Head gasket failure on the 2014 Ford Escape
2 fires 2 of the 64 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
When head gasket failure gets reported
Owners of the 2014 Ford Escape report head gasket failure at a median of 85,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 60,000 miles and a quarter after 100,000 miles, from 43 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 115,000 miles. It is the 9th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 50,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 127,500 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 78,403 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
0% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 49,197 miles | 60,150 miles | 83,900 miles | 100,750 miles | 127,600 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 2 a fire is mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $1,400–$4,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 9 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2020, at a median of 55,000 miles, and latest on the 2022 at 260,000 miles.
By volume the 2017 carries the most reports, with 137; the 2014 has 64. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
Roughly four weeks ago, I received an alert that my car was overheating when I was parked. I took my car in to ford and they told me that I need a new reserve bottle and charged me nearly $300. At this point, they inspected my coolant system and topped off my coolant which was low. Two weeks later, I was getting on the freeway and I received a severe warning for over heating. My car started shaking and an alarm was going off. I pulled off the freeway to observe that my coolant bottle was completely empty. I had my car in the shop for nearly a week before they discovered now that I need a new coolant bypass valve. I believe that ford needs to expand their recall (17s09) to include the actual issue of what is causing the localized overheating, which is a lack of coolant flowing through the engine leading to a crack in the cylinder head. I have to spend nearly $900 to fix this part on a car built in 2014. Ford's solution to fixing the possible cracked cylinder head is not to address the issue of why the coolant is leaking, but to install a sensor to then make owners have to constantly check their coolant system. This is not a fair…
2014 ford escape 4x2 overflow coolant tank causing coolant to leak. 230,000 cars have been repaired by ford but they will not repair mine without a $230+cost. For some unknown reason my serial number is not covered. Lack of coolant leads to overheating and cracked head gasket. The car did reduce power and sound a pull over immediately warning on 2 occasions. The car has 55,000 miles.
2014 ford escape 4x2 overflow coolant tank causing coolant to leak. 230,000 cars have been repaired by ford but they will not repair mine without a $230+cost. For some unknown reason my serial number is not covered. Lack of coolant leads to overheating and cracked head gasket. The car did reduce power and sound a pull over immediately warning on 2 occasions. The car has 55,000 miles.
Also reported on the 2014 Ford Escape
Other engine problem
Other powertrain problem
Overheating
Radiator or coolant leak
Other body or interior problem
Other electrical problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 64 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does head gasket failure happen on the 2014 Ford Escape?
Across 43 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 85,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 60,000 miles and a quarter after 100,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is head gasket failure on the 2014 Ford Escape?
64 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.2 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed