>``The increase simply shows that those Explorers were equipped with bad
>tires,'' said Ernie Grushz, Ford's manager of safety data analysis.
Anyone with an Exploder able to confirm the rumor I've heard that Ford
specifies an inflation pressure of 26PSI? And with the typical American
approach to maintenance (let the tire guys check it once every new set of
tires) and the likelihood of a certain amount of pressure loss over time
even in ideal conditions, is it any wonder that tires are coming
apart? Heck, even if they were inflated to the recommended pressure, you'd
have to expect some failures if people were running them at high speeds in
hot conditions on fully-loaded vehicles. That's not a heck of a lot of
pressure....
And you know Firestone can't do anything about this, if they hope to have
any future in the OEM market. I don't buy them myself, as my past
experiences with them were that the tires were "round" only in a rough
sense, but it seems to me that maybe their product was being misused to
some extent. Oh well, now the lawyers will get ahold of it, and reality
will be even further gone than it is when the media is working it.
Paul and Meredith Brown
MR2: "Not the easiest car in the world to work on"
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