Hey Scotty can you do a video on the First Generation 1991-2000 Ford EXPLORER and the Firestone Tire Debacle over their Wilderness A/T ATX II and these tires were known to have tred separation and Ford told then to inflate tires to 26 PSI and Firestone said 32 PSI. Can you do a video on the Ford/Firestone Tire Debacle of 2000-2001. Ford tried to hide all the deaths in rollovers until a class action filed in 1998 when a tire separated and killed a 17 year old kid and the Explorer flipped and she was injected and died and the following year there were 187 deaths and over 380k injuries. There were another 1500 deaths in the Exporter and Firestone Tires. You need to do a video on the Firestone/ Ford Tire Debacle Can you do a viddeo on this I thank this would make a great video
Ford's engineering failure was using a small pickup truck chassis as the basis for the SUV. Pickup trucks aren't top heavy, they're relatively stable because the CG is low. Throwing stuff in the bed raises it a bit, but not to the point of an SUV. SUVs have an long cabin, extra seats and passengers, which all significantly raise the CG. This means the vehicle is unstable in turning maneuvers and is very top heavy. The only way to compensate for this correctly is to widen the wheel track, giving the vehicle a wider stance. Ford did not do this, because if they did, they couldn't use their cost cutting "off-the-shelf" Ranger truck frame anymore. Ford was in a hurry to capitalize on the new SUV craze. To "solve" the problem, they let air out of the tires. This had the effect of very slightly lowering the CG to where it was stable, somewhat, but Ford failed to notify Firestone of their design change, and the rest is history.
Ford learned the hard way from their mistake. The following generation Explorer, the 2002 model, had a dedicated frame designed specifically for that purpose.
That was ages ago.
There was a 60 Minutes episode about it you can find on the internet.
