lancer
Member
- Joined
- June 20, 2009
- Messages
- 24
- Reaction score
- 0
- City, State
- Brisbane, State of Queensland, Australia
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 96 UN XLT Wagon
Ford Australia have just recalled all year and model Explorers to check out/modify the cruise control system due to an Explorer going beserk on a main highway in Victoria, a State of Australia, where the driver virtually had no control with the vehicle reaching reported speeds of 150+KPH.
He just could not stop the thing including attempting to turn off the ignition.
A Victorian Police Officer chased the Explorer, got his vehicle in front and virtually bulldogged it to a stop.
Ford Australia requested the vehicle for inspection and testing as this was a bad case of something gone wrong. Fortuantely, no one was hurt.
From what has emerged, albeit unconfirmed, the driver had done some modifications fitting a hands free telephone, connecting the power source somewhere along the line that powers the cruise control.
In this instance he had feed back through the Explorer computer when he dialed a 1300 or 1800 toll free number and this set off the speed control in the onboard computer taking it to an uncontrollable 150+kph.
If this was the case, it was an exceptional incident and one that all Explorer owners should take heed of if they simulate his accesssory installation.
Anyway, congratulations to Ford Australia for taking the responsible initiative of recalling all Explorers in Australia, irrespective, for the test and upgrade.
Denmac Ford, my local dealer did mine along with some other minor maintenace work in less than 6 hours. Now that's service OZ style.
Anyway, that is just one side of my query.
Whilst I had it at my Ford dealer I asked them to do a diagnostic check as mine was guzzling juice around town getting down to as low as 10-15MPG.
On the highway, cruising 100-110KPH up to 20-22MPG was achieveable.
Their summation was that the tyres I had on, 31x10.5R15LT's were the wrong size making the Explorer pull harder in lower speeds and enhancing it at higher speeds. Seems feasable to me. But I doubt I will be changing them soon as they still have about 10-15,000KM's left on them.
If that is the case what size should I be running?, as I do all my running on bitumen paved surfaces, very rarey on dirt. My long distant running of round trips of about 1,000KM's, is only about 3 or 4 times a year to a western Queensland regional town to visit our son and his family, so most of my usage is urban.
They even went so far as to suggest that the speedo would probably read more miles on the odometer and there would be a discrepancy in the actual speed I was travelling up to 10KPH faster, which would get me into serious trouble with the law if I got hooked in a radar trap being over the limit especially in 'work in progress zones' or 'school safety zones' where the limit in most if not all States of OZ is 40KPH.
Has anyone experienced this problem or have any comments.
Thanks.
LesB!
He just could not stop the thing including attempting to turn off the ignition.
A Victorian Police Officer chased the Explorer, got his vehicle in front and virtually bulldogged it to a stop.
Ford Australia requested the vehicle for inspection and testing as this was a bad case of something gone wrong. Fortuantely, no one was hurt.
From what has emerged, albeit unconfirmed, the driver had done some modifications fitting a hands free telephone, connecting the power source somewhere along the line that powers the cruise control.
In this instance he had feed back through the Explorer computer when he dialed a 1300 or 1800 toll free number and this set off the speed control in the onboard computer taking it to an uncontrollable 150+kph.
If this was the case, it was an exceptional incident and one that all Explorer owners should take heed of if they simulate his accesssory installation.
Anyway, congratulations to Ford Australia for taking the responsible initiative of recalling all Explorers in Australia, irrespective, for the test and upgrade.
Denmac Ford, my local dealer did mine along with some other minor maintenace work in less than 6 hours. Now that's service OZ style.
Anyway, that is just one side of my query.
Whilst I had it at my Ford dealer I asked them to do a diagnostic check as mine was guzzling juice around town getting down to as low as 10-15MPG.
On the highway, cruising 100-110KPH up to 20-22MPG was achieveable.
Their summation was that the tyres I had on, 31x10.5R15LT's were the wrong size making the Explorer pull harder in lower speeds and enhancing it at higher speeds. Seems feasable to me. But I doubt I will be changing them soon as they still have about 10-15,000KM's left on them.
If that is the case what size should I be running?, as I do all my running on bitumen paved surfaces, very rarey on dirt. My long distant running of round trips of about 1,000KM's, is only about 3 or 4 times a year to a western Queensland regional town to visit our son and his family, so most of my usage is urban.
They even went so far as to suggest that the speedo would probably read more miles on the odometer and there would be a discrepancy in the actual speed I was travelling up to 10KPH faster, which would get me into serious trouble with the law if I got hooked in a radar trap being over the limit especially in 'work in progress zones' or 'school safety zones' where the limit in most if not all States of OZ is 40KPH.
Has anyone experienced this problem or have any comments.
Thanks.
LesB!
