Broken taillight caused by mis-alignment of light

[2010SEL]

I managed to break the bottom inboard corner off of the drivers side taillight on my '10 Fusion SEL just by closing the trunk lid firmly. Well, actually I slammed it shut! But it looks like the lights both need to be adjusted to stop the lid from hitting them. Look at your cars and see if the trunklid is touching, or close to touching, the lights. If it looks real close, you might break one of your taillights like I did. They are $140 or more, each. You can show it to your dealer but they will probably just say "duhh-oh" like mine did. You can get to the (3) mounting studs fairly easily by pulling away the felt material in the trunk. You only need to remove one plastic "nut" at the top edge, and you can pull the felt out. Then you'll need a very deep 10mm socket to loosen the 3 nuts a bit. Firmly shove the light forward and outboard, and while holding it there, tighten the nuts evenly. It will move a couple mm at most, but on my car it was enough to keep the trunk lid from hitting the new taillight and breaking it too. Hopefully this helps someone avoid my problem!

[Frenchy]

I managed to break the bottom inboard corner off of the drivers side taillight on my '10 Fusion SEL just by closing the trunk lid firmly. Well, actually I slammed it shut! But it looks like the lights both need to be adjusted to stop the lid from hitting them. Look at your cars and see if the trunklid is touching, or close to touching, the lights. If it looks real close, you might break one of your taillights like I did. They are $140 or more, each. You can show it to your dealer but they will probably just say "duhh-oh" like mine did. You can get to the (3) mounting studs fairly easily by pulling away the felt material in the trunk. You only need to remove one plastic "nut" at the top edge, and you can pull the felt out. Then you'll need a very deep 10mm socket to loosen the 3 nuts a bit. Firmly shove the light forward and outboard, and while holding it there, tighten the nuts evenly. It will move a couple mm at most, but on my car it was enough to keep the trunk lid from hitting the new taillight and breaking it too. Hopefully this helps someone avoid my problem!

 

Got my 2010 AWD a couple of weeks ago. Last week I noticed the bottom tip had snapped off. Well, a printout of this post saved me alot of grief and money. They replaced it.

Thanks

:happy feet:

[2010SEL]

Got my 2010 AWD a couple of weeks ago. Last week I noticed the bottom tip had snapped off. Well, a printout of this post saved me alot of grief and money. They replaced it.

Thanks

:happy feet:

That's great! I wonder if Ford is aware of this problem and is making changes?

[Rodeo]

FORD has a definite taillight problem with this platform. If you think the Fusion has problems, you should see each and every Milan. The Milans tail lights are so misaligned that it is clearly visible from over 20 feet away. To be honest, I doubt the Milan has a misalignment problem because it's really a design error that is not fixable. Pretty pizz poor if you ask me....

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NICE SEAM ALIGNMENT FORD!!

[FFHdriver]

Got my 2010 AWD a couple of weeks ago. Last week I noticed the bottom tip had snapped off. Well, a printout of this post saved me alot of grief and money. They replaced it.

Thanks

:happy feet:

I checked mine and I have plenty of clearance. Thanks for the "heads-up".

[bartman1]

Re the Milan tail light issue

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I read posts on another forum about this. It appears to me if the trunk lid fits properly and aligns with the fenders from the "C" pillar back, then it isn't an alignment problem - it's a tooling problem. Unless you can move the tail light assemblies, there is no way to correct this if the stamped fenders and trunk lid aren't accurate.

[who]

FORD has a definite taillight problem with this platform. If you think the Fusion has problems, you should see each and every Milan. The Milans tail lights are so misaligned that it is clearly visible from over 20 feet away. To be honest, I doubt the Milan has a misalignment problem because it's really a design error that is not fixable. Pretty pizz poor if you ask me....

-

 

NICE SEAM ALIGNMENT FORD!!

 

Pizz poor and embarrassing. Ruins the look of the Milan and is unacceptable.