So I was driving down a back road where a lot of semi's pull out of cross docks, speed limit 50 mph. As I was heading down the road a semi pulled out in front of me and I had to swerve to miss him. I hit the curb and went off the road at 50 mph. Gained control and got out to see any damage, and there was no damage. This is a tough truck, thank God for the Ford Toughness.

Just thought you guys would like to know how strong this thing is!


Thanks,
Brad

 

maybe a true test of Ford toughness would have been to hit the semi...

 

ok, now try 80 mph and let us know how it works out. hehe.

 

thanks for the info. you are right, these are tough trucks. Glad to hear your ok!

 

When your front tires begin to wear in odd patterns, you'll realize that 'Ford Tough' doesn't include immunity from alignment problems.

 

Talk about odd wear patterns on the front tires. I was once the head mechanic for a local heating and a/c company who had a fleet of 120 Chevy and Dodge trucks. Mostly Chevy, about 118. It was very normal to replace tires on the Chevies at 25,000 miles because they were completely useless. Some appeared to not even be aligned from the factory. And when they were aligned they had to put shims between the bolts and upper A arms. Really a pathetic way to align a truck in my opinion.

By the time I left the fleet was slowing being replaced by F150 trucks.

 

That does get the old adrenaline flowing doesn't it? Good to hear that the truck came through it okay. I had a similar experience, the 40 mph slalom when a twit in an Intrepid pulled out right in front of me. The truck handled the situation like a pro when I yanked the wheel to the right, got into the bike lane and didn't hit anything. I'm not sure I even got on the brakes first...just ****** the wheel right then left and hope.

I was lucky, in that it happened in an area with a bike lane. Another few hundred yards and the road gets very narrow with 3' ditches on each side. Hmmm, dive into the ditch or hit the Intrepid? Neither choice would have been good.

 

Hit the Intrepid, no question. In fact accelerate and slam into the Intrepid.

 

A few years ago our inbred road crew cut a ditch across a paved road to drop in a pipe or line. They filled the ditch with gravel and called it good. That night it rained hard and washed away / settled the filler gravel. I'm on my way to school the next morning in my '88 F-150. I'm going 55mph and see the ditch but I am unable to see it washed out. When I'm about five feet from it, I see the road is missing and there is a 12-16" gap over 6-8" deep. I let off the gas but there was no use for the brakes. I hit that ditch square on (both front tires at the same time) and took the biggest pot hole ever. I actually felt the rear tires leave the ground for a moment. I was pissed off and ready to make the city pay for any damage. Well, they were lucky I was driving a truck built Ford tough and there was no damage.
A few hours later, I see my shop teacher replacing a wheel on his Honda Civic. I asked him what happened. He said he hit a washed out ditch and it blew out a tire and destroyed the rim. LOL!!!

 

Don't know how true this is... but a GM technician once told me that there were 3 front suspension settings for each of the 3 engines (as each was a different weight) If the wrong setting was used from the factory you had nothing but problems with the alignment.

It sounds reasonable... maybe someone with a little bit of Chevy suspension experience could confirm or deny.

 

This was not true from my Tahoe 4x4. It only had one suspension setting from the factory. You couldn't even line up the suspension without buying a special kit and knocking out a suspension plug.

Grim

 

Thats the kinda stuff I am talking about.

 

Grims right. My 97 4x4 tahoe was same way. I also put a 3" suspension lift in my buddies 88 1/2 1500 p/up. This was the first model to run the independent front, same setup was used until 99 roughly. The 2000 Z71 tahoes were still the old bodystyle and setup. The all had the alignment plug thad had to be knoked out. Also most all the ball joints were riveted in. First replacement sucked, have to drill out rivets and use bolts for new ones.

Adam