Fuel tank, filler or EVAP failure on the 2018 Ford F-150
4 crashes 4 fires 3 injuries 1 death 12 of the 10 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 5 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.
When fuel tank, filler or evap failure gets reported
There are 10 reports of fuel tank, filler or EVAP failure on the 2018 Ford F-150, 5 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 88,000 miles. It is the 46th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 3,500 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, 4 a crash, 4 a fire, 3 an injury and 1 a fatality 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 $250–$1,800 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 22 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2018, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2024 at 145,000 miles.
By volume the 1997 carries the most reports, with 206; the 2018 has 10. 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.
Within 30 days of purchase & approx. 1,000 miles on vehicle, the front end of the fuel tank dropped out of truck while in motion at approx. 20 MPH on multi-lane suburban street. Vehicle had been filled with fuel a few minutes prior. Driver stopped and turned off vehicle in right lane shortly after hearing dragging noise. Holes in tank caused fuel to pour out and collect on road. Fire department and police responded to neutralize fuel spill. Vehicle towed to dealer. Dealer determined fuel tank strap broke, replaced fuel tank, strap and seal under warranty. Vehicle owner sent letter to ford motor company, awaiting response. Vehicle owner worried about integrity of vehicle and/or repeat issue.
June 21, 2018 we were driving down hwy 1 bypass in forrest city, ar and were hit on the driver's side, passenger door and gas tank area. The truck took the impact well and we spun 180 degrees to the opposite side of the road. The side and curtain airbags deployed and my two small children in the back seat were unharmed, including the one whose door took most of the impact. My hip was injured from the air bag that deployed from the back of my seat. As I was sitting in the seat immediately following the accident calling 911, the seat began smoking. I tried to exit out of the driver's side door and it was jammed. Smoke continued to get thicker and smelled like an electrical/plastic burning smell. I then had to crawl over the center console and exit through the front passenger door. At that point, thick black smoke was coming from my seat and the left side of the cab began to burn. The actual impact damage to my vehicle would not have totaled it out, but the fire, smoke, and water damage from the fire being put out, did. I have also filed a case with ford motor company, as I believe this was a mechanical/electrical defect in the…
June 21, 2018 we were driving down hwy 1 bypass in forrest city, ar and were hit on the driver's side, passenger door and gas tank area. The truck took the impact well and we spun 180 degrees to the opposite side of the road. The side and curtain airbags deployed and my two small children in the back seat were unharmed, including the one whose door took most of the impact. My hip was injured from the air bag that deployed from the back of my seat. As I was sitting in the seat immediately following the accident calling 911, the seat began smoking. I tried to exit out of the driver's side door and it was jammed. Smoke continued to get thicker and smelled like an electrical/plastic burning smell. I then had to crawl over the center console and exit through the front passenger door. At that point, thick black smoke was coming from my seat and the left side of the cab began to burn. The actual impact damage to my vehicle would not have totaled it out, but the fire, smoke, and water damage from the fire being put out, did. I have also filed a case with ford motor company, as I believe this was a mechanical/electrical defect in the…
Also reported on the 2018 Ford F-150
Other powertrain problem
Other engine problem
Other body or interior problem
Other electrical problem
Complete transmission failure
Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 10 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 10 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 tank, filler or evap failure happen on the 2018 Ford F-150?
Across 5 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 5,000 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 fuel tank, filler or evap failure on the 2018 Ford F-150?
10 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