2018 FORD EXPLORER — Complaint #2057846
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about ENGINE AND ENGINE COOLING filed January 21, 2025
NHTSA complaint #2057846 (ODI reference 11637319) concerns a 2018 FORD EXPLORER and was filed on January 21, 2025. The owner reports the failure occurred on January 21, 2024. The vehicle had 95,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Connecticut based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as engine and engine cooling, 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 engine and engine cooling 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 2018 FORD EXPLORER shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2018 Ford Explorer. The contact stated that while driving at an undisclosed speed, the engine overheated. The contact stated that the vehicle was losing coolant, but there was no indication of a coolant leak. There were no warning lights illuminated. There was cool air coming from the heater vents. The contact called an independent mechanic for orange coolant, who informed the contact that the coolant was on backorder. The vehicle was taken to the local dealer for a routine oil change and diagnosed that the water pump was leaking and needed to be replaced. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was contacted, but no assistance was provided. The contact was referred to the NHTSA Hotline for assistance. The approximate failure mileage was approximately 95,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2057846 |
| ODI Number | 11637319 |
| Date Filed | January 21, 2025 |
| Failure Date | January 21, 2024 |
| VIN | 1FM5K8D80JG |
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The contact owns a 2018 Ford Explorer. The contact stated that while driving at an undisclosed speed, the check engine warning light illuminated. Prior to the failure, when the vehicle was started, th
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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.