I have been considering trading my 2004 Ford F-150 Lariat Crew Cab truck. ONe of the vehicles that i have been interested in is the Ford Edge. My next door neighbor has an Edge and I like the appearance of the vehicle, so I drove one locally and really liked it. Until yesterday...
...yesterday I came home and my neighbor was outside with her friend. We stopped and talked and the conversation eventually turned to her new Edge. She was going to show me the inside and when she opened the passenger side door, water poured out - and I do mean POURED! I am a plastics engineer and have worked primarily in the OEM automotive business. I looked at where the water had come from, and there was a lower seal at the rocker panel where the door meets it. There is also a flat area (painted) just outside of where the "Edge" logo is found. This flat area had a very noticeable water mark on it. There was already a discoloration of the paint and the inside edge of the door had a small area of rust on it. This vehicle has 1, 454 miles on it. I opened the other doors, drivers side and rear, and found the same problem. Water splashed out of all four locations and it was apparent from the wawter marking that this wasn't the first time that this had happened. I asked her about it and she said that it did this every time she drove in the rain (here in Tennessee that's often). I asked her if she had taken the vehicle back to a dealership to have this resolved and she said that she had taken it to two different dealers and they couldn't fix it - couldn't find the problem! The problem is tha there is NO seal at the vertical edge of the door and water is leaking into the area between the rocker panel near the logo and the bottom of the door and is trapped there by the rubber seal at the bottom until the door id opened. This problem is obvious to me - there is a design problem with the seal along the bottom edge of the door. If the seal were extended along the bottom edge of the rocker panel and then traveled vertically along the inside of the front fender, the water could not get in this area. The same kind of "fix" could be done on the rear doors.
It's hard to believe that Ford has not had a recall on this by now - I'm sure this was noticed during all of the weater testing that is performed on a new model vehicle. Now- the solution...
Dealers should be instructed to add weatherstripping to the inner surface of the fender to block the waters' point of entry. This isn't a difficult fix - just needs to be done on the Edge. This is too nice of a vehicle to have this sort of problem.
Also, the rotors on this Edge are squeaking...they are slightly warped. I have had this issue with Ford for many years. The quality of the OEM brake rotors is substandard and should be addressed. I replaced my truck rotors after @ 3, 500 miles because they warped. I have 150, 000 miles on the truck now and have no problems with the rotors warping. Just a little harder material is all that it wil take to make a better rotor - an expense that you could pass on to consumers with NO complaints. Please.
In closing, I have driven Ford products for over thirty years. I will consider Ford for my upcoming purchase. Please reply and let me know what you will do to correct the problem with the Edge. I'm sure that I'm not the first person to write to you with this complaint.
My name is Richard Johnson, I teach at a technology center - Advanced Manufacturing Education - robotics, programmable controllers, computer controlled machinery, and plastics technology. I am an instructor with 38 students who drive, for the most part, General Motors products. I'd really like to brag to them about Ford responding quickly to this problem. Thank you.

Richard Johnson, Instructor
Tennessee Technology Center at Pulaski
[email protected]