NHTSA Complaint #11601824 — 2017 FORD EXPEDITION

In 2022, around mileage of 67000, our SUV was climbing a steep road when it suddenly made a pop sound & went into limp mode with the wrench light showing and the engine sounding rough. It felt like no fuel was getting to the engine & the gas pedal was non-responsive. The RPMs didn't change when the gas pedal was pressed. The grade was so steep, we barely made it to the side of the road without rolling backwards into traffic behind us. After turning the engine off and sitting about 10 mins, we tried starting the engine again. The car seemed to have reset itself! It ran fine; the wrench light turned off, and the gas pedal was responsive again. (At the time, we were on vacation at the coast and had traveled from our home at about elevation 3500'. We had also recently had to buy gas from a small no name gas station, so we feared we may have gotten bad fuel). From there, we returned home without re-occurrence, and we used fuel cleaning additive to our Chevron fuel for the next 2 fill ups. Then, approximately 600 miles later on a flat grade, it happened again without the pop sound. We immediately went to our Ford dealer who found no error code but found our purge valve stuck open. They recommended we replace it, which we did, and we operated the vehicle for 2 years without re-occurrence and using only Chevron gas. Recently, it happened again! Luckily, we weren't on a steep grade this time or on the freeway, but if a car would have been behind us, we would have likely been rear ended, especially had we been on the freeway. Once again, we shut the engine off, and it reset with the wrench light disappearing, so no diagnostic code got thrown AGAIN! Based on many complaints, this appears to be a common problem. It's very dangerous as the car immediately losses power to a crawl no matter what speed you are traveling at the time. It seems to be the electronic throttle body in instances where the SUV can stay running, so a code can be obtained before it resets.