2026 data Public-data reference. official source

2021 FORD F-550 SD — Complaint #2178092

Open-data reference.

NHTSA Complaint about EQUIPMENT:ELECTRICAL:ACCESSORY GENERATOR:SOLAR PANEL filed February 18, 2026

NHTSA complaint #2178092 (ODI reference 11718835) concerns a 2021 FORD F-550 SD and was filed on February 18, 2026. The owner reports the failure occurred on February 16, 2026. The report was geocoded to Montana based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as equipment:electrical:accessory generator:solar panel, 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 F-550 SD cohort independently describe similar equipment:electrical:accessory generator:solar panel 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 F-550 SD shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.

Vehicle
2021 FORD F-550 SD
Component
EQUIPMENT:ELECTRICAL:ACCESSORY GENERATOR:SOLAR PANEL
State
Montana

Complaint Description

I stopped at a campground after leaving SC. Discovered a Thor factory solar panel had detached somewhere between SC and Arkansas. The mounting bracket was still attached to the roof but the bolts, washers and nuts were missing on 2 of the 4 mounts and the other mounts had loose components. It would have been a possible catastrophic event if it would have detached at highway speeds.

Complaint Details

NHTSA Complaint ID 2178092
ODI Number 11718835
Date Filed February 18, 2026
Failure Date February 16, 2026
VIN 1fduf5ht3md

Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.