I have one of these vehicles (98 Mountaineer) and the sticker on the door post definately says 26 pounds of air in the tires. Sound low to you? It did to me but when you put 30-32 in the tires the damn thing bounds all over the road and generally drives like $h#t. It handles pretty good with 26 in the tires and therein lies the problem. I suspect the tire gets to hot and comes apart. The question is really how will this thing ride with different say Michlin tires instead of these Firestones. My wife drives this most of the time just around town but she goes to Houston and thats on the highway. Ford is now saying to raise the air pressure to 30. I want a different set of tires from another manufacturer. If they don't pay I will.

 

JIGAWATT: I'm sorry to hear of your families loss...sometimes we forget that there are many faces behind those statistics...

noelvm: my initial thoughts were the same as yours regarding the ability to control a blowout, but I've come to realize that these are not normal blowouts. The tires totally disintegrate in a matter of seconds, dropping the vehicle to its rim.
Speed may have been a factor also in some of these rollovers...many people push those SUVS too fast, in my opinion. I also think that you guys are right about the maintenance/pressure issue, but Ford/Firestone will have a hard time proving that in court

[This message has been edited by speed (edited 08-25-2000).]

 

the problem I have with tire pressure recommendations by ford is that there were 500,000 explorers equipped with goodyear tires using those same 26lbs of tire pressure and there has not been one related tire failure.that does not make firestone look too good at all.

 

Well, the Michelin tires are heads above those crappy firestones. The underinflation definitely contributed to the problem, but the tires still sucked to begin with. You can say what you want about the driver not being able to handle the blowout, but I'm sure other factors could contribute such as road angle, middle of a curve, front tire vs. rear tire, etc. Until you have been in the same exact position with the same road conditions, etc. you shouldn't automatically contribute driver incompetence as a factor. In most of the recent incidents, the injuries were not fatal because the persons involved were wearing their seatbelts. But how can you account for the fact that in the same incident, some people are killed and some walk away virtually unharmed, even from the same vehicle. There are too many factors involved to make such a broad statement as that. Consider yourself lucky in your many blow outs that you have not been in conditions that resulted in serious injury to you or your loved ones.

 

I remember hearing something about the fact that when the tread separated, it wrapped itself around the axle of the Explorers.

So, not only a blowout, but a nearly uncontrollable situation as well.