Engine bay fire on the 1997 Ford F-150
12 fires 12 of the 13 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 engine bay fire gets reported
Owners of the 1997 Ford F-150 report engine bay fire at a median of 145,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 125,000 miles and a quarter after 200,000 miles, from 8 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 95,000 miles. It is the 42nd most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 100,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 200,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 101,602 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
A spread this wide points at use rather than design. Towing, climate, service history and city mileage all move a failure like this, so the median is a weak guide to any individual car.
0% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 98,398 miles | 127,000 miles | 143,800 miles | 200,000 miles | 200,000 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, 12 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 $4,000–$20,000 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 10 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2016, at a median of 100 miles, and latest on the 1998 at 145,000 miles.
By volume the 2000 carries the most reports, with 23; the 1997 has 13. 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.
Parked the vehicle at 10:00 and at 10:30 the alarm sounded. Went to look at vehicle and saw fire under the hood on the driver's side. Pictures posted at http://plaza.ufl.edu/bethie21/. The cruise control failed before the fire, and the brake lights had gone out. The cruise control failed before christmas. The brake lights went out in early january. The vehicle would not come out of park. We replaced the fuse and it blew again. We replaced it 3 times and it stopped blowing. The vehicle was insured by state farm policy number 8922531-59 4.*ak *nm
At 3:15 am on june 1, my 1997 ford f-150 caught fire and burned. Horn honking woke my daughter who first observed a fire from a bedroom window. She woke my wife and I up thinking my detached shop was on fire. We ran outside and found the fire to be a truck engine compartment fire. The truck was driven last at 7:30 pm and parked on my driveway next to a horse trailer. I called 911 and began spraying water on the truck and trailer. I could not control the fire and focused on keeping the trailer cool. When the fire truck finally arrived it took about 30 minutes to put the fire totally out. At that point the fire had burned through the cab to rear seats. Based on how the truck burned, I believe it was attributed to a cruise control switch fire.
Tl*- the contact stated that while the 1997 ford f-150 was parked in the driveway the vehicle caught on fire under the hood. The fire department arrived to extinguish the fire. The fire damaged the engine, electrical wiring, piping ,and anything that was made of plastic melted in the vehicle. The contact could provide pictures of damaged vehicle, and a fire department report.*ak updated 02/28/07. *jb
Also reported on the 1997 Ford F-150
Other wheel or tire problem
Other engine problem
Other body or interior problem
Fuel tank, filler or EVAP failure
Other suspension problem
Other electrical problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 13 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 engine bay fire happen on the 1997 Ford F-150?
Across 8 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 145,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 125,000 miles and a quarter after 200,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is engine bay fire on the 1997 Ford F-150?
13 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.0 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