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2000 Explorer XLT 2 year lease. 4.0L SOHC motor had to have the timing chain tensioner fixed. Gave back to dealer with close to 30,000 miles on it.
2000 Limited with the 4.0L SOHC that my wife currently drives. Has needed 2 lower ball joints and a thermostat. She is currently at 76,000 miles. I also mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was getting a lot of front suspension noise. Turned out to be the front stabilizer bar end links. I took off the bolt for each and installed 3 washers on each end link to pull it tighter together. It worked beautifully! A 29 cents fix! For the horrible roads we live on, the Explorer still remains to be very tight and quiet.
I am a Ford guy, but I am not trying to sweeten a sour grape. I am reporting all problems I recall having, and am lead to believe these are very good trucks.
Is it the same transitioning smell as a house A/C system, when you first switch it to heat, from months of cooling? My guess it's probably the coating from the heatcore, and might take awhile for it to dissipate.
coating from the heatcore - could be. I'll give it some time. Appointment at the dealer is on the 4th of February, anyway.
Avoid if you're sensitive to coffee odors.
Steve, Host
GOOD LUCK!
-Chuck1
If you own a 03 Ford Explorer get ready to have you rear end replaced on a fairly regular basis. I bought mine new 16 months ago and I put a few more miles on per month than most. The first replacement went in at 28000...they paid. The latest one went in at almost the same mileage 58000...I paid. Ford service was unsympathetic at best but the parts rep at the dealership was a little secretive but more than a little informative. The Nashville dealership I bought it at is one of the bigger ones in Tennesse but he told me mine was the 47th in 2004 that he had ordered. Ford is naturally silent about the problem because any TSB or recall will cost them. I'm in the music business with a major label deal so I'll make my noise where I can.
Steve
Good luck with the latest replacement.
Steve, Host
Steve
It's generally agreed that only people who are strongly opinionated post messages about their vehicles online. And, people who have problems are more likely to be strongly opinionated than those who are merely satisfied. I bet for every one driver on here complaining, there are 20 more out there racking up the miles on their Explorers, happy as clams. But then, that's the story with nearly every single car on the road.
In 2004, Ford sold 340,000 Explorers. There are over a million of the new body style (which you love to trash so much) on the roads. This 340k in 2004 accounted for about 12.5% of all of Ford's sales.
Here in my state the "larger" Ford dealers sell between 250 and 1,000 total vehicles per month (on average). That means each one sells between 30 and 120 Explorers per month for a total of 360 to 1000 Explorers per year.
The industry average for miles per year on a passenger car is about 12,500 (and that's conservative!) So, figure that almost every Explorer sold in 2002 (or in 2001 as an 02 model) has about 37,500 miles on average. And, 2002 Explorers were on the lots in March of 2001! So that number is most likely conservative as well.
So, what does all this mean? How does this make sense? Here's how. Let's say the dealership in question, being described as a "larger" dealership, sells about 300 cars a month (again, on average, of course). If 12.5% of their sales were Explorers, they themselves put almost 38 of them on the road each month.
If they started really selling them in April of 2001, this one "larger" dealer could very reasonably have 800 POTENTIALLY affected '02 and '03 vehicles on the road, all of which are on average right about 37,500 miles. And according to some in this forum, these rear ends are only good for about 30k.
47 rear ends in one year, out of 800 vehicles in service just from that dealer, is less than six percent, or one in 17 vehicles. That's my main point, and a point that has been made over and over. The Ford Explorer is one of the best-selling vehicles around (for good reason). There are millions of them on the road. So, numbers like this one, that got you all sarcastic, really don't seem so big when you look at them in perspective. If we were talking about a vehicle that doesn't have so many examples on the road, that would be a different story.
And, don't forget, like I have posted earlier, I am not saying that there is no problem. I have posted before that I know Ford is investigating both the gearset and the fluid used. I just want to show that these problems are much more minor than some people in these forums make them out to be. There is no need to buy an extended warranty (if you weren't going to otherwise) on a 6% chance that something will fail. And yes, I do beleive it is a supplier problem. In fact, I think that they probably used several suppliers, and that is why the problem only exists in a small percentage of the rear ends, instead of with a large portion of the vehicles produced.
The parts guy at the Nashville Ford dealership said that's how many had been order. Not sure if they were actually done at that dealership or by a third party mechanic. I had my second one put in by a shop that was a little closer to home.Didn't feel like giving Ford the money.I have own a number of vehicles in my 30 years of driving both 2wd and 4wd and I have never, never had to replace one rear end in any vehicle before this Ford. My father-in -law is getting a lot of mileage out of "I told you so" and I can't get back in to a GM product soon enough
My math is not fuzzy. And at least I can back up my claims. I accurately showed how the number in question (47 rear ends ordered by a large dealer in one year) is extremely low when you consider how many vehicles there are on the road, and how many were sold by that dealer.
Ford sells so many Explorers because of a combination of desirable attributes, the least of which is a low price. It's domestic competitor, the Trailblazer, also has heavy rebates. By your logic that must make General Motors poor in quality as well huh? Have you even read the Edmund's review of the Explorer? You know they picked it as "Editors Most Wanted Midsize SUV Under $35K" for 2004, right?
Ford does provide the quality of many other makes. In fact independent research organizations which study the automotive industry, such as JD Power and Consumer Reports, rate Ford as average (compared to all makes) in quality/reliability and the Explorer itself average as well. Both ratings are improving over previous generations.
They are doing something about the rear end issue. Read the TSBs. They are trying to determine the cause of the problem. Do you think they made millions of rear ends themselves, or had suppliers? Do you think they had just one supplier, or chose not to put all of their eggs in one basket? If one assembly line in one supplier had a problem, that would explain why only (roughly) six percent of vehicles over 30k miles are affected. It would also explain why it would take some time for Ford to determine the source of the problem (fluid mixture, gearset, etc).
Most importantly, the level of service (or dis-service) you get, on any issue, is going to vary from dealer to dealer. The service manager and the owner/dealer ultimately decide whether or not to fix something and at what cost to the customer. It is not Ford, Inc. who isn't stepping to the plate; it is some of the dealers. I know my dealer would replace my rear end (even after warranty) if I showed them the TSB.
“I'd also like to chime in. Our 02 V6 AWD Mountaineer has been rock solid.” - #2021 by troyben Oct 15, 2004
“So far our [02] Exp has been just fine, no problems whatsoever This is our 3rd Exp and we fully intend to buy another one” - #2036 by roger341 Oct 18, 2004
“like [nvbanker], i'm big explorer fan.... it's not perfect, but it's the best overall vehicle i've ever had, as far as overall satisfaction goes.” - #2016 by explorerx4 Oct 13, 2004
“My 2003 Premier MM V-8 has 52k miles. To date no major repairs or issues.” - #1966 by tjf2000 Apr 27, 2004
“4.0 in first 02 explorer went 65 -68k, dont remember exactly, with no problems at all just routine maintenance. I now have another 02 with the 4.0 engine is 32k and has been trouble free too.” - #1917 by dondilio Mar 31, 2004
Did I miss anybody? I'm sure I could have gone back farther and found a ton more.
Anybody else out there have over 30k and want to share experiences?
Anyways, to answer your questions: You claimed the rear end problem was wide-spread, and that Ford has poor quality, so I showed examples of happy owners with trouble-free vehicles. You also insinuated that because a few people have had problems getting good service at their dealers that Ford, Inc. does not stand behind its product. I was showing how a good relationship with a dealer can go a long way. Experiences vary from one dealer to another, and Ford Motor Company really has little to do with how John Doe is treated by an employee at a privately owned dealer that might care less about customer satisfaction. This happens to people at dealers for all kinds of cars, everywhere.
Your biggest exaggerations, the ones that got me started, are when you say that every Explorer will develop this problem (you told me for certain that mine will) and that people should either buy an extended warranty or buy something else. That is just flat out ridiculous advice. And every time I see you post some such exaggeration that is along those lines, I am going to continue to PROVE that you are wrong.
I haven’t proved anything? I presented enough of an argument that the problem is very limited and that Ford overall and the Explorer are reliable, while you can't show otherwise.
1991 - Explorer introduces the 4 door SUV to the world in a package that has the spare under the car, has room for 5 adults, is affordable in 4WD, with a low range, amazingly rugged for the price, but not as rough as a Jeep is. It was bigger than the Jeep, smoother, more refined, easier to operate, drive and more powerful. Better for trips, more stable. Better all around except for tough off-roading. If you want to crawl rocks, get the Jeep. It made old news of the Cherokee instantly, as well as the S-10 Blazer and took the market away permanently, (so far). As it turned out, it was a darn dependable truck, tough as nails, I still have a 94 Eddie Bauer with 140,000 miles on it with the original everything on it, trans, engine, and it all works fine having been abused terribly.
In 1995, Ford was first out with the first V-8 mid sized SUV in their Explorer. Ok, you could only get it in 2WD until 1997.
In 2002, Ford was first out with the Explorer that had independent rear suspension and a folding flat rear 3rd seat. Now, everybody has copied it. But only Toyota has put a V-8 in this class of SUV along with Ford.
Ford and Toyota are really the only two car companies who innovate their products to this level in the world. Toyota does it a little better and more consistently. They are slower though. And they cost more. That's why I buy the Fords. If Ford really do start missing the mark badly, I'll start buying Toyotas. Nobody else gets in their much, IMO.
So, Ford contracts out with about 5 or 6 subs to build the pumpkin for their independent rear suspensions on their Explorers, and buys lubricant to their spects for them. One of the subs builds a substandard pumpkin, or one of the subs sends substandard lubricant, and a large number of the Explorers experience rear-end whines or failures. It takes a long time for the Ford engineers to figure out what's going on. For a long time, the dealer personnel deny that anything is wrong, because they just don't know. Lots of them are morons, you know. When Ford finally gets it, they start replacing some of them, but some of the replacements are from the same supplier, so they have repeat failures. They have to start batching the failures and replacement failures, and identifying and sourcing and it can take a year or more to identify who is causing the problem. Then, the lawyers step in. Do we cancel the contract? Sue them? Do they settle? Meantime, we're making cars, we need differentials, we need fluids, we need more of them, because we have failures, we're now short of them, because we just quaranteened 20% of our supply, and we need our other suppliers to make up the difference, we're short cars, we have 20,000 Explorers sitting in the snow in Kentucky with no differentials in them because we're short, and in case you didn't notice, Ford isn't flush with cash at the moment, we really need to sell the trucks, it's a big seller for us.....
This isn't as easy as it looks..... If you're pissed off, go buy a Pilot. As for me, my 94 Explorer is running great, no whining. My Mountaineer just blew a transmission. My dealer fixed it in one day, gave me a Town Car to drive, no charge. It's great again, I'm very happy with Ford. What more can I ask. And the rear end is still fine in that car. I've never had one go bad yet.
No good at all, my friend.....
Thanks.
It depends on how much stuff you want to permanently keep in your vehicle, what kind of cargo you think you will have to transport on occasion (and how often), and how many times you think you might have 6 passengers.
Decisions...decisions!
Additionally, the V8 is smoother and provides better acceleration, but the V6 is thought to be more durable.
It's like the 3.0L Vulcan V6... It's bulletproof overall, but a dog in design and performance.
the not completely flat floor is a non issue 99.9% of the time.