they didn’t choose fiberglass.