A good friend of mine, Jim Ottie , moved up in the Ford Tech school in 89 , I was offered his job but I moved on to aviation. Just wondering if you ever ran into him? (he traveled a lot, but was based in Minnesota.)
Ford's feed-back history is a lot different, better then most, cheaper but better sensors. They went to reading everything in HZ in the early 80's, instead of volts (very early Mopar, the first to invest in feed-back engines,,,1976) Or digital 10x a second like GM. (Late 70's)
Ford had the best knock sensors* early on, they could read the engine noise so fast that the processor could tell what cylinder it was that made the noise. Long before it could do anything about it. (individually timed cylinders and separate injectors)
I would have a very hard time telling someone that just spent an equivalent to a down-payment on a house that there new 'POS' (or Nisson's and such!) is just going to make noise.
It has been a while, but Ford called it 'M' -time, or better, straight clock time to diagnoses a cure for a problem. I had logged thousands of M-time hours, and Ford never shuddered paying for it.
My post are getting a little long, thanks for putting up with them!
Can you tell I miss it just a little?
*in 1987, Ford had a little problem with there SVO-SHO Taurus,,,,
It seemed there was a real bad TQ-steer problem off a green light,,,,,,,,,
They could not keep a 700HP FWD car in it's own lane of traffic! (that problem has long been fixed!)
(I worked for 2 weeks with the SVO people trying all kinds of stuff to get the 5-speed SHO gear box to shift quicker and smoother,,,,till they dropped the program)