Ford will be ready to start replacing the faulty hardtop roofs on the Ford Bronco within the week.
“Testing has been completed,” Mark Grueber, Ford Bronco marketing manager, told the Detroit Free Press on Tuesday. “We’re ramping up production of the new roof.”
This will be welcome news to Bronco owners and order holders who have long waited for their new SUV.
Read More: Ford Replacing All Bronco Hardtops After Issues, Confirms Some Delays For Existing Orders
“We’ve started the roof replacements on the hardtop. We’ll be continuing to ramp that up to replace the roofs on vehicles currently being held needing the new roof,” Grueber said. “Shortly, we’ll be starting to send the new roofs out to dealers for those vehicles that have already been delivered. We expect to be shipping the roofs and the Broncos with the new roofs within the week.”
Ford says that it will start sending out letters to owners and order holders about the roofs, though it will run comprehensive inspections on the Broncos that have been sitting before committing to shipping them out.
Ford announced in August that it would be replacing all hardtop roofs on the new Bronco as a result of a manufacturing defect in the part that its supplier, Webasto, made.
In a letter to order holders, Ford said that “the issue does not impact the functionality of the roof but can cause unsatisfactory appearance when exposed to extreme water and humidity.” Speaking to Carscoops, Ford spokesperson Said Deep said that the company was working to replace all of the roofs at no cost to the owners.
Deep added that a second production facility was being set up to increase hardtop production. That site won’t be online until the first quarter of 2022, though, so these new roofs are still being produced at the first production site.
Unfortunately, the pace at which new roofs are being produced and how long it will take the automaker to replace all of the existing roofs is not known at this time. We reached out to Ford for comment and will update this story when the company responds.
