Taylor McKnight was waiting at an Austin stoplight in her 2024 Ford Escape when the cabin filled with an acrid, greasy smell. The engine light flicked on, she limped home, and the next morning a dealer service adviser delivered the news: Ford had just filed Recall 25V-372. The company now urges some owners to stop driving and park outside, because a single missing steel ball smaller than a jellybean can turn a routine errand into a roadside bonfire.
The fine print in one gulp
Filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on June 3 2025, the action covers 404 U.S. vehicles:
- 2023-2025 Ford Escape built with the 1.5-liter EcoBoost three-cylinder, and
- 2025 Ford Bronco Sport, which using the same engine.
- Ford’s internal reference is 25S61. Dealers will replace the entire cylinder head, free of charge, once parts arrive.
- Inside every 1.5-liter EcoBoost head, a steel ball plug seals an oil passage. Supplier Nemak Monterrey heat-treats those heads so aluminum shrinks tightly around the plug. Two power outages in 2024 interrupted that heat cycle, leaving some heads too soft to grip the ball. Under load and heat the plug can wiggle out, letting pressurized oil gush into the exhaust manifold or pool atop the block. The result:
- Oil on a red-hot catalytic converter, which ends up in a fire, or
- Sudden oil starvation; which translates to a seized engine, loss of motive power.
Either way, you lose.
How Ford caught it
A warranty claim in March 2025 described a locked-up Escape engine. Ford’s teardown team found an empty plug bore. A second Escape arrived in April, this one dripping oil. Lab hardness tests traced the flaw to heads cast between February 28 and November 4 2024. Engineers flagged 404 units built with those heads (plus a handful of service long blocks) before the factory switched to in-spec parts.
If a dealer orders a fix, expect these replacements:
- Cylinder head PV4Z-6049-A (cast February 28–Nov 4 2024)
- Long block PV4Z-6006-A (built June 10–Sept 24 2024)
The new heads now meet Ford’s hardness spec and include a laser-etched date code.
What owners must do today
- Run your VIN at the NHTSA webpage for recalls, or the official one by Ford.
- If you’re in the 404:
Park outside, away from buildings.
Call 1-866-436-7332 with recall 25S61.
Request a free tow if you smell oil or see smoke.
- Schedule the head swap. Ford expects first parts in July, with a second notification letter once inventory stabilizes.
- Keep receipts. The company will reimburse out-of-pocket towing or rental costs tied to the recall.
Dealers need about eight hours of shop time for the head replacement, plus fresh coolant and oil.
Nemak’s mea culpa and the supply-chain lesson
Nemak told Ford that both power failures hit during the critical quench phase of heat treatment. Quality checks missed the softer heads, which then sailed through machining and assembly.
After Ford’s root-cause audit, the supplier added backup generators and extra hardness probes on the line. Total affected heads worldwide remain under 600, but Ford confined its recall scope to vehicles already in customer hands.
How this fits Ford’s recall streak
The oil-leak bulletin lands just weeks after Ford’s million-car rear-camera recall and amid an ongoing NHTSA probe into injector cracks on earlier Escapes. Small by volume, the 404-unit campaign still stings: it touches two of Ford’s best-selling crossovers, arrives in peak summer travel, and marks at least the 13th safety action for the company in 2025.
Staying ahead of the next bulletin
Ford’s episode underscores a simple rule: check your VIN every quarter, even if no letter arrives. Modern supply chains stretch across continents and can shove a one-in-a-thousand defect into your driveway. Automakers and regulators will track it; ultimately, you have to act on it.