Ford suing dana over defective frames

Did the parts meet the print or not? That is the question. However now the lawyers are involved so that probably doesn't matter any longer.

If your customers do not demand 10+ years of rust through warranty why bother with using high grade steels and plating? from what I understand Its not far off from lower bidder takes it all in us army contracts. do the cheapest shit you could (or in this case you could not) get away with and pocket the rest. then wonder in amazement wtf imports are taking over and beg the feds to bail them. I dunno who's gonna bail the french. they use the sheetmetal not far in quality from what dana used and rust is an everpresent problem.

Customers "claim" they want high quality, but buck wise few put them where their mouth is so they got what they deserve (evil grin).

a bunch of local idiots have tried to open a class action lawsuit against citroen a year or so ago due to the widespread early rusting problems. guess what? you want durability pay the money upfront and don't buy french trash!

This all really irrelevant to the lawsuit in question. Either the parts meet what is on the print or they don't. It appears Ford believes they do not and Dana thinks they do. It takes a lot to get to the point of lawsuit over something like this. It may be due to the large sum involved or because Dana doesn't believe it is responsible for warranty costs regardless if the parts were in spec or not. Now that it is in court reality changes and it's now in lawyer land.

Rust is one thing, bad welds are another. Google,,, Bad Welds Cars and Trucks weldreality.com

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Even if the frames were exactly to spec Ford will likely use the "you're the experts" argument as in "you've been doing this a long time, you should have let us know that our spec'd combination of steel/plating/coating might not be durable enough in salty conditions" and blame Dana anyway.

nate

This story says rear axles are a problem...

Ford Adds Virginia To Windstar Recall Wed, 05/09/2012

Ford is adding 27,000 Windstar minivans from Virginia to a larger recall because the rear axles can crack and fail.

In August of 2010 the company announced it was recalling more than

600,000 Windstars in the U.S. and Canada. The recall covered vans from the 1998 to 2003 model years that were sold in states where salt is used to clear the roads of snow and ice. Over time the axles can rust, crack and break, causing a driver to lose control.

Virginia wasn't in the original recall. But Ford says a recent analysis shows that vans there can have similar problems. There were

11 reports of axle cracks from Virginia between October 2011 and March of 2012.

Ford will either replace the axles or install brackets to reinforce them.

This story names "subframes"... SBRE8701TP20120801 -----

- gpsman

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frod philosophy is to never cut /to/ the bone, but cut /into/ the bone until limbs start to fall off, and trust to the ruthlessness of their legal team to keep the compensation to the families of the deceased lower than their costs of recall/replacement.

but from what i can gather, the backroom deal that got them off the hook for their exploder corporate manslaughter calculation was that they had to start picking up the tab and do recalls going forward. so what we're seeing here is "business as normal" with regard to having cheaped out with the inevitable resultant failures, but where the original intention was to do nothing about it, they're now saddled with actually /having/ to act. and true to their corporate culture, they're suing their supplier to try and wriggle out from under the expense. just like when they went ahead and brazenly and wrongly blamed their tire supplier for an inherent instability problem with the exploder that was nothing to do with rubber whatsoever.

if i were dana, i'd tell them to go f*ck themselves, just like firestone did. but frod probably have a reptile or two on the dana board...

                                           Google,,,   Bad Welds Cars and Trucks weldreality.com

bad welds are reality of shade tree welder shops not something you get straight out of the factory

My sole point is the allegedly defective "frames" report might be misleading or wrong.

The evidence and Occam's Razor suggest otherwise.

NHTSA Denies Firestone Request For Ford Explorer Investigation

The Firestone request focused on one specific handling factor. However, there are many other factors that determine whether a driver will be able to control a vehicle following tread separation. Moreover, the vast majority of tread separations, including many that occurred at highway speeds, do not result in crashes.

The agency's analysis also referred to claims data reviewed during the Firestone tire investigation that showed there is "no significant difference in the likelihood of a crash following a tread separation between Explorer vehicles and other compact SUVs."

But the agency concluded that "the data does not support Firestone's contention that Explorers in general, or even model year 1995 and later two-wheel drive Explorers in particular, are more likely to" cause a loss of control following a rear tread separation and tire failure than other, comparable SUVs.

I think your longstanding hard-on for FoMoCo is clouding your judgment. -----

- gpsman

Ok. You drive your civic at 70mph and have the tire of your choice 'shot out' or otherwise suddenly fail. When this happens jam on the brake pedal as hard as you can while violently turning the steering wheel (over correcting for the direction the vehicle veers when the tire blows out). See what happens. Of course you'd never react that way to blow out... and there lies a key problem. Take people who don't know how to handle a blow out and put them in a high CG vehicle that wouldn't be used for passenger hauling in the first place if it wasn't for the unintended conesquences of government regulations.

The roll over required the following series of events:

1) Prolonged underinflation of the tire. 2) sudden tire failure. 3) driver reacting to the blow out improperly.

Remove any one of these three and it's a non-event. All three in your civic or any other motor vehicle and it becomes an event.

you're an idiot b[r]ent. failure mode of the tire is completely irrelevant. what's relevant is the body roll dynamic of the vehicle and whether it can tip over its own center of gravity. and in this case, it can.

you have a point there, if the vehicle has fundamental instability. but if it hasn't [and it shouldn't], then it's irrelevant and you've swallowed a big red herring. it's criminal to be selling a car to the general public that is fundamentally unstable and can only be controlled by an expert.

ignorant presumptive nonsense. my civic has one of the lowest stock c.g's on the road, and a huge wheel-base width to c.g. height ratio. the only way you can get it to roll is to slide sideways into a deep ditch. on any flat road, it simply won't. and yes, i know this for fact. you don't.

Name calling is not an argument. Your Civic can be made to roll over at highway speeds.

1) It's a truck. 2) It's used as a passenger vehicle because of an unforseen consequence of federal regulation. 3) not reacting to blow out correctly in a light truck is more likely to result in a roll over.

The explorer tire separation is a multi-factor failure mode. Put all the factors together and something bad happens.

Fine. Take my challenge. Blow out a tire at speed over 50mph and then immediately nail the brakes hard while over correcting violently with the steering wheel. If you're correct it should be a non-event. But you know as well as I do that such a reaction to a blow out while driving can very well result in a roll over, even on flat pavement, but especially in a actual road conditions once one or more tires slide off the paved surface or the vehicle hits something.

Better yet, try it in a CRV.

For $15K I will roll your Civic on level ground at 40 mph or less.

If I can't do it, it's free. -----

- gpsman

I was under the impression the vehicle was a bit portly for the weigh rating frod specced to goodyear.

Well, goodyear could have retained the goodwill of the customers if they had routinely checked once a truck rolled off the assembly lines if the tires are sufficiently overbuilt (I wonder how often that's the case for oem tires)

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It was not overweight for the tires. It had comparatively HUGE tires for the truck size. All of the problem with explorer tire rollovers were related to bad firestone tires blowing out combined with people who didn't have a clue what to do when that happened and who over reacted. One of the car mags purposely blew out a tire on an explorer going 60 mph and had their hands off the steering where and the explorer just kept on going straight down the road with the blown tire. The Firestone tires were pure crap, unbalanceable and they road like they were square.

The explorers with the Goodyear tires didn't have any rollover problems because those tires didn't blow out and cause people to yank the steering wheel.

they are stone tires, right? so few exploders caught on fire as a result

and both companies are still in business

oops, mixed the two

i won't /pay/ you to try, but on the 89, you're welcome to test it. seriously, you won't do it.

i've had sheetrock blow off a truck right in front of me on a freeway and evasion had me sliding sideways on the freeway at 80, first one way, then the other as i brought it back to straight. all it did was slide. i've done other stuff recreationally, but that was the most drastic wheel yanking i've done and you can get the thing to fishtail and 180 rear around the front easily enough, but it simply won't flip unless you have assistance from an obstacle.

why are people brainwashed by this spectacular untruth? the tire has nothing to do with it. my car doesn't roll when it gets a sudden blow-out. i know this from experience. my car doesn't roll when you flip 90°, then 180° at 80mph on a freeway. i know this from experience too.

so, please explain why people do /not/ consider that vehicle dynamics have anything to do with a vehicle that has propensity to roll, and instead blame the tire.

please also account for the fact that

1. any vehicle can experience a blowout at any time with any tire,
2. that they're not driven by experts, and therefore
3. why any vehicle manufacturer should be exempt from considering this during design and testing.

It's both.

nate