Posted on 03/21/2019 5:16:17 PM PDT by rickmichaels
Migraine headaches, fatigue and dizziness were sidelining Bert Henriksen several times a week.
Evenings were the worst, after his 50-km commute home in his 2017 Ford Explorer.
His behaviour grew erratic. He’d get angry over minor things. “We were getting scared that he had some kind of a brain problem,” said his wife, Megan.
An answer came last March in a phone call from his doctor: A blood test revealed Henriksen had been exposed to toxic levels of carbon monoxide gas. But how? He says his prime suspect was parked in his driveway.
Henriksen is among more than 3,000 Ford Explorer owners who’ve complained to Ford or U.S. federal regulators they suspect exhaust fumes have seeped into their sport utility vehicles’ cabins.
Many fear carbon monoxide gas may have made them ill, and dozens of drivers have complained to regulators that the company’s recommended fix wasn’t effective.
Explorer owners have filed more than 50 legal claims across the U.S. against Ford. And some police departments said in 2017 that Explorers used as cruisers were exposing officers to carbon monoxide.
The complaints, which cover vehicles built between 2010 and 2018, carry high stakes for the second-largest U.S. automaker. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began investigating drivers’ claims in 2016, then expanded the probe a year later after saying it had “preliminary evidence” of elevated carbon monoxide levels in some driving scenarios.
If NHTSA finds a safety defect, Ford would face the prospect of recalling more than 1 million vehicles, costing perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ford, which in January debuted a redesigned Explorer for the 2020 model year, says there’s nothing wrong with the previous version. “All of our testing to date has shown these vehicles are safe,” company spokesman Mike Levine said in a statement.
“Ford’s investigation has not found carbon monoxide levels that exceed what people are exposed to every day.”
The claims aren’t easy to investigate. The U.S. has no regulatory standard for how much of the odourless, colourless, toxic gas would create a health risk for drivers, and scientists say the answer varies depending on an individual’s health and age. And drivers say the seepage problem comes and goes, complicating attempts to verify their allegations.
NHTSA’s task includes evaluating both what might be causing the alleged defect and what sort of health risk is posed to occupants by any pollutants in the cabin, a subject that global experts have just begun to study in recent years.
Ford’s response to the claims has served to deepen some drivers’ mistrust. The company’s first attempt to quell the concerns—through repair instructions the company provided to dealerships in 2012 to respond to customers’ complaints—was followed by repeated updates and several additional instructions.
Ford said it’s confident in its most recent repair campaign, which was offered in 2017 and is still in effect. Complaints have dropped dramatically since this latest effort, the company said, and the fix “effectively resolves the matter.”
And yet, for drivers like Bert Henriksen, it hasn’t. He now drives with a portable carbon monoxide detector in his Explorer, and he said it occasionally shows elevated levels of the gas.
He invited Bloomberg News along for a ride. There was very little sign of carbon monoxide during a 120-km test drive near Henriksen’s home in South Lyon, Michigan, in January. One of two detectors in his vehicle registered only tiny amounts of the gas. The other showed zero.
“That’s the problem—it’s so sporadic,” he said. Ford twice sent engineers to examine his Explorer, Henriksen said, and they found no problem.
Ford offered to buy his Explorer back after he sued the company under Michigan’s lemon law. He’s in the process of closing that deal now.
As of mid-2016, Ford had bought back roughly 100 Explorers from complaining drivers, according to federal records. “We have made buyback offers to certain customers as goodwill gestures,” Ford’s Levine said.
One of the first complaints came from a Ford manager who was leasing an Explorer. Company engineers tested his vehicle and confirmed what they described as a slight exhaust odour under specific driving conditions: full-throttle acceleration while the climate-control system was in “recirculation” mode.
Ford described those circumstances as outside “typical customer usage,” according to a letter the company sent NHTSA in August 2016.
Using recirculation mode created negative air pressure inside the cabin, which could draw in outside gases through gaps in the rear of the Explorer’s body, Ford’s letter said.
That letter didn’t address any potential flaws in the Explorer’s exhaust system itself, but records the company turned over to NHTSA indicate that Ford dealers found exhaust system leaks in roughly 50 Explorers between December 2011 and April 2016—all on vehicles with fewer than 160,000 km.
The leaks were mostly found in the exhaust manifold and the catalytic converter, and were chalked up to porous welds, cracks and poor fits with other components. The reports indicate installing new parts resolved owners’ complaints.
In a statement, Ford said its testing hasn’t found exhaust leaks “to be a contributor to the concern.”
NHTSA declined to comment on the progress of its probe, but said it’s testing and inspecting several Explorers driven by consumers and police officers and reviewing crashes involving police Explorers. The agency has completed about 90 such engineering analyses on various vehicle models since 2008; more than two-thirds of them resulted in manufacturers issuing recalls.
Recalling the 1.3 million fifth-generation Explorers would be costly. For context: In 2017, Ford took a US$267 million charge to recall 1.3 million F-Series pickup trucks in the U.S., Canada and Mexico to correct faulty door latches.
In Michigan, Bert Henriksen is still waiting to complete his buyback. Meanwhile, he’s driving his Explorer to and from work each day and keeping an eye on the carbon monoxide detector that sits on his dashboard. When it registers, he says, he rolls down the windows.
I owned a towing and recovery service, There is a very good reason why they went to padded dashboards.
There was a customer satisfaction repair done on mine for this reason (it’s a 2013 ex). Ford sent out letters claiming the same thing - that there was no excessive carbon monoxide they found during their testing for the numerous complaints they had.
Even after this service it still stinks in the cabin if I accelerate hard. I can reproduce the problem easily. Problem is, the rear hatch seals leak and the exhaust literally gets sucked up into the hatch when driving. There are several things they check when they do the service; they patch seams and holes on the uni body with mastic, but are loath to change the rear seal for some reason. Also, I think a lot of the dealerships aren’t performing the entire TSB because they have to pull a lot of stuff apart to do it correctly, including some body panels (if I recall what I read correctly).
The claim by the dealership that did this for me free of charge, plus a free rental stated that it was mostly upfitted vehicles that were really problematic (cop cars with all the racks and gun safes, etc.) where the upfitter drilled holes into the uni body for attachment and never sealed them, yadda, yadda, yadda.
The other issue is the fresh air intake is around the rear tire wells, so that is a big problem too.
Ford has always been a head ache.
I would hazard that if there was a valid problem, as bad as the complaints make it, their own sources would have some definitive results instead of having to refer to Ford’s analysis.
Why haven’t I heard about this before?
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A number of police depts. complained to Ford about 2 yrs. ago.
Supposedly their answer was the add on devices were compromising the integrity on the cabin.
A lot of officers were getting suck.
My guess is possibly the rear body design is drawing exhaust fumes back into the cab .
It could also be that other cars have problems too, but it just hasn’t crossed the threshold to detection. Which can be high.
At the right level such poisoning can apparently go undetected, and accumulate, until it is too late.
It could be sporadic and real.
From the company that made the Pinto and put it on the market anyway knowing of the gas tank issue and figured it was cheaper to pay out settlements for the dead and injured than to recall the cars.
The bottom line for them is the money. The heck with lives destroyed.
Airbags. Need a hypo allergenic metal dashboard and an airbag fitted vehicle. Probably no such animal exists.
I was in a wreck that totaled my truck and rearranged my face...plastic dashboard but no airbag.
“I would hazard that if there was a valid problem, as bad as the complaints make it, their own sources would have some definitive results instead of having to refer to Ford’s analysis.”
Yes. It’s not hard to measure.
state law is insane here with repos..
they get repo’d a lot but i have to send them to auction, then if I get more than they owe, I have to PAY THEM back the differance (after repo/auction costs)
it’s nuts. so I don’t really do much repo-resell..
sometimes they come back from the auction because the amount owed to me is so high no one bids that much.
then I just owe the run fee.
those do get resold by me again. but most times they bring just enough for me not to want it back.
Wow... That is crazy. It would seem that if you are financing directly in house with a private party to private party contract, that contract would be legally upheld period. I have never heard of state law being a legal referee in between a contract between two private parties. In most states if you promise your first born in a signed contract you have to deliver as written and signed no matter how crazy the terms might be.
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