Misfire or rough idle on the 2002 Ford F-250
1 crash 3 fires 4 of the 12 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 7 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 misfire or rough idle gets reported
There are 12 reports of misfire or rough idle on the 2002 Ford F-250, 7 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 92,000 miles. It is the 3rd most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 98,000 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, 1 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 $250–$1,600 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 10 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2005, at a median of 60,000 miles, and latest on the 2004 at 155,000 miles.
By volume the 1999 carries the most reports, with 26; the 2002 has 12. 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.
Dt*: the contact stated while traveling 60 MPH on a downhill curve, the driver side front tire blew out and the vehicle hit a guard rail on the driver side. Then, while trying to get the vehicle off of the road, the tread separated and the tread hit the side mirror and fender. A spare tire was put on. Then, 175 miles later there was a noise, the vehicle was running rough and was pulled over. The passenger side front tire had separated and the vehicle was towed to the residence. The tires were taken to the dealership. No injuries were sustained.
Tl*- the contact stated that while driving the 2002 ford f250 with 100,000 failure mileage at 55 MPH the contact heard a loud popping noise, the vehicle was riding rough and it started to shake. The vehicle was taken to a dealer, and they stated that the spark plug blew out of the aluminum head. The contact was concerned that this was a serious safety problem. The current mileage was 140,000. *ak the vehicle would lose power when the spark plug failed. Update 4/25/07 *tr
On 03/16/2012 at 10:30pm while on my way home from work, I came to a stop at a stop sign. Truck was running fine. As I pulled away from the stop sign and accelerating I heard a loud pop and what sounded like an exhaust leak. I immediately pulled over and looked under the hood. I found that the coil on the #3 spark plug was out and the exhaust sound was coming from the hole where the spark plug should have been. Only living 2 miles from work, I drove the truck home and parked it til morning. In the morning I went out and tried to put the plug back in and realized there were no threads to thread the plug into. This is very disconcerting realizing that there will be some major work needing to be done on the truck before I can drive it again. Not to mention cost. Upon some internet research, I have found that this has been a major problem with these ford trucks and that ford is refusing to do a recall on this matter. I just purchased this truck on 03/12/2012 and cannot drive it any more. I will not drive it any more due to the safety aspect of the fuel vapors coming out of the hole and possibly catching fire from the spark plug wire…
Also reported on the 2002 Ford F-250
Other engine problem
Other wheel or tire problem
Tire blowout or tread separation
Other electrical problem
Other brake problem
Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 12 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 12 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 misfire or rough idle happen on the 2002 Ford F-250?
Across 7 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 100,000 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 misfire or rough idle on the 2002 Ford F-250?
12 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.5 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