Ping Steve Firth. Ford Explorer info.

when you have half an hour, read the Honest John site , they have a large page dedicated to the more well known faults. My favourite was the fault that sets fire to the cruise control and engages full throttle. 271 people in the States have died in crashes caused by tyre problems.

Ah yes, of course! I forgot about that site. I will have a shufti.

Well, that just sounds like a way to save money on Alton Towers tickets.

I don't think that would be a problem - 271 out of what must have been many thousands, whilst sucking a lot of ball for those that got it, isn't much of a gamble, really, and I am sure that my friend would be getting the tyres changed anyway.

Thanks for the reply.

You're asking the wrong question.

What you should ask is 'is there anything in particular that I don't need to look out for'.

For some reason, Steve loves his, but the rest of the world seem to have realised they're shonky heaps of badly built s**te.

Why would you want to waste half an hour reading lies?

Do you want a 4x4 that is a 4x4, or something more car like?

The Jeep Cherokee used to have a good rap for car-like road holding, the Kia Sportage for half decent suspension, and if you liked to practice welding then the UK 4x4 offer a lifetime of practice. If you just want a 4x4 re bulk carrying and all weather and Audi Quattro is still hard to beat. Audi hourly rates are high and some models lack reliability.

A true 4x4 has taxation against it, and increasingly so, hence the possibility of getting a good bargain.

Check carefully reliability of automatic gearboxes re Ford, although Audi have been known to create some (very) expensive driveway ornaments re gearbox failures. Find a good web forum and trawl through it (it will take you a whole weekend to go through the maintenance forum). If you do not, you may find out what it costs to replace (say) injectors, dual mass flywheels, short lived gearbox and so on. Typical repair bills on cars have tripled since the 1998 era - what used to be a =A3250 bill can very easily be =A3750-1250 by routine.

Basically, if total cost of ownership says it is a lemon, walk. That CAN mean you buy a =A330,000 car as a =A34,500 dog at 4yrs old because it needs an =A31,850 part every 4yrs which makes the consumer & auction crowd baulk. It CAN mean you avoid something which blows its automatic gearbox and will keep doing at =A32700 so because the problem is in the original casting so will repeatedly recur. The easy credit era meant people rolled over cars every 3yrs, but are now keeping them or buying them at 3yrs only to find the turbo diesel needs hugely expensive injectors or can run its bearings from coked oil ports or has a short lived gearbox. It masked a car industry pressured by ill-thought green legislation into rushing products to market where teething was paid for by the consumer - at a very high price.

Yes, it is a Ford so should be avoided at all costs. Only idots and Chavs drive them.

You are a man of wisdom indeed!

Wow!. He must be a Chav or Pickey.

why would anyone bother when its truth is so easily confirmed?

Yes, don't look at the XLT. The only version worth considering is the North Face. Get as late a model as possible, 1999 to 2001.

Problem areas are relatively minor. The ball joints on the front wishbones are best treated as service items, change every 80,000 miles. Rear shocks can be expensive because they are self-levelling, buy them on eBay from a bloke in Canada and they cost £70 a pair. That's about £300 less than from a Ford dealer. Brake calipers on mine replaced at 220,000 miles.

The engine timing chain can start ticking at 250,000 miles, by reputation that can be ignored for the life of the engine. There's a known fault on the gearbox with a faulty solenoid valve that causes a slow shift between second and third gear. It can be fixed but will cost about £1800 because it's best to recondition the gearbox while it is out. Coil packs can go at intervals, but are relatively cheap. I fitted a new pack at 200,000 miles but I'm not sure that it was needed, it turned out that a stupid mechanic had trapped a spark plug lead and damaged the core causing a misfire. New coil pack didn't fix the problem, a new lead did.

They seem to be largely bomb proof, although owners of Italian rot-boxes will claim otherwise.

Can you list how many Ford Explorers that you have owned and driven? Then perhaps you could set your comment in the context of your decades of posting Ford hate mail right up until you drove one and found it was better than your shitty Golf?

Only among drivelling fuckwits. I've got a Jeep (Grand) Cherokheep. It's the biggest heap of crap I've ever owned/driven. It shimmys on the road like jelly on a plate. The handling is actually dangerous, and it will catch out the unwary. The steering on the Jeep is appalling, hideously vague recirculating ball with no feeling at all. And the Cherokee is tiny as 4x4s go.

The Explorer is much more sure footed, the steering is precise and the engine/gearbox combination is one of the best around.

No really. My Exploder costs the same to tax as a Merc A class.

The Ford Exploder gearbox is built by Mazda and used in the Ranger and Mazda pickup trucks outside the UK. Do you consider Mazda to be unreliable?

I'm sorry but the rest of your post was largely drivel. As wax the start of it.

Yes, look out for a Ford Explorer and avoid it.

You might consider why its nickname is the Ford Exploder.(Or was, if you're reading this and you're a lawyer working for Ford).

-- Halmyre

But those problems are surely ancient history now? This was surely only news in the 90s (assuming it's not another Pinto cost/benefit analysis on Ford's part!)

Scott

& if you're running tyres old enough for that to be relevant on any vehicle then they'll be as unsafe on the motorway.

It was cheaper to pay settlements rather than recall the vehicle and scrap them

Why would anyone take any notice of you? Unless you can provide proof that HJ review pages are lies. They seem spot-on for my car.

MBQ

Correct but some people like to bang on about things. The tyre problem was never an issue in the UK where different tyres were used. The "cruise control issue" wasn't an issue but the usual lawyers chasing ambulances and people using cruise control as an excuse for piss-poor driving.

FWIW I've covered distances of 350 miles between fuel stops on journeys of

600 miles/day all on cruise control, no bizarre incidents. By comparison the cruise control on the jeep is bloody dangerous and hunts frantically on modest inclines. So bad that I've pulled the fuse to remove the temptation to use it.