Paul,
It is true that Ford specified a 26 PSI rating for the Explorer, and
I am sure some people let it go lower. However, I think it is hard
to blame Ford much, since they sold over 500,000 Explorers
with 26 PSI GOODYEAR tires, and not one has come apart.
The ones with the Firestone tires have not been so lucky...
It may have been a combination of a poor tire, with low pressures.
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul and Meredith Brown" <racers@rt66.com>
To: <autox@autox.team.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2000 8:56 PM
Subject: Re: Ford sure picked some winners....
>
> >``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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