Ford Bronco, Ford Bronco Sport, Ford Explorer, Ford Mustang, Ford Ranger, model year 2026. Filed by Ford Motor Company and reported to NHTSA on 25 August 2026. 10,001 vehicles potentially affected.
What the notice says Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2026 Explorer, Bronco, Bronco Sport, Mustang, and Ranger vehicles. The engine piston domes may have been manufactured incorrectly, which can result in piston dome failure and lead to a loss of drive power.
Is your vehicle included? Check with your VIN at NHTSA, or ask a dealer. This page is an independent copy of the notice, kept so you can see what changed after it was published. It is not the authority, and the authority’s own text is the one to act on.
Ford's own number for this recall: 26S61. That is the number on the owner letter and on the dealer paperwork. 26V548 is the number NHTSA gave the same campaign, and the number this page is filed under. They are one recall, written two ways.
What owners ask about this recall
- Which vehicles does recall 26V548 cover?
- Ford Bronco, Ford Bronco Sport, Ford Explorer, Ford Mustang, Ford Ranger, model year 2026.
- What is wrong with them?
- Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2026 Explorer, Bronco, Bronco Sport, Mustang, and Ranger vehicles. The engine piston domes may have been manufactured incorrectly, which can result in piston dome failure and lead to a loss of drive power.
- What can happen if it is not put right?
- An unexpected loss of drive power increases the risk of a crash.
- Is there a fix yet?
- Not yet, on the wording NHTSA publishes today. Dealers will inspect the engine pistons and replace the engine long block, if necessary, free of charge. Interim letters, notifying owners of the safety risk, were mailed September 3, 2026. Additional letters will be sent once the remedy is available, anticipated in December 2026.
- What should I do now?
- Check your own vehicle by its VIN with NHTSA, which is the record to act on. Ford calls this recall 26S61, which is the number on the owner letter and the dealer paperwork.
- Has this notice changed since it was announced?
- Yes. The remedy was reworded on 9 Sep 2026. Both versions are on this page, with the date each was read.
Answered from the register this site holds. NHTSA is the record to act on.
What the authority says can happen if this is not fixed: “An unexpected loss of drive power increases the risk of a crash.”
affected
in the notice
caught
| Campaign | 26V548 |
|---|---|
| Filed by | Ford Motor Company |
| System at fault | Engine And Engine Cooling:Engine:Hard Parts Internal/Mechanical |
| Reported to NHTSA | 25 August 2026 |
| Model years | 2026-2026 |
| Vehicles named | FORD BRONCO, FORD BRONCO SPORT, FORD EXPLORER, FORD MUSTANG, FORD RANGER |
What the notice says today
The defect
Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2026 Explorer, Bronco, Bronco Sport, Mustang, and Ranger vehicles. The engine piston domes may have been manufactured incorrectly, which can result in piston dome failure and lead to a loss of drive power.
The consequence
An unexpected loss of drive power increases the risk of a crash.
The remedy
Dealers will inspect the engine pistons and replace the engine long block, if necessary, free of charge. Interim letters, notifying owners of the safety risk, were mailed September 3, 2026. Additional letters will be sent once the remedy is available, anticipated in December 2026. Owners may contact Ford customer service at 1-866-436-7332. Ford's number for this recall is 26S61. Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs) involved in this recall became searchable on NHTSA.gov on August 28, 2026.
What it said before
This notice has been edited since it was first published. NHTSA shows only the current version. Both are below, read straight from the agency at the times shown, with the words that moved marked.
The remedy was rewritten
2 words added, 5 removed. The notice grew from 508 to 494 characters.
Dealers will inspect the engine pistons and replace the engine long block, if necessary, free of charge. Interim letters, notifying owners of the safety risk, are expected to be mailed September 4, 2026. Additional letters will be sent once the remedy is available, anticipated in December 2026. Owners may contact Ford customer service at 1-866-436-7332. Ford's number for this recall is 26S61. Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs) involved in this recall became searchable on NHTSA.gov on August 28, 2026.
Dealers will inspect the engine pistons and replace the engine long block, if necessary, free of charge. Interim letters, notifying owners of the safety risk, were mailed September 3, 2026. Additional letters will be sent once the remedy is available, anticipated in December 2026. Owners may contact Ford customer service at 1-866-436-7332. Ford's number for this recall is 26S61. Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs) involved in this recall became searchable on NHTSA.gov on August 28, 2026.
Nothing above is our paraphrase. Both columns are the agency’s own text; only the marking is ours.
This is one of 588 notices in the record whose component field names engine and engine cooling. Across that group the median wait before owners were written to was 47 days.
Last checked . No change has been recorded in the wording.
The same recall in other countries
This campaign carries a manufacturer code that also appears in another country’s register, which means the same defect was recalled there too.
- Canada: Transport Canada recall 2026411, recorded 26 August 2026
Matched on 26S61, the manufacturer’s own number for this campaign, which is the only field the registers share. Exact match, nothing paired on brand and date. The two dates are adjacent instruments rather than the same one, so a difference of a day or two means nothing.
How often the two countries file on the same day · The European alerts
The models named here, across their whole recall history
- Ford Bronco recalls: 47 US campaigns since 2016
- Ford Bronco Sport recalls: 32 US campaigns
- Ford Explorer recalls: 81 US campaigns
- Ford Mustang recalls: 41 US campaigns
- Ford Ranger recalls: 38 US campaigns since 2016
How to cite this record
Quoting the wording on this page means quoting a version, so the date belongs in the citation:
CarsMultiverse, recall 26V548, wording as read on 17 September 2026. https://carsmultiverse.com/recall/26v548/
The copy quoted above hashes to c1892695541025056aafa6c263adb0ee…. If the notice is reworded later, that fingerprint will not match, which is how a reader checks that the quotation was of the version we say it was.
The cross-border matches used on this site are deposited as a citable dataset: doi:10.5281/zenodo.22087136. The recall wording itself is published by the national authority named above and is theirs, not ours.
The recall record and its wording are published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and are US Government public domain. The dated archive, the comparison and any before-and-after above are CarsMultiverse. How fresh every engine behind this page is, is public on the status page. To check a specific vehicle, use NHTSA’s own VIN lookup.
Other Ford notices we hold
- 26V579: 2026-2027 Transit
- 26V578: 2023-2027 F-150
- 26V577: 2026 F-150
- 26V576: 2026 F-150
- 26V550: 2026 Maverick, F-150, and Bronco Sport
- 26V547: 2024-2026 Mustang
- 26V532: 2026 Explorer
- 26V489: 2021-2023 F-150 and 2023-2026 F-250 SD
All 776 Ford campaigns we hold · Every manufacturer in the record
The fingerprint of this notice
We take a SHA-256 of each of the three blocks of text the authority publishes and keep the first eight characters. As we last read campaign 26V548 on 17 September 2026, they were:
- Defect summary
45a8a88b - Consequence
acd50c7c - Remedy
a19f30df
We first read this notice on 1 September 2026 and have caught it being edited 1 time since.
The wording we hold for 26V548 · how the whole register is watched
This notice names one vehicle among several registers that have written about it. Every notice this site holds for the Ford Bronco Sport, in all seven, is kept on that vehicle's own page, with the newest in each.
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Owners of these cars
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