After his role in the Toyota recall scandal, Brian Ross of ABC News has become the Mainstream Media’s go-to guy for auto safety exposés. Now, Ross reports on a story that had been largely championed by Christopher Jensen of the NY Times: Ford’s response to rear-axle breakage on Windstar minivans. Jensen reports that NHTSA opened an investigation into Windstar axle issues in May, when the auto safety watchdog had some 243 complaints in its database. At the time, Ford insisted that
the operator retains control of the vehicle at all times… the few reports alleging loss of control are inconsistent with how Ford would expect these front-wheel-drive vehicles to respond
Ross’s report shows that this is not necessarily the case, and Ford has since recalled the Windstar. But with at least one death attributable to the lateness of that recall, Ford could be in line for a Toyota-style smackdown from federal regulators. Especially now that ABC has splashed fuel on the fire. As with his Toyota test, Ross’s team creates the defect, but because Ford didn’t deny that axles could snap but rather insisted that vehicles suffering from axle breakage were safe, this one seems more credible. And this time, NHTSA’s investigation process (or lack thereof) is getting a much negative attention as Ford is. Check out the report for yourself on Youtube.
I believe Brian Ross was involved the (in)famous exploding side-saddle gas tank on the GM pickups fiasco. He worked at NBC at the time. For those who don’t remember – small fireworks were placed underneath GM pickups in a demonstration of their “unsafeness”. GM sued on that one. And won.
He left NBC (I wonder why) and moved on to ABC for his “reporting”.
The Toyota expose involved a professor performing intricate rewiring of the accelerator sensors – inducing (unintended) acceleration.
Ford may have a real problem but Brian Ross has no credibility reporting it.
Same sensationalist media, different story . . .
I listened to ABC radio news cover this last night and they make it sound like there are millions of dangerous Windstars running around out there and Ford isn’t doing anything about it.
The TRUTH of the matter is this: the axle has areas which collect road spray/debris, and in geographical areas where road salt is used, this can eventually cause corrosion which if allowed to continue long enough, can cause failure. Ford has already announced that they are focused on replacing axles on vans located in specific geographical areas which makes sense, although there are always some vehicles which migrate around the country which could be missed (but the problem can easily be determined by a simple inspection which only takes a few minutes).
My neighbor has a Windstar, and the LAST thing I would worry about failing on it is the axle – let’s review, at around 100K miles: Head gaskets fixed, but fixed too late ruining engine bearings due to coolant in the oil, short block then replaced, transmission rebuilt at the same time, entire exhaust system replaced, intake manifold gaskets redone yet again more recently, rear hatch strut mounting points broken, etc etc. He has paid more for the repairs on it than what he paid for the van (used).
Shame on ABC. Thankfully we have automotive blogs like this one which will provide more of a fact-based report (a la Toyota’s Pedalgate).
I believe most Windstar owners would be surprised to learn that this vehicle can actually last long enough for the axles to break. The Windstar alienated more owners than almost any other Ford vehicle.
The Ford Aerostar was a pretty crap predecessor. We had one, and I’ve never looked at Ford for a 3-row hauler, never will.
I had thought that there were only 58 reasons to avoid buying a Windstar. I guess this rusting axle issue is Reason #59.
This is one of my great near-misses. When I was looking for a 3 row vehicle in 1995, the Windstar was just out. I kind of liked it, but bought a 1 yr old Club Wagon instead. I turned out to be a genius.
Ford has a dark past of vehicles with safety issues – let’s hope that the “new” Ford is aggressively addressing that.
Even if axles are randomly snapping like toothpicks, at least there aren’t a whole lot of Windstars still on the roads in my area. But if I do see one I’ll try to stay clear of it.
And it’s nice that the wife of the guy that died received the recall notice after he was dead.
Yeesh…if customers remember this, it won’t bode well for C-Max sales.
There is nearly nothing in common between these two vehicles. Much has changed in the last 15 years … those on top have fallen, those once at the bottom have risen-up, and the eternal shuffeling and re-shuffeling of the deck continues.
Axles should not break period, but Google up photos of the accident that killed Sean Bowman; It’s ashame anyone died in that accident as the vehicle is very much intact? I wonder if he was wearing his seatbelt or not.
My condolences.
where did you see anything other than the rear bumper shot? you can’t make a judgment about the condition of the windstar from that.
Side, Rear, up close all in the news video. Tight in on the drivers and front seat area as well.
Knowing a little bit about IP’s and a lot about steering columns, I would like to see/know more about the reason the st. wheel appears to be so off axis and the IP appears to have detached from the a-pillar… too bad there are not more photos including an overhead one…
This will not go well for Ford. The existing recall already puts Ford at a disadvantage.
The important perception difference here is:
A. Ford – Since axle retention does not require driver input, only the mfr looks bad.
B. Toyota – Since starting and stopping do require driver input, the driver shares some blame.
Just as valid as ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bath water”, is “Don’t necessarily let the channel be cause to impugn the message” … just because the abc/ross/kane axis is involved, the issue can’t be simply discarded or denied, and deserves proper consideration … (and, unlike the abc/ross/gilbert drive test video of the toyota ua, the Windstar axle failure video is reported to be from nhtsa’s own test.)
situation is:
– something happened that never should have (axles failed);
– something happened that should have (vehicles were recalled);
– something that never should have happened (operator death) has apparently happened, and seemingly due to something that never should have happened (see above) combined with something that should have happened (see above) apparently happening far too slowly.
See my comments to this situation in my post from yesterday on the Toyota settlement page:
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/12/breaking-toyota-to-end-nhtsa-investigation-with-32m-fine/#comment-1696618
One thing I, as an automotive engineer, find interesting, is the surprising amount of corrosion on the INSIDE of the axle beam … if this is not a closed section, then why was it not effectively treated to make it corrosion resistant? And if it were a closed-section, then what promoted the corrosion seen in the images?
Fact: corrosion reduces the cross-section of healthy material expected to resist stress and fatigue. Fact: stress combined with any of the following: corrosion, material chemistry, material imperfections and/or material forming issues can promote the initiation and propagation of microcracks. Fact: a part simultaneously subjected to factors which promote failure, and factors which reduce resistance will (all other factors held equal, and given time for the corrosion to have its effect) under perform a part absent one or more of these factors, and will likely under perform the expected fatigue life targets (esp. if these misjudged the environmental conditions**).
** There is ample proof of this, just consider all the corrosion-related recalls (some just for “salt states”) due to failures of things like perimeter frames (toyota/dana), sub-frames (ford & gm), brake rotors (chrysler), hood-latches, brake/fuel lines, abs pump mechanisms, steering shafts, etc. ad infinitum… (as with any recall, if these items had been properly specified, designed, tested and/or manufactured, with proper consideration to customer use and environment, there would have been no recalls at all.)
Question: In the video, in the rear view of the vehicle just before the axle separation is triggered, there seems to be an amazingly large negative camber angle … is this normal? If the vehicle had had an IRS set-up, and had been heavily loaded, such an angle might seem normal, but such a rr-beam axle is the antithesis of IRS, and when heacily loaded, camber angles can’t change … so unless I don’t know the vehicle as well as I thought I did, or unless I don’t understand everything I know about suspension design, can somebody with knowledge weigh-in on what a normal rr camber angle in the Windstar looks like, and comment whether the test vehicle properly represented the expected rr camber angle?
Z71_Silvy anti-Ford rant is 3,2,1…
I’m surprised that it has taken this long…
97V058000 is an effective deterrent…
http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/problems/recalls/relatedRecallsummary.cfm?INV_ID=RQ99002&recallIdlist=97V058000&ModuleType=Vehicles
I thought the same thing when I started reading the comments. Although it’s not like GM has/had any minivans that were any better to use as an example.
On the other hand, I haven’t seen him around lately, maybe we need another Mustang or F150 review.
A serious issue, but MSM is also seriously painful to watch.
From the video:
“But there was a serious hidden problem with the Windstar van, and the rear axle bar that turns the wheels.”
Huh?
Their “professional driver” also seemed to be totally incompetent at counter-steering to correct the oversteer situation. I’m not saying it would be easy to control the van in that situation, depending on speed, but a professional driver should react strongly and quickly when the back end starts coming around. He barely even turned the steering wheel.
Well this would explain why the local K-Mart parking lot next to the Ford dealer has 2 long rows filled full of Windstars. Unbelievable that something like this could be so poorly designed.
Is it fact that the failed axles are heavily corroded? One year ago, my 92 Sable experienced a rust induced suspension failure. The rear is independent and the outboard (wheel) positions are held in place by a steel rod that mounts to the lower suspension point and attached to the body forward of the wheel. Each end has a washer/bushing/nut assembly. The washers corroded to the point that at one mounting point the rod broke free, causing that wheel to have no lateral support. The tire jammed against the wheel opening. Luckily this happened after hitting a speed bump in a parking lot. Can’t imagine what would have happened if I was going 70. Must be a common problem as SHO Source sells used rods for this very reason…too bad there is no database for this kind of stuff…
Golden, was your Sable a wagon? I’m not really sure on this point anymore, but IIRC, IRS only showed-up in the wagons as a way to avoid having rear suspension-towers intrude into the rear cargo space and force it to be narrower than desired…
Even though there were numerous changes so as to almost make it a totally new platform, the original Windstar WIN88, engineered and developed within Ford’s then Light Truck organization, started as an off-shoot of the previous generation DN5 Taurus platform.
BTW, Taurus also suffered from corrosion recalls, ca. 2.7M units came back due to front sub-frames seeking liberation from their body mounting points (nearly the same thing happened with the GM-10 cars of the same era causing multiple recalls.) In each case, it took about 10 years for the defect to reach the level of being recalled).
Would seem the old front sub frame corrosion problem is back again … new report out today indicates a new federal investigation due to 300+ failures, 3 crashe, 1 totalled.
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20101223/AUTO01/12230353/1148/Feds-widen-Windstar-probe’s-scope
Robert, it is a sedan. As to the engine subframe, the recall was done to the car many years ago. However, it didn’t really help. A couple of years ago the car developed a bang under the passenger foot well. The right rear subframe mount separated from the car body. I had no choice but to drive 49 miles home. I took the mount apart and fount that the steel that was sandwiched in the rubber had rusted away. It had the effect of enlarging the subframe hole just enough to be a hair bigger in diameter than the rubber mount. The rest of the subframe was perfect. Seems this point not only got the salt treatment, the A/C condensate dripped all over it during the summer so it was wet pretty much year round. I wanted to weld a repair, but my MIG welder was too small. No shop would consider anything but replacement, which cost me $800 using a boneyard frame. I had to have the car back to get to the train station, so I ate the cost and later that week I bought a welder. I detest being held hostage to the money takers. I replaced the failed bushings in the rear suspension myself. Funny how the sheetmetal still is rust free, including almost everything underneath, yet the thick stuff rotted out. I suppose quality coatings wins out over mindless thickness…
I think Ford knew about Windstar axle problems at least as far back as 2000.I worked on the Windstar replacement, the Freestar, and the Mercury Monterey. I sat next to a woman who was responsible for Windstar rear axcles, and other things. She was pretty sharp, and she worked hard to remedy the cracking axle problems. But she was thwarted at every step by her management.Ford knew that the axles would almost certainly crack if 2 conditions where met. 1. The vehicle was loaded to GVW, distributed to max axle loads.
2. The vehicle was then backed onto a steep ramp, like the driveway entrance ramp at an older home.
Cracking gauranteed. Now the crack by itself was not really a failure. It caused the axle to make a terrible sound, especially when the axle was cold. It sounded, and felt, like the ends of a broken bone in your arm rubbing against each other before the arm was in a cast. This noise alone caused people to replace the axle. Ford monitored axle sales, and knew they were selling far more replacemnt axles than could be accounted for by collision rates.
And this was when vehicles were faily new, with not much, if any, corrosion.There were changes, design changes, material changes, manufacturing changfes that were known to solve the problem, at least in non-corroded vehicles. But none were adopted.Ford deserves to take a hit on this one.Bob
I have a 2000 Windstar SE that’s currently getting its radiator replaced. I’ve asked my mechanic to inspect the axle and front subframe while he has it. It sounds like if I take it into Ford at this point, I may not get to drive it home. I live in heavily salted southern Minnesota, so corrosion is always an issue. I’ve had the van for almost 2 years, and it’s given me almost 50k trouble-free miles. If the axle checks out, I may just wait until Ford has replacement parts to fix it. I’m not unfamiliar with Ford corrosion-caused failures. I had a ’92 Taurus that had the front subframe detach while driving. My dad’s ’97 Lesabre just had the same problem. Modern vehicles are built to last many years, but unfortunately the Minnesota salt bath can end that prematurely.