I don't have any experience with this, but some forum members claim you waive your right to the lemon laws if you take a loaner. Might be worth looking into before you get too far into the process.
That’s not quite it; getting a loaner doesn’t always kill a lemon law suit and it varies state to state, however... there are general qualifications to file and be eligible to succeed in a lawsuit. the law may be worded like
... be down for service for more than 30 days, more than 3/4/5 etc. visits for the same or related issue, an issue that severely diminishes the use or fair market value of the vehicle, blah, blah, blah.
some exclusions may apply such as
if a vehicle is provided in place of the purchased vehicle while in service ( a loaner ).
Depending on how the law is worded, you may need to satisfy every qualifier to succeed, but let’s say for example you have a fried PCM (topical).
You drop the truck off for service, you get a loaner. Dealer calls and says ‘national back order on the part, we cannot fix it, no ETA on the part arrival’.
What are you supposed to do? You can’t keep the loaner forever. Even if you have the top of the line ESP, there’s a cap on how many days they pay for, and if it’s dealer provided, that’s likely something they will ask you to return as well. Even so, Ford cannot realistically expect someone to be without a car or truck for an indefinite period of time awaiting repair.
There are limited mechanisms for this. One is, if you finance through Ford, you can suspend payments via the lemon law process until repairs are completed to your satisfaction OR a resolution is reached to the suit. That’s a lawyer discussion, obviously. Note, you cannot simply not pay, it must follow a legal process. However, if you financed outside of Ford, you still have to make the payments regardless. that’s a more complicated situation.
Overarching all of the lemon discussion is the reputation of the manufacturer.
Unfortunately for Sasquatch77 - currently masquerading as MGD, the new Raptor is even more reliable than the old generation for the same age. Nevertheless, if they were to put something into the market with a persistent failure - a big one, the whole model takes a reputation hit. if that happens, so does the manufacturer. If a bunch were to have catastrophic issues, folks would hear about this and start dumping the vehicles at 35,999 miles, value would tank. If during this time or occurrence Ford just unsympathetically told owners “tough cookies, we’re following the law” customers would leave in droves. While the Raptor has no current market place rival, persistent problems and bad customer service will just drive people to other manufacturers.
The Raptor is kind of an odd duck vehicle. It’s not “really” an F150, even though the model is F150. There are a host of unique parts that have proven to be significantly more challenging to procure. As a result, even a simple sensor failure can legally qualify for a lemon lawsuit because Ford has not spooled up available parts! Something is wrong there.
It’s crucial to keep the dealer “on your side”. regardless of their business obligations, you want the whole team to look forward to your visits, even if the visit is you checking on why your truck has been down for 2 months, you want that team thinking ’that guy is always happy and treats us great, no matter how bad things get’ - because that sentiment makes people want to go the extra mile for you. Basically, in this kind of situation you need to be able to sell a drowning man a cup of water.
