Fuel pump failure on the 2013 Ford F-150
2 crashes 3 fires 5 of the 65 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 fuel pump failure gets reported
Owners of the 2013 Ford F-150 report fuel pump failure at a median of 70,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 60,000 miles and a quarter after 90,000 miles, from 49 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 85,000 miles. It is the 12th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 42,500 miles at the tenth percentile to 120,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 76,586 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.
6% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 43,134 miles | 60,000 miles | 69,000 miles | 90,000 miles | 119,720 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 crash and 3 a fire are 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 $600–$2,600 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 26 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2020, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2001 at 170,000 miles.
By volume the 2013 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
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.
Tl* the contact owns a 2013 ford f-150. The vehicle was being refueled when the metal stopper within the fuel tank did not engage and fuel spilled out of the fuel tank. The contact was unable to insert the fuel pump nozzle because the capless entry point was blocked by the metal piece in the fuel tank. The dealer informed the contact to force the nozzle into the fuel tank. The contact did not heed the dealer's suggestion. The contact was planning to have the failure diagnosed and repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failure. The approximate failure mileage was 5,500.
I purchased my 2013 ford f 150 v8, 6.2l raptor about 6 months ago for the main purpose of hunting very remote areas here in maine. About 1 month ago, I utilized the remote start to start the truck and drove to work. At noon that day, I went to start my truck, it would turn over but not fire. Called aaa, they checked the battery which was fine and then placed key into door to unlock and engine fired up. Then about a week ago, during hunting season, I drove the truck into a gas station, filled the tank, I went to start the truck to leave and the same issue occurred. I ended up taking the cable off of the battery, then reattached and the engine fired up. I brought the truck to ford, they stated that they diagnosed as as known problem. The fuse to the fuel pump will need to be diverted. I told ford that I was heading north to hunt the next day, they recommended strongly that I get the issue fixed asap, said they could get part and have the issue remedied the next day. I set up the appointment. Ford just called and said the part was on backorder, they can't get it until nov 30. Hunting season ends nov 27th.
After towing truck to dealer after a crank no start, the dealer diagnosed the problem as melted fuse f27 which powers the fuel pump. Surprisingly this fuse has melted often enough that ford has a specifically designed rework kit p/n el3z-14293-a which relocates the fuse to a different spot in the fuse box where a physically larger but identical amperage fuse is used. After doing some research, some of the other affected vehicles with the melted f27 experienced stalling while they were driving. Others have had to replace the entire fuse box due to melting. It seems this issue has happened often enough that there is an official tsb from ford (tsb-15-0137) as well as the above mentioned rework kit, which my dealer had in stock. Based on the work performed (moving the fuse to a different spot in the fuse box and replacing it with a physically larger fuse of the same amperage), it seems that this issue is a design problem. This seems like a potentially dangerous defect that ford is making customers pay to fix.
Also reported on the 2013 Ford F-150
Other powertrain problem
Other engine problem
Other electrical problem
Other speed control problem
Other visibility problem
Other steering problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 65 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 fuel pump failure happen on the 2013 Ford F-150?
Across 49 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 70,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 60,000 miles and a quarter after 90,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is fuel pump failure on the 2013 Ford F-150?
65 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