AtWhatMileage
Cooling · 3 owner reports

Overheating on the 2007 Ford F-150

3 fires 3 of the 3 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.

Only 3 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 3
With an odometer reading 3
Reports per 1,000 built 5.0 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 0%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 3
Typical repair $400–$3,500
What it means when it happens High
Rank among this year's problems 33rd

When overheating gets reported

There are 3 reports of overheating on the 2007 Ford F-150, 3 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 102,000 miles. It is the 33rd most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 3 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 93,300 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, 3 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 $400–$3,500 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.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 19 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2020, at a median of 25,000 miles, and latest on the 1998 at 225,000 miles.

By volume the 2018 carries the most reports, with 30; the 2007 has 3. 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.

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

I was driving down the road and I heard a loud popping noise so I pulled off on the side of the road and turned the truck off. I then saw smoke like the engine had overheated but in a matter of seconds flames ignited and I quickly got out of the vehicle and called 911. As I was speaking to the dispatcher there was a loud explosion and the whole front of my truck was engulfed in flames. By the time the fire department arrived and put out the fire my hood was totally burned up the engine is burned up and melted and the windshield and driver's side window blew out and the dash and front interior is burned and melted. I am lucky that I was able to get out in time because it happened so quickly. I am also glad my 10 month old son was not with me on this day. *tr

93,300 miles NHTSA complaint 1100960 filed 2014-08-22

I was driving down the road and I heard a loud popping noise so I pulled off on the side of the road and turned the truck off. I then saw smoke like the engine had overheated but in a matter of seconds flames ignited and I quickly got out of the vehicle and called 911. As I was speaking to the dispatcher there was a loud explosion and the whole front of my truck was engulfed in flames. By the time the fire department arrived and put out the fire my hood was totally burned up the engine is burned up and melted and the windshield and driver's side window blew out and the dash and front interior is burned and melted. I am lucky that I was able to get out in time because it happened so quickly. I am also glad my 10 month old son was not with me on this day. *tr

93,300 miles NHTSA complaint 1100961 filed 2014-08-22

I was driving down the road and I heard a loud popping noise so I pulled off on the side of the road and turned the truck off. I then saw smoke like the engine had overheated but in a matter of seconds flames ignited and I quickly got out of the vehicle and called 911. As I was speaking to the dispatcher there was a loud explosion and the whole front of my truck was engulfed in flames. By the time the fire department arrived and put out the fire my hood was totally burned up the engine is burned up and melted and the windshield and driver's side window blew out and the dash and front interior is burned and melted. I am lucky that I was able to get out in time because it happened so quickly. I am also glad my 10 month old son was not with me on this day. *tr

93,300 miles NHTSA complaint 1100962 filed 2014-08-22

Also reported on the 2007 Ford F-150

Other engine problem

81 reports median 88k

Other wheel or tire problem

52 reports median 21k

Misfire or rough idle

51 reports median 92k

Other speed control problem

45 reports median 45k

Other powertrain problem

38 reports median 56k

Other brake problem

29 reports median 37k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 3 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 3 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 overheating happen on the 2007 Ford F-150?

Across 3 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 95,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is overheating on the 2007 Ford F-150?

3 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 5.0 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