My 1998 Ford Explorer in in immaculate condition from all points visible both on the body and undercarriage. However, I just had a brake line rupture. Where the rupture occured is at a clamp over the transaxle, the one place my mechanic missed when he did a safety inspection of the vehicle last year. The rest of the brake lines look like brand-new. Just this one spot, hidden inside the clamp, must have rusted through. The vehicle is only 7 years old, but still looks like less than a year old. No rust visible anywhere, not even the frame underneath. Now I have had numerous trucks and autos over my lifetime, and had none with a brakeline failure that was less than 20 years old. And the vehicle was pretty rusted out by the time it did fail. I have a Mitsubishi that is 16 years old, has 300K miles on it, and still on the original brake lines. I have never seen a brake line fail in just seven years. This is a serious issue, and I intend to write Ford Motor Co. about it. Driving a fairly new vehicle (actually, the newest vehicle I've ever owned, and I've two more years of loan payments on it), one is generally confident about the mechanical safety of said vehicle. Had this been my wife driving, possibly down the big hill (40% grade) the goes from our mountaintop location to downtown, the likelihood of a serious tragic ending would have been high. Had this been in traffic on the highway, where traffic suddenly stops, to have your brakes fail, means colliding with the car in front of you, pushing that car into the next and the next into the one in front of it, resulting in tremendous damages and litigation for me!
I am writing a letter to Ford now, but I want to CC it to the government agencies responsible for auto safety regulation. I'm rather upset that my "new" vehicle could have killed me because of a defect in design of the brake system. There is no reason why the brake lines should not have been made of a non-corrosive metal, like stainless steel. This is a driver's life we're talking about here.
Which government agencies should I contact about my vehicle's safety problem?
-- Take care,
Mark & Mary Ann Weiss
VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . DVD MASTERING . AUDIO RESTORATION Hear my Kurzweil Creations at:
-- Take care,
Mark & Mary Ann Weiss
VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . DVD MASTERING . AUDIO RESTORATION Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: