2000 Explorer roll over issue

Do I understand that in 2002 the Explorer was redesigned to be wider, with a lower center of gravity because of rollover issues in the previous models?

Reply to
Haggar
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Your very question shows a bias. You have been sucked in my the press. There was not a rollover issue (compared to similar size SUVs) with the previous model except in the minds of the "I need a sensational story" incompetents that pretended to be reporters and slime sucking bottom feeding ambulance chasing trial lawyers. Even with the defective Firestone tires, the 1996-2000 4 door models had very good injury loss rating. If you want to see a problem vehicle, go look at the 1996-97 Toyota 4Runner. They had a driver roll over death rate three times the 4 door Explorer from the same period (and 60% higher than the 2 Door Explorer). You never hear that in the press, do you?

If your question is - are 2002 4 door Explorer less likely to roll over than 2001 4 door Explorers - the answer is probably yes but the injury loss rating and driver death rating statistics don't show any significant difference.

2003-2005 4 door Explorers have an injury loss rating of 77 (100 is average, lower is better). For 2002-2004 it was 76. For 1991-2001 4 Door 4WD Explorer, the injury loss rating was 72. 2WD models are higher, and the 2 door models are much higher. The late 90's 4Runners had an injury loss rating of well over 100.

The single vehicle driver death rates due to rollover for a 2002 Explorer 4 door is 26. Guess what it was for 1995-1997 Models - if you guessed 26 you won. NO DIFFERENCE.

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Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

I have read the rollover issue through the Internet actually, and I knew there was some controversy over the issue.

Reply to
Haggar

The problem is, most of the internet hits on "Explorer Rollover" take you to trail lawyer sponsored sites. The entire Explorer rollover hype was largely created and promoted by trail lawyers. They used a bunch of lazy reporter to publish their lies and Ford ended up getting it's reputation smeared. It always irked me that major "reporters" never bothered to compare the Explorer accident statistics to those of similar vehicles. The Chevy S10 Blazer, Isuzu Trooper, and Toyota

4Runner all had much worse accident rates, but you would never know this from the articles published at the height of the frenzy. It was much easier for the "reporters" to re-write the lies fed to them by scum suckers than to research the truth. And of course there was/is a bias in the press against SUVs. So a large number of reporters were more than willing to write anti-SUV articles no matter how inaccurate. The Explorer was a favorite target because it was (is?) the number one selling SUV.

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

There are still many today that believe all of that misinformation, mostly pushed by the environuts, that do not want you to buy the vehicles you choose. Even today they will still try to argue the point. The fact is one has a greater probability of being truck by lighting than rolling over in ANY of the multi-millions of different vehicles on the road every day.

Contrary to what many would have us believe more cars are involved in rollovers than light trucks or SUVs. The type of SUV that is apt to roll after being stuck, or run up a grade, are those built on a short wheelbase, like a RAV4 or CJ Jeep, not a long wheel base SUV like the Explorer.

Many were led to believe the inch or so higher center of gravity would cause an SUV to roll. IF indeed that small difference was causing vehicles to roll one should expect to see box trucks, six wheelers etc., that have a much higher center of gravity, rolling over along the highways every day. LOL

mike

Reply to
Mike Hunter

If one searches the "Congressional Record" you will discover the government investigation determined Explorers, as well as some other brands, were rolling years back because of the defective Firestone tires with which most were equipped. Explorers with other brand tires were not effected, their height was not the cause.

mike

Reply to
Mike Hunter

There are 10,000 rollover crashes and about 1,000 lighning strikes that hit people every year.

Actually, in 2000 it was about equal between cars and trucks (including SUVs).

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No true. Explorers or more likely to rollover than a car, even if a Jeep is even more likely to rollover.

Explain why trucks and SUVs are much more likely to rollover per million miles traveled than cars, then.

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff

Common sense. Forgetting the obvious higher center of gravity for the moment, SUV's are far more likely to be overloaded and when they are they seem to almost always be driven by someone grossly inexperienced. Around here it always seems to be an Asian church group that winds up rolling and most of the passengers are not wearing seat belts.

Reply to
F.H.

Thanks for proving that even today some that fell for "higher center of gravity" crap and the other misinformation, still believe SUVs and particularly Explorers, tended to rollover more than cars.

The fact is no vehicle has a tendency to rollover. Even if tipped up to 45 degrees or more all vehicles have a propensity to fall back upon its wheels.

Generally a rollover occurs to any vehicle when the vehicle is struck, runs up or down a grade alongside the road or slides into a curb.

If you ever had seen the four to six foot ramps that manufacturers used in testing, and stuntmen used to make a car rollover for a movie scene, you would understand the dynamics needed to rollover any motor vehicle at speed

Joey Chitwood use to drive cars around a race tack at 35 MPH way up on the two drivers side wheels back in the fifties, and when he left off the throttle the car fell back on its wheels LOL

mike

Reply to
Mike Hunter

Like I said, many STILL believe that old hype. You are free to believe whatever you choose LOL

mike

Reply to
Mike Hunter

You remind me a great deal of my born again former mother in-law.

Reply to
F.H.

You are free to believe whatever you choose. I could not careless LOL

mike

Reply to
Mike Hunter

Are you making that a gift?

Uh huh, that's why you put the LOL at the end.

Reply to
F.H.

I believe that the statistics in this NHTSA report are more accurate than what you have to say:

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And the statistics clearly show that in 2000, trucks were more likely to rollover and that fatalities were more likely to be in truck crashes than car crashes, despite the fact that there were more cars on the road than trucks.

How you can believe what you do despite the plain facts presented is beyond me. But then again, we can add to this list: VINs, Rule 78 loans.

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff

I don't know what other people believe, but the fact is that more trucks and SUVs (combined) rollover compared to cars. And there are more cars on the road.

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Table 6 shows that in 2000, the fatality rate for cars was 21.53 deaths per 100,000 cars, while it was 26.64 for trucks. There were more rollover crashes involving the 76,192,673 registered trucks than the

127,720,809 registered cars that year. So if there are more cars than trucks, but fewer car rollovers, what does that tell you about the rate of car rollovers compared to truck rollovers? The rate of car rollovers is lower than it is for trucks.

And, in 2000, the rate in terms of number of fatalities per 100 million miles driven was 1.74 for cars but 2.15 for trucks. In other words, you were more likely to die if you drove a truck the same distance as a car. And more fatalities in trucks were from rollovers than cars.

That's funny. In SUVs, there were more fatalities in rollovers than nonrollover crashes (in 2000).

And, on page 10 of the report, it says, "Historically, SUVs have been the most rollover prone of the passenger vehicles."

They were doing that in 70s. I saw them at a truck in Northeast PA (no idea where, I was like 10 at the time).

Anyway, according the NTSHA report I cited above, trucks including (and especially SUVs) were more likely to rollover from 1991 to 2000. I see no reason why this trend would not continue since 2000.

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff

Close: you could not be more clueless (not clueless).

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff

I think he means to say he could not be more clueless (not careless).

jeff

Reply to
Jeff

The big problem was with catastrophic tire failure (blowout or tread separation) causing a rollover.

And that tire failure is often precipitated by under-inflation - Ford deliberately specified a lower than optimal tire pressure to improve ride comfort (trying to use the tires as part of the suspension), and then people didn't check their tire pressures regularly and they sank even lower.

Run tires at highway speeds (70 and up) while they are grossly under-inflated, and they are going to get hot and come apart on you.

It's simple to have safe tires:

  1. Buy good quality tires that are of the proper design and load rating for the vehicle - not the loss-leader tires Ford often specced, where the vehicle axle weight is 5 pounds under the tire's maximum weight rating. Go up one tire size (easier) or one Load Rating notch to give yourself a safety cushion.
1A. And definitely NO offshore import no-name tires where the quality is a total crapshoot. They just had a huge recall for some Korean tires (sold under a few dozen no-name names) where they left out a critical inner rubber layer, and the tires are blowing out after they get a few thousand miles on them.
  1. Get your actual axle weights at a truck scale and keep the tires properly inflated to the tire maker's "Load and Pressure Chart" recommendations for the tires you bought. The tire maker has the final say on that.
  2. And watch them regularly for signs of trouble - blistering or bulging, uneven wear, cupping or uneven wear (alignment or shock absorber problems), cuts or gouges (no hitting curbs), and you'll be fine.

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Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman

If this is the first vehicle that has been made safer in later models, i would be surprised, think about what you're asking Haggar.

Reply to
Picasso

"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Whether you mean to or not, you are spreading the Firestone propaganda that was printed in the press back during the height of the faux Explorer Rollover "crisis." The truth is that Firestone built defective tires that failed under loading conditions that were well inside the normal load ratings for the tires on the vehicles.

Point 1 - Ford's pressure recommendations were not unusually low. Both Toyota and Nissan had similar pressure recommendation for the same size tires on similar vehicles (mid-size SUVs).

Point 2 - In congressional testimony, Ford engineers said the pressure was specified for SAFETY reasons. They wanted to reduce the responsiveness of the truck to violent steering inputs. Lower tire pressures reduce steering response and lessen the chance that the driver might get the truck sideways when making violent maneuvers.

Point 3 - At the time, the press made claims that the center of gravity of the Explorer was abnormally high because Ford had to raise the engine location to allow for the use of the old style twin I-beam, or twin traction arm front axles. However, the model of Explorer that supposedly had the rollover problems did not use this style of front suspension. Ford had redesigned the vehicle to use conventional A-Arm type suspension.

Point 4 - 50% of the 1996 Explorers were delivered with Goodyear tires. There was no problem with high rates of tire failure for those vehicles.

Point 5 - The 4 Door Explorers that were supposedly dangerous, actually had lower rollover driver death rates, and lower injury rates that most similar sized SUVs of the period (Only the Jeep Grand Cherokee was better).

Point 6 - The Ford recommended tire pressure was well above the pressure necessary to safely support a fully loaded Explorer. Even Firestone admitted that the tires installed on an Explorer of that era SHOULD have been safe if inflated to only 20 psi. The following text was extracted from a Firestone web site during the aftermath of the "crisis" (unfortunately the web site is long since closed down - it was from a report of Firestone's congressional testimony):

"A table distributed by Firestone shows that the 2000 Explorer, with tires inflated at Ford's recommendation of 26 pounds, would be safe. But if the pressure fell by 7 pounds -- as is common, Firestone said, because many people fail to check their tire pressure -- the four-door, four-wheel- drive model would reach its carrying capacity...."

So, According to Firestone's own load/inflation pressure tables, the tires should have been "safe" with a pressure of only 20 psi. In the original reference, Firestone never once claimed that a pressure of 26 psi was unsafe. They said it just didn't provide as much of a safety margin as 30 psi. This has to be just about the silliest defense on the planet. They might as well have said that a pressure of 36 psi would have provided an even greater safety margin. Of course this is true if you were only worried about substandard tires failing. Ford, had to consider many other requirements. Based on Tire Industry Standards, and Firestone's own data, Ford felt that the 26 psi recommendation was the correct one. Even Firestone explicitly admits that the 26 psi recommendation was safe. According to their own testimony, the tires would have to be under inflated by 7 psi before they were unsafe. As has been pointed out many times before, Goodyear tires inflated to the same pressure recommendation had very few failures.

While I certainly agree that you should by good quality tires, I strongly disagree with your claim that Ford spec'd tires so close to the axle weight limit. As I pointed out above the tires and pressures specified for the Explorer should have been just fine with very large safety margins (and the Goodyear tires were). I agree Ford can be blamed for installing Firestone tires, given Firestone's history of making crummy tires (Radial 500, 721, etc.), but it wasn't the pressure specification that was faulty, it was the tires.

The problem is that most consumers have no idea where to get a copy of the load/inflation pressure tables. I have a copy of the industry standard tables, but most people don't. Most tire stores do, but I've yet to see a consumer ask for a copy.

Good advice.

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

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