Mach-Lee
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Lee
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2021
- Threads
- 262
- Messages
- 11,350
- Reaction score
- 24,975
- Location
- Wisconsin
- Vehicles
- 2022 Mach-E Premium AWD
- Occupation
- Sci/Eng
- Thread starter
- #1
I was replacing a broken wind deflector (plastic piece in front of tire) on my Mach-E today (because some road debris hit it), and noticed this on it:
(Pic while I'm lying on the ground about to replace it
)
For those that don't know, this is a date stamp that is engraved into the mold of the plastic part for quality tracking (it's very common, on almost every plastic part Ford makes). At the beginning of each month, the mold operator will ding the calendar with a punch so the parts made from it can be dated. In my case, the latest mark is September 2025, so that's when my part was made.
What's interesting is the pattern of months that don't have a tool mark. Since this wind deflector is a small, simple plastic part on every Mach-E, I can't imagine there really being any production constraints on it. That means if a batch wasn't made, it was probably in excess supply, and there must have been something else holding up the production of Mach-E's at that time.
Based on the pattern of gaps, you can conclude a few things:
(Pic while I'm lying on the ground about to replace it
)For those that don't know, this is a date stamp that is engraved into the mold of the plastic part for quality tracking (it's very common, on almost every plastic part Ford makes). At the beginning of each month, the mold operator will ding the calendar with a punch so the parts made from it can be dated. In my case, the latest mark is September 2025, so that's when my part was made.
What's interesting is the pattern of months that don't have a tool mark. Since this wind deflector is a small, simple plastic part on every Mach-E, I can't imagine there really being any production constraints on it. That means if a batch wasn't made, it was probably in excess supply, and there must have been something else holding up the production of Mach-E's at that time.
Based on the pattern of gaps, you can conclude a few things:
- The grid starts at 2019 when the mold was made, this possibly means Ford was ready to start trial production of the Mach-E as early as 2019 but it was delayed until 2020.
- The first mark is in Jan 2020, this when first trial production runs were getting started.
- Full production didn't ramp up until late 2020 (COVID delays).
- You can see the effect of the global chip shortage of 2021-2022, there is a large gap in that timeframe. My car was delayed almost a year back then.
- Production ramped back up in late 2022 and through 2023.
- In early 2024 there was another production pause since the 2024 models were held until mid year.
- Back to normal production since. Time for a new mold to be made since the calendar is full.
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