The contact owns a 1998 Ford Taurus. The contact stated that the heater was not working in the vehicle. The vehicle was taken to an independent mechanic for diagnostic testing, but was not repaired. The manufacturer was notified. The failure mileage was 177,000. Updated 10/30/14

- Austin, TX, USA

Vehicle started to smoke. Consumer had the heater core replaced. However, heater core kept becoming defective. The consumer had the heater core replaced on four occasions.

- Port Arthur, TX, USA

I bought my 1998 Ford Taurus this past spring of 2003, and now that winter has arrived, I find that I have no heat or defroster. I took it to my mechanic and they told me it was my blend door, and they thought it was a recall item. When I contacted Ford, they told me it was not a recall item, and that it would cost over $900 to get it fixed. How is this not a saftey issue, and how are they getting away with not paying for it? someone signed off on this cheap part that has obviously failed repeatedly on these vehicles. They need to be held responsible. Visibility is a saftey issue, and they should be forced to recall this item. They shouldn't be able to choose not to recall something because it will cost them too much money to fix. They should have thought about that when they went cheap in the first place.

- Wilmington, DE, USA

Heater abruptly stopped working while driving last winter. Since then the cooling system has been flushed 6 times. Each time it will work for a week and then it stopped again. The car was taken to a dealership where they replaced the blend door motor, charged $230 for it and it did nothing. It was given a "chemical flush" for $125 which did nothing. Then the dealership informed me that it would need the heater core and blend door replaced. I was told by another dealership that this was a service bulletin in the first place and they should not have done the other work at all. Apparently this was a known problem on the Taurus from 96 on. I found a lot of people on the internet complaining about the exact same thing and was told that the NHTSA had advised Ford in 96 or 97 that they should probably recall the cars for this problem which causes the defroster to not work and therefore makes it dangerous to drive at all in the winter. Apparently Ford did a " customer satisfaction" recall which expired in 99 but was never done on my car (I bought it used in 2000). I called Ford to ask why this wasn't a recall since from what I have found it effects all tauruses from 96-99 at least. They told me that it wasn't a safety issue so it wouldn't be a recall. I submitted that it is a safety issue since you cannot see out of the windshield in the winter and since when ours stopped working we were on I-70 between St. Louis and Kansas City during a snowstorm and had to stop because we couldn't see. This is a $1300 repair that Ford knew about for a long time, I think they should have to pay for it.

- Ft Leavenworth, KS, USA