Just months after Ford agreed to pay millions to Focus and Fiesta owners over their faulty PowerShift transmissions, it’s again facing a class-action lawsuit—this time for the Mustang’s six-speed manual. Drivers of 2011-2020 Mustang and Mustang GT models have long made their problems with the Getrag MT82 gearbox known, and now, they’ve taken legal action. In the lawsuit, plaintiffs claim the equipment to be failure-prone and blame Ford for not remedying the situation, despite knowing of the complaints for nearly a decade.
The Mustang’s MT82 and MT82-D4 gearboxes are alleged to suffer inherent defects that lead to slipping, jerking, and clashing of gears. What’s more, the plaintiffs of Gregoria vs. Ford Motor Company say these hiccups persist even after being repaired, citing a poor design that causes shift forks, shift shafts, synchronizers, and clutch assemblies to fail.
Essentially, they’re saying it’s only a matter of time before these parts need replacing over and over.
The lawsuit mentions that Ford acknowledged said issues internally by issuing special service bulletins to dealerships. These bulletins instructed technicians to drain and refill the transmissions, along with replacing a list of parts including shift forks, synchronizer hubs and sleeves, clutch pedal position switches and the gearshift lever, among other items.
In 2011, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conducted an investigation into the Mustang’s manual gearbox. According to provided documents, the NHTSA received 364 complaints regarding the Getrag unit, though it ultimately found no safety risks. Ford also took action to correct the problems reported to the agency, though it found these faults affected only three percent of all transmissions.
The Drive‘s Mike Spinelli reported on this several years ago at Jalopnik, explaining that Ford blamed “abusive” Mustang owners for such issues. Apparently, most of them occurred when temperatures were cold, and the cars hadn’t been properly warmed up.
Ford itself says these problems can be attributed to simple wear and tear, denying any actual defect with the transmissions.
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h/t: Car Complaints