Ford Motor Company is recalling 41,748 Super Duty pickup trucks and Expedition SUVs in the United States because contaminated LED chips inside the headlight assemblies can cause daytime running lights, parking lights, or high and low beams to go dim or fail entirely.
The defect was detailed in a recall notice filed with federal regulators.
What triggered the recall
The automaker traced the defect to a tier-three chip supplier whose components were contaminated during manufacturing before reaching Flex-N-Gate, Ford’s tier-one lighting supplier.
In affected vehicles, the headlight assemblies may contain a contaminated LED chip, which can result in a loss of daytime running lights, parking lights, high beams or low beams. This problem could cause the vehicles to fail to comply with federal motor vehicle safety regulations governing headlights.
Regulators warned the failure mode is more than a cosmetic nuisance. A loss of exterior lighting can reduce visibility, increasing the risk of a crash.
Which trucks and SUVs are affected
The recall population skews heavily toward Ford’s heavy-duty pickup lineup rather than its light-duty F-150, which sits outside this campaign.
The recall covered several Super Duty pickup truck models, including 120 F-550s, 523 F-450s, 10,295 F-350s and 17,512 F-250s, all with model year 2026, along with a total of 13,298 Ford Expedition SUVs, with model years between 2025 and 2027.
Affected vehicles include select 2025-2027 Ford Expedition models built between June 24, 2025, and July 2, 2026, as well as certain 2026 Ford Super Duty F-250, F-350, and F-450 trucks produced on August 4, 2026.
That full-size SUV line has not been a focus of GCN’s recent coverage of SUV safety issues, which has mostly centered on collision-avoidance software rather than lighting hardware, including a separate collision-avoidance recall covering more than 400,000 vehicles.
How Ford discovered the problem
Ford’s own paper trail shows the issue surfaced through a small number of customer complaints before engineers connected it to a broader supply-chain flaw.
In a recall report, Ford said it was unaware of any accidents or injuries related to the problem, but did note there were six warranty claims and field reports related to the problem.
Those six claims were enough to prompt Ford to trace the defect upstream from the finished headlight assembly to the raw LED chip supplier.
That tracing process reflects how automakers increasingly rely on supply-chain audits as vehicle electronics grow more complex, a shift also visible in the industry’s push toward simplified wiring architecture.
What owners should do next
Ford dealers will inspect the headlight assemblies and replace them at no charge if the contaminated chips are found.
The fix involves dealers inspecting and replacing the headlight assemblies as necessary, free of charge, with owner communications expected to begin on October 26, 2026.
The company’s internal tracking number for the campaign is 26C43, and owners can check their vehicle identification number through NHTSA’s recall lookup tool to confirm whether their specific truck or SUV is included.
The dashboard will also provide an early warning sign for drivers whose vehicles are affected. A dashboard indicator light will illuminate for customers experiencing inoperative low beam or high beam headlamps.
This is the latest in a string of recalls for Ford this year, which has already pulled back millions of pickups and SUVs for unrelated software and mechanical defects across its lineup.
