Thread: Ford may have put the last nail in the coffin for the defender.

dunno where you got the info from, but there are literally millions of ford transits in europe with many many more miles than 150k on them without a major problem... it's a standard courier type van, thus fleet buyers would avoid them like the plague if they were pox...not to mention the same motor was/is in the mondeo (most popular car in UK), london taxis (how many miles do they do between services) and the jag x-type (although why you would want a deisel jag is beyond me).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Duratorq

well developed, long reliable history, wide range of applications... what more could you want in a motor?

Yeah - I think when a motor is produced in the immense quantities as the Transit engine, then of course there will also be high numbers of failures recorded. It's the proportion of failures that counts though.

I've only heard good things about this engine on the UK forums.

May be it never got serviced or had petrol through it, etc.

a bit like a printer i once worked with; had a (92) LEXUS LS400 from new, drove it in places (with a three ton boat) where no-one goes, never had it serviced, ever!!!

200,000ks later (never serviced, ever) and wondered why it conked out...

true as i stand here, and truly sad what he did to that car...

as said, the dear old transit must be the ducks guts or nuts or whatever, or ford would not be sellng them in the huge volumes they do - the transit sits in the top ten of euro sales every year, and has done for aeons....

GQ

A few years ago a friend was interested in a Transit and asked me to quiz the transport supervisor at the local Post delivery centre. He said don't get one, they were unreliable, a few drivers agreed with this. I don't know if it was the engine that let them down or something else.

Jeff

the only serious problem with the early version of this model engine was the timeing chain tensioners and the duel mass flywheels the curent defender and transit use the later version with the twin oil filter arangement like the td5 and the tensioner has been up graded we havent seen any failings of the curent model transit yet

Not What I hear,
2 Transit courier drivers that collect from me 1 @ over 500k only starter motor ring gear problems and another over 700k with only electrical Probs.

I hope I can have as few problems.

I've also heard good reports from courier drivers.

Remember that in this application the engines are hot all day (like a cab). This is a good thing for longevity.

In any case, its got to be a big improvement on the TD5..............