Quick update. Tire swap went fine. High of 77 degrees tomorrow, so hopefully we get fewer "summer" days and my winter tires don't wear significantly before colder days get here. Alignment was way off as expected, but I don't remember whether it was toe, camber, or something else entirely that I had too much of. When he was finished I was too tired and ready to leave the shop, so I didn't ask too many questions.
So in the end, I don't know whether my predicament had anything to do with the recall toe link replacement or not, but I'd like to think that me showing my mechanic the pics from J_C turned on a light bulb in his head and allowed him to make the adjustments that he previously said he couldn't do.
Here's the printout I got. Looks like toe was my main problem actually. He said the rear right wheel was off by roughly an inch, which obviously is not good. The "after" results make me happy.
I'll drop this here just because I took the time to make it rather than reading old copies of Motor Trend while I waited (well, I read those too actually). I found the receipt from the recall repair, old receipts in my email, plus CarFax gives you a pretty decent log of your maintenance, considering I didn't independently modify any of the info they had.
2/10/14 new Explorer delivered, (Hankook Optimo tires)
12/20/16 winter tires purchased (Blizzak)
10/20/18 winter tires sold
7/14/21 75,603 miles on odometer
12/16/21 new tires (Michelin Primacy Tour)
1/11/22 78,796 miles on odometer
9/19/22 tire rotation - tread depth greater than or equal to 7/32" on all 4 tires
10/11/22 Recall 21S32
3/30/23 new wheel bearings, 95,509 miles on odometer
5/26/23 new tires (Nexen Roadian), 96,915 on odometer
10/19/23 102,089 miles on odometer
11/10/23 winter tires purchased and installed (Blizzak)
4/12/24 winter tires removed
6/25/24 mechanic says he won't rotate tires because rears too worn
10/9/24 Nexen removed, Blizzak installed 117,229 miles on odometer
Of note, I got roughly 75k miles off the tires from the factory (minus two winters that I was on my first set of winter tires, maybe 10k-ish in total). I got roughly 20k off of each of my two subsequent sets of tires, and the repair was done about a year after my 2nd set of tires (this was while I was living down south and only putting under 5k miles/year on my car at the time). Whether the recall had anything to do with my alignment/toe being out of whack is anyone's guess; the timing may or may not have been a coincidence.
I will say though, 9/19/22 all 4 tires were good, then roughly 8 months later (7 months after the recall repair) I was getting new tires installed and the Michelins were FLAT. I had to get bearings replaced - were they bad enough that they single-handedly trashed my tires? Who knows...
Anyway, thanks for the help, gentlemen. This has proven again to be a fine community and valuable resource to Explorer owners everywhere
