On a trip from cincinnati oh to bloomington in, roughly 140 miles, the check engine light came on several times with no apparent driveability issues. The return trip a few hours later, however, on a busy highway at 75 MPH the vehicle suddenly lost power showing the message "pull over safely immediately". It was difficult to navigate to the shoulder without power, and very frightening. After a few minutes I was able to start and run the vehicle again for about 10 minutes before experiencing the power loss again. After a tow and oil change I was sent on my way only to have the same issue again several times before getting another tow all the way home. This has happened several times since, only at highway speeds, always dangerous and scary. The dealer is replacing the merc pump and a couple other items for a cost of over 1200.00. This should be a recall issue--so many complaints already lodged and such a dangerous situation.
2007 Ford Escape Hybrid fuel system complaints
Page 2 of 2: complaints 11 to 13 of 13, newest first, as owners wrote them.
While traveling on an interstate highway, the vehicle displayed "stop safely now" message along with an audible chime and a red triangle with exclamation point symbol. The gas engine shut down and the vehicle lost power coasting from highway speed to around 35 MPH. The vehicle remained under hybrid electric power allowing me to move to the side of the road. My vehicle is around 7.5 years old and has 89,000 miles. I researched this issue and it appears to have occurred with several of these type vehicles. The dealership reported that they retrieved error codes p1aod, p0a3e, b139. The dealership says that it requires replacement of the hybrid drive train motor electronics cooling system (mecs) water pump (part# 5m6z8c419a) and (part# al8z19e66f). There is a technical service bulletin (tsb) 08-24-5 that seems to relate to similar problems. The problem is not covered by the manufacturer 8 year /100,000 mile hybrid warranty according to ford customer relations despite both parts being part of the hybrid drive system.
I was driving on the freeway when the engine shut off and 'master vehicle electrical hazrard warning lamp' came on. Fortunately I only had to cross one lane in modest traffic. The owner's manual instructions state 'stop the vehicle, shift to park, turn the key to off position and attempt to restart the vehicle. If the fault remains, the vehicle may require resetting the shut-off switches.' following the instructions, I was able to restart the vehicle and continue driving without resetting any switches. The warning light remained off and has not come back on again. I have sheduled an appointment to take the vehicle to a dealer. In the mean time I have searched the web for drivers with similiar experiences and have come across quite a few. I personally do not feel safe driving a vehicle that can shut off without warning, especially on a busy highway. The fact that ford has instructions in the owners manual for 'resetting the fuel pump/high voltage shut off switches' is alarming in itself essentially I can be traveling in urban rush hour traffic and a computer can decide to shut off the engine. I urge you to require ford to address this defect.
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