When I made the crack about the Ford front ends it was a little
tonque-in-cheek, but only a little. I know the later models have
a-arms and it would be interesting to compare the percentage of
the rollovers with each type of suspension. My dad bought a new
Ford half ton truck in '72 and it ate tires on a regular basis,
lots of "cupping" and generally wierd wear patterns. I've seen
pictures of various Ford vehicles, with this setup, under heavy
cornering and it looks scary. Back 10 years or so ago when
Consumer Reports was making a big deal out of Jeep Wranglers rolling
over a lot, it was pointed out, very quietly, by a couple of
brave reporters, that Bronco IIs rolled more frequently than Jeeps.
The national media never picked up on this fact. I guess someone
just had it in for Jeep at the time. Now Ford has reintroduced
this setup on their Super Duty trucks in even beefier form. I would
like to buy a new truck in a year or so. Now that GM has some decent
drivetrains available in their 2001 models, I will probably look at
those instead of the Ford simply because of the front suspension.
Except for that one thing, they are really nice trucks.
I am still baffled as to why they would put such an abomination on
a vehicle. If strength is that big of an issue they should just use a
straight beam axle. GM and Dodge don't seem to have any durability
or strength problems using a-arms. It's also interesting that Ford
acknowledged, indirectly, that they have a problem, by specifying
low tire pressures to lessen rollover tendencies. A-arms can be
made to behave like swing axles if you give them the "right"
geometry.
Just My .02...
Bruce
so is there or is there not any correlation to the inherhent handling
flaws of exploders due to the dbl I-beam? Like Ron said, the newer ones
don't have that prehistoric configuration but still seem to suffer
rolloever just the same. I can see where that abortion of a front
suspension can act very much like a swing-axle and catapult a car when
sliding, but is that really a contributor? or is the exploder cg just too
high and too softly sprung?
Dave Yeung
Houston Region
On Tue, 26 Sep 2000 21:48:22 -0400 <nottingham@alltel.net> writes:
>> these are the "firehawk" SUV tires and might be bad also
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>> on a lighter note the driver yesterday matained control and was
>fine, the
>> truck did not flip.
>> ***********************************
>> Probably because the Yukon doesn't have "Twin Swing-axle" front
>suspension!
>>
>
>Neither do 96+ Explorers.......
>
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