Had an 08 Expy Limited. Picked it up with 14 miles on the clock, drove til 148,000 when a run in with a guard rail secondary to a deer strike ended it's reign. I had a love-hate relationship with it but had I to do it all over again and buy a used one of the same model, here is what I would look out for. I'm not talking about the usual used car/truck wear item stuff, these are issues I ran into that are specific to this truck. I experienced almost all of these issues and they can be big $$$ to fix. Thank GOD I got the warranty...
- Spark Plugs, spark plugs, spark plugs! - Let me say this from the outset. Like Bigfoot and the Chupacabra there is no such thing as a 100K mile plug. That's for 1 owner soccer Mom's that can't be bothered for their vehicle to be down for 3 hours once a year for routine maintenance. In the Ford 3V engine of this model year the 100K mile plug was a disaster. Check the maintenance records and if you don't see a spark plug change in the last 50K miles, consider looking elsewhere. You could be in for a $700-$1000 head/cylinder repair on the next plug change.
- End play in the crankshaft - This spells DEATH for your engine and a $7-8K (!!) repair if you don't have a warranty. Some motors in the 07-08 MY were defective in the assembly and didn't mate up perfectly with the transmission. The result, the crankshaft was allowed to move laterally mere thousands of an inch.. but that's enough to kill your engine around 50-70K miles. Despite religious oil changes and maintenance. The symptoms are subtle at first, slightly rough idle that resembles dirty injectors, minor spark, or fuel delivery. Then progresses to rough idle and eventually the engine will stall inexplicably and won't start until it cools. Then will restart and run for a bit but then stall. Eventually it won't start at all. So... what to look out for, check for signs of small metal shavings in oil.. I mean SMALL.. like metal powder. Of course it could also be like mine and the entire crankshaft seal plate was worn paper thin, cracked off and in the bottom of the oil pan too.
If you see ANY evidence of this or strange running behavior as described, RUN AWAY!
- 4WD Wheel Slippage - In tight turns my 4WD would "slip". The front would buck hard enough to be a concern and it wasn't the wheels rubbing. I was told this was "normal" by the dealer, but I think he may have been avoiding another repair on a vehicle that he had already spent THOUSANDS on warranty work. Admittedly, I didn't use the 4WD enough in conditions where this happened a lot, but I never recalled it doing that during the first few years. May be an area to check because most owners of these vehicles rarely engage the 4WD. I would use mine as often as I could but make sure it's working correctly and shifts into all modes.
- Automatic running boards - The person that designed these deserves his own special place in Hell. It's absolutely the worst design EVER with the motor being integrated directly into the running board and placed in a high exposure location, unsealed, right under the damn vehicle. I constantly complained about those things, mostly because the awkward opening height was designed for Moms in heels and they opened so slowly that I was forever cracking my shins on them. Likewise if you were in deep snow, mud, sand, anything that isn't a grocery store parking lot, they would half deploy leaving you to search the poorly designed menu system to shut them off so you could exit the cab. NEVER liked them and this progressed straight to HATRED once they stopped working. As expected, 8 years of direct exposure to rain, salt, dirt, sand, snow, etc and the motors failed. I tried to limp them along by squirting in lubes, graphite, etc. Even pulled the motors apart and cleaned the windings. But no amount of care and maintenance could compensate for a truly terrible design and they eventually quit. If you want to replace them expect to shell out $1200 EACH for the integrated motor/running board combo... and that's if you like unpainted primer black. Tack on another $500-800 for paint and install. Don't even think about claiming these on the warranty either. I tried when one failed at 93K and 2 stealerships outright refused to cover them. Expect unavoidable problems with these at 100K+.. sorry... they just suck.
- DVD/CD Changer-Player - Whoever made these for Ford should also be waterboarded. Replaced 3 (yes 3) under the factory warranty. Plus it's nearly impossible to figure out how to navigate the awkward combination of controls and menus to get it working fully. Maybe your average teen could figure them out, but for me, I gave up after 2 hours with the manual on a 2 hour drive and just faded the sound to the back so my girls could watch Thumbelina for the 35th time. Watch for this to eventually fail or just not work. If you just HAVE to have the factory model of this POS so your kids can watch Little Mermaid on a screen slightly larger than the average cell phone, look to shell out $800+ bucks.. about the cost of 2 iPads.
- Corrosion on the lift gate - What is it about lift gates and Ford? You would think that the company that LITERALLY started the vehicle revolution would be able to get something as simple as a rear liftgate correct (see also Ford Explorer lift gate cracks). Alas, it's not to be. The aluminum liftgate on almost every single one of these vehicles shows some signs of corrosion from minor paint bubbling to large patches of rough white powder coated exposed metal. Mine was somewhere in between starting at at 90K miles. Despite "corrosion" being listed in the warranty (100K miles / 7 years), the dealership and Ford MoCo outright refused to cover it. If you find one without this "feature", count yourself blessed.
- Frame rust-through - Now I'm not talking about a little or even a lot of surface rust here, but it seems that the frames on these vehicles are prone to SEVERE car cancer especially in northern climes where state road crews aren't afraid to use rock salt. Maybe it's faulty undercoating or inferior (cheap) metal but it can be BAD. Take a hammer on your test drive and really wrap on the frame in spots. Pay very close attention to the rear near the sway bar/swing arms. Look for cover-up repairs or freshly painted sections. If you hit a dull spot or the hammer drives right through the frame... that's a hard "NO". Unlike the good ol' days, most welding shops wont touch a vehicle frame with a 10 foot pole due to liability concerns. If you are handy with a torch then you can weigh your options but you could be looking at a total loss. Donor frames, if you can find one, go for $3k, and that's before you even start the laborious process of swapping the entire vehicle over.
- Seat Heating Unit - If equipped, this can also be trouble. Mine went out with no warning at 76K miles with a very nasty acrid electric burning smell. So bad I pulled over and checked to make sure the dash hadn't caught fire. It didn't but after that smell, neither driver or passenger side worked. Another warranty repair that would have cost $1200. If you find one with a heated seat module that doesn't work then you could be shelling out some green or just get a $30 seat cover.
- Honorable Mention - Window Regulators - Why, why, why, in a $55K vehicle would something a SIMPLE as a window regulator be so poorly constructed that they would almost ALL fail before 100K?? 3 of mine did, 2 under warranty and the other, luckily my brother-in-law had a shop and got me the parts for his cost. Otherwise, look to spend $350+ on this common failure item. Listen for rattle inside the door when you close it and slow raising window. One is sign that the plastic tabs (yes) that hold the window in place have failed and your window will soon drop straight into the door panel, the other means that your motor is giving out. Either one will cost the same, unless the window breaks in the process.
- OH almost forgot... Poor Door Drainage. I began to notice a "sloshing" noise inside my door panels. A little investigation and the undersized drain holes at the bottom of the door panels seemed unusally prone to get clogged with dirt and debris. Once discovered it became part of my regular cleaning routine to stick a plastic knife or other non-metal probe up in the drain holes to make sure they ran free. This is probably the reason why I see so many of these with lower door panel rust.
This is not my opinion. I experienced all of these items in my 10 years of ownership. Keep in mind that I buy my cars for the long haul (usually not selling until 150K+ miles). In all my vehicles this one was one of my most expensive purchases and would have had the highest TCO of them all (by far) had I not gotten the warranty. Without the warranty, I probably would have lit it on fire around year 5. Not that I didn't enjoy the vehicle, it was a great car for the family. But the fact that so many very expensive things went wrong with a vehicle through poor design/craftsmanship that I had NEVER experienced before was very disappointing. All this in a truck that's supposed to be "built Ford TOUGH!", lol! the Ford emblem faded out to illegible by 80K.
Oh.. I did forget.. Air Ride Suspension - This goes bad too but I was lucky enough to be spared the out of warranty repair because the vehicle was totaled just as it started to go out. I'd stay away from models with this feature unless it's been recently fixed.
