OEM Running Boards Detaching

[revv]

I bought a CPO 2023 Expedition and today I noticed that one of the running boards was crooked, unlike the other perfectly straight running board.

After taking a look it appears as if the board has detached itself from the last bracket (rear of the car). I can't tell if the bolt that attached the board to the bracket ripped through the step's hole or not. I don't see any evidence of hard impact or anything that would have caused this. If the bolt ripped through, it would mean that someone hit a huge rock or curb and that object applied pressure upwards on the board to get sit to detach.

Has this happened to anyone? Each board is $600 and I'd like to avoid paying this for a running board.

My car has the Blue Advantage Gold CPO package and I have Premium Care on top of that, but I don't think this is a covered component on either one, is it?

 

[99WhiteC5Coupe]

I bought a CPO 2023 Expedition and today I noticed that one of the running boards was crooked, unlike the other perfectly straight running board.

After taking a look it appears as if the board has detached itself from the last bracket (rear of the car). I can't tell if the bolt that attached the board to the bracket ripped through the step's hole or not. I don't see any evidence of hard impact or anything that would have caused this. If the bolt ripped through, it would mean that someone hit a huge rock or curb and that object applied pressure upwards on the board to get sit to detach.

Has this happened to anyone? Each board is $600 and I'd like to avoid paying this for a running board.

My car has the Blue Advantage Gold CPO package and I have Premium Care on top of that, but I don't think this is a covered component on either one, is it?

You should read your two plan documents to determine if the issue is covered.

 

[revv]

I did read the brochure and think that these are not covered. I was mainly trying to see if anyone has had luck with Ford replacing things on a CPO they just got and when the issue is excluded from the brochure. Clearly, this is a pre-exisitng issue, not something that I broke.

I went ahead and pulled the running board today to take a closer look and prevent damage to the rear door, since the displaced running board was creating pressure against it when closing the door.

I found this:






All brackets appear to be in good shape, no deformations. But they have these strange bolts on them. I've never seen these. I presume these are supposed to "pop" into the holes of the running board? There has to be something wrong; if I'm right it seems like a very flimsy way of securing running boards to a vehicle.

Can anyone tell what the issue is based off of these photos?

Some more photos:




Oh, two of the three brackets had been popped off. The entire running board was being held in place by a single bracket. Fortunately, the bracket design has the board resting on top of the bracket, so when someone used the board to get in/out, the weight applied was being held by the steel bracket and likely the sole reason why these didn't break off, even though they were only attached by one bracket.

 

[East-TN]

Do you see any threads in the holes? It looks, from your photos, the actual thread inserts have been pulled from the attach/secure area and are now located on the bolts. That would take a lot of weight/pressure to pull those bolts out along with the thread inserts.

 

[revv]

That might make sense actually. I didn't think that it would be the inner part of the running board now on the bolt; I thought it was some sort of strange bolt that would pop the step into place. I'm going to try and remove the only bracket that was left today to see what that looks like.

What's funny is that I cannot see any evidence of this being put on a boulder or tall curb to justify the inmense amount of upward pressure this running board was subjected to if this theory is correct.

 

[revv]

@East-TN You were right, these are the metal threads that go into the plastic running boards. They were pulled out cleanly from 5 out of 6 holes. Quite insane.

I was able to unscrew them from the bolts and hammer them back into the running board. 4 out of the 5 I hammered in have some resistance and are "attached" to the running board. The last one is completely loose. This means I have one secure bolt/thread combo, 4 that are "hammered in", and 1 that is completely loose. It is increasingly looking like I should just get a new set of running boards for this truck, hopefully of better quality than the plastic ones that came with it.

 

[East-TN]

Another option may have been to use a heavy duty epoxy to secure them back into the running boards. But that may be impossible or extremely difficult now that their hammered in. We've used something like that on certain aircraft fasteners in areas that are lower stress.