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1995 FORD ESCORT — Complaint #551161

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NHTSA Complaint about FUEL SYSTEM, OTHER:STORAGE:TANK ASSEMBLY filed August 24, 2005

NHTSA complaint #551161 (ODI reference 10134041) concerns a 1995 FORD ESCORT and was filed on August 24, 2005. The owner reports the failure occurred on August 22, 2005. The vehicle had 130,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Mississippi based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as fuel system, other:storage:tank assembly, 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 ESCORT cohort independently describe similar fuel system, other:storage:tank assembly 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 1995 FORD ESCORT shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.

Vehicle
1995 FORD ESCORT
Component
FUEL SYSTEM, OTHER:STORAGE:TANK ASSEMBLY
State
Mississippi
Mileage
130,000 mi

Complaint Description

STARTED SMELLING PROFUSE GAS FUMES IN MY 1995 ESCORT LX. TOOK IN TO MEINEIKE TO BE REPAIRED. THEY FOUND THAT THE GAS TANK WAS CRACKED DUE TO HEAT SHIELD. THIS IS THE MONTH OF AUGUST IN MISSISSIPPI AND THE HEAT FACTOR HAS BEEN OVER 100 FOR THE LAST COUPLE OF WEEKS. LOOKED ONLINE AND FOUND THAT CERTAIN ESCORTS HAD NO GAP BETWEEN HEAT SHIELD AND GAS TANK AND WAS UNDER RECALL FROM 1997. THIS MODEL CAME UP NOT UNDER RECALL BUT PROBLEM WAS INDICATIVE OF RECALL MODELS. FORD REFUSES TO INVESTIGATE MY CLAIM. THE REMEDY FOR FIXING RECALLED MODELS WAS TO MAKE A GAP BETWEEN HEATSHEILD AND GAS TANK. THERE IS NO GAP BETWEEN HEAT SHIELD AND GAS TANK ON MY CAR. THIS MODEL SHOULD HAVE BEEN UNDER THE RECALL.

Complaint Details

NHTSA Complaint ID 551161
ODI Number 10134041
Date Filed August 24, 2005
Failure Date August 22, 2005
VIN 3FASP11J2SR

Similar FUEL SYSTEM, OTHER:STORAGE:TANK ASSEMBLY Complaints for 1995 FORD ESCORT

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