2021 FORD EXPLORER — Complaint #1873426
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about FUEL SYSTEM, GASOLINE:DELIVERY:HOSES, LINES/PIPING, AND FITTINGS filed February 14, 2023
NHTSA complaint #1873426 (ODI reference 11507304) concerns a 2021 FORD EXPLORER and was filed on February 14, 2023. The owner reports the failure occurred on December 25, 2022. The vehicle had 41,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Illinois based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as fuel system, gasoline:delivery:hoses, lines/piping, and fittings, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same FORD EXPLORER cohort independently describe similar fuel system, gasoline:delivery:hoses, lines/piping, and fittings failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2021 FORD EXPLORER shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2021 Ford Explorer. The contact stated while driving 10 MPH, there was a strong gasoline odor inside the cabin of the vehicle. Additionally, the contact stated while the vehicle was parked in the garage, there was a strong gasoline odor coming from the vehicle. The contact stated that the gasoline odor was present throughout the entire three-story residence. There was no warning light illuminated. The vehicle was taken to the dealer where it was diagnosed that the fuel line was leaking from a hole. The fuel line was replaced, and the diagnostic fault codes were cleared. The contact stated that upon reviewing photographs of the fuel line, he noticed that an unknown component had been rubbing against the fuel line, which caused the failure; however, the dealer did not inform him of the cause of the failure. The manufacturer was notified of the failure, but no assistance was provided. The failure mileage was approximately 41,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1873426 |
| ODI Number | 11507304 |
| Date Filed | February 14, 2023 |
| Failure Date | December 25, 2022 |
| VIN | 1FMSK8DH8MG |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.