general problems of the 2002 Ford Explorer - part 1

Summer,spring weather, all four, clear, glass windows do not slide up or down through its' power button, electronically.

Was driving on hwy and my vehicle just shit down as I was turning off the main road, lost all control of steering. When I raised the hood I saw my radiator smoking and all of a sudden it popped. Had to have it towed in to the shop and was told that the radiator had exploded and the engine seized up! how could this happen? I never even had it to over heat or the light never even alerted me. Just blew up and left me stranded. I was told after the fact that there is a recall on the radiator!.

I was driving down the highway I went to make a left hand turn when smoke started coming out of the grill, so I pulled over to check under the hood, smoke started boiling out from under the hood.

The radiator started going out on me. I had to fix it twice. The breakes I keep having the continued fixing them every 4 months. Recently October 25, 2019 it started smelling like burnt rubber came thru the air vents. Things with the electricity oe a shortage. With the tires they put wrong tire size. They told me to sign and go because they didn't have my actual tire size. Its always on the smalls streets and on freeway or. Highway it smells like burnt rubber. The owner didn't notify me or bother to tell me it was on recall already.

Had a bad battery and now 4x4 won't work.

The door locks lock and unlock all by themselves dozens of times in a row while I am driving. With this the dome light flashes off and on and the door ajar light flashes and the interior chime goes off constantly. All of this happens at the same time. This is a huge and common issue with thousands of forum posts by other owners who have spend countless $$ at mechanic's to no avail. This can cause wrecks at night it is very distracting. Especially the dome light.

Blinkers and gauges won't work also bright lights do not work. Everything else works fine including emergency flashers. I've changed relay and checked fuses.

The fuel gage is not working properly even though I have full tank of gas.

Door ajar light is always on and alarm goes off constantly from it. Seat belt light is always on even when seat belts are in use. Abs light is always on and off. Always issues with heat and coolant.

The contact owns a 2002 Ford Explorer. While driving various speeds, the door ajar warning indicator illuminated, which caused the door locks to consistently lock and unlock. The failure caused the battery to drain and the security alarm to sound. The dealer was not notified of the failure. The failure mileage was 120,000.

The contact owns a 2002 Ford Explorer. While the vehicle was idling at a stop light, the overdrive warning indicator illuminated and the vehicle stalled several times. In addition, the vehicle was difficult to shift into second and third gear as well as drive, which was when the intermittent stall failure occurred. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failures. The vehicle was parked and unable to be driven due to the intermittent failures. The approximate failure mileage was 200,000.

The door locks lock and unlock all by themselves dozens of times in a row while I am driving. With this the dome light flashes off and on and the door ajar light flashes and the interior chime goes off constantly. All of this happens at the same time. This is a huge and common issue with thousands of forum posts by other owners who have spend countless $$ at mechanic's to no avail. This can cause wrecks at night it is very distracting. Especially the dome light. Why is Ford ignoring this obvious safety design flaw? liability is yours . . There are too many complaints of this same problem for you to claim you are not aware. If someone gets car jacked while locks are freaking out you might get sued. It happens the most if someone is in passenger front seat.

I just bought my vehicle on 5/17/20 at a lot called grant motors 2744 fowler st fort myers FL, 33901 during the daytime, they keep pushing , and pushing me to buy it took my id to copy we left without my id, had another vehicle I wanted to buy but had to go back to grant to get id, when pete started at us again and keep coming down on price, till my brother told me it was worth it to buy it, so I did, well during the day in bright sunshine you couldn't see the taillights, nor the dashboard lights, and as driving it home turned on radio to listen to it , all's it would do is flicker, wouldn't change stations, wouldn't do nothing at all, and they put a carfax folder on my dash for me to read at home , that is when I seen the info about the recalls and figured it had something to do with my lights outside and in the dash and the stereo not working at all. Them my brother said he wondered why they continued to drop the price to way more then they first asked for as if they new ahead of time the issues and didn't tell us about any of it. So could someone please let me know what is going on , I now have nothing to drive and no money to buy another I'm old raising two grandbabies one with autism , the other with bipolar please help me out. Sitting in walmart parking lot, and in motion to go home family had to stay behind me to get home safely,.

I was driving my Ford on the highway and the next thing I know my feet were really hot and black smoke started coming up. Then the black smoke started coming from the engine and I nearly crashed trying to get to the edge of the highway before the fire took over the whole front of the car. Luckily the fire department was right there for another accident. It was incredibly disturbing experience. Luckily my 3 small children were not in the car.

Two weeks ago for no reason my air bags deployed while I was driving. I contacted Ford and couldn't get any help from them at all. I was leaving work in virginia.

Both rear coil springs broke. Replaced front and rear wheel bearings replaced ball joints replaced transmission has now failed and is now undependable. May fail with out warning no accidents, any of the above could have resulted in an accident Ford is aware of all of the mentioned problems and refuses to rectify the problems. This is a wide spread problem with all 2002 Ford Explorers.

Tl-the contact owns a 2002 Ford Explorer. The contact stated that the door ajar warning light illuminated while the doors was closed. As a result, the contact mentioned that the battery became inoperable due to the failure. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The failure mileage was 155,000. Ss.

My alarm system go off all time I don't know what to do.

The consumer stated the home fire hazard created by faulty design of non ul approved personal snow plow use for SUV manufactured by western products. Snow plow electric motor was unfused and overheated not responding to the comman controller shorting out and causing a serious expensive fire.

Alarm started going off and the back gate door became unlocked without anyone being in or near the SUV Saturday night June 14,2014. It continued off and on every twenty minutes, then ten minutes. This was at night about seven o'clock. It stopped. The next day on Sunday after coming back from a religious meeting it started going off again with an error message stating that the rear back door was open. It was and I didn't open it. I opened and closed every door after using the panic button to stop the alarm. It starts with the lights coming on in the front of the SUV, then the alarm will start beeping very loudly without stopping. This goes on for about a good hour every day since with you going out there to turn it off with the panic button. I did some research to find out what is making this happen and I was amazed and shocked at how many 2002 Ford Explorers and other Ford cars, trucks, and suvs has this problem. It is a very dangerous problem because no one knows how to stop it and it ends up with you having to leave your doors unlocked to stop the alarm from going off and killing your battery. I have limited resources and I want to know why Ford has not addressed this problem since it affects so many people. I don't wish to die before something is done about this dangerous problem. I don't want my family or me worrying about my safety because if anyone finds out my SUV is unlocked, I could be accosted, or robbed or killed and nothing will be done about it because the auto insurance people say your car has to be locked. Please address this dangerous problem with Ford since no one else seems to care because I know for a fact the Ford people don't. By the way it going on now! thank you.

I have a 2002 Ford Explorer and it has not been wrecked and I had the light that come on in my dash and they said that my seat belt pretentioner was gone in my seat belt.

It is having trouble shifting from 2nd to 3rd gear. Engine revs up to and over 4,000rpms and slams into the gears.

The 2002 Ford Explorer has a design flaw such that the rear panel cracks. When moisture gets in it causes electrical problems. The six problems experiences on this Explorer are as follows: 1) false "door ajar" indicator 2) rear window wiper no longer worked 3) dead battery 4) back-up warning signals no longer work 5) rear window can no longer open 6) brake lights won't turn off even after the engine is turned off. We had to disconnect the battery and take it to the dealership the next day.

I bought a used 2002 Ford Explorer in April of this year at a used car lot. It was a beautiful blue SUV in remarkable good condition. I had it four months, and it caught on fire while at a stop sight on my way home from a shopping strip twenty miles from my home. It started smoking and while I was fumbling for my purse to get my cell phone to call for help, it caught fire and bystanders on the thoroughfare pulled me forcefully from the car, and then called the fire department. It was a total loss when the entire hood caught fire and melted. My garage mechanic, who had just seen the car, told me that he could see no reason why it would have caught fire. Can you help me?.

At approximately 12:30 pm, a brief rain shower began and the windshield wipers failed to operate. After replacement of the wiper motor, and significant troubleshooting, it is likely that the gem module is defective. There had been several days of light, moderate, and heavy rain preceding this issue, during which the automobile was not driven. After this incident, the door-ajar light stays on, the automatic door locks do not work, and there are other electrical issues.

My power steering stuck caused a wreck!!.

My Ford Explorer has had so many ridiculous problems. This one is extremely inconvenient. The car has trouble shifting gears, it spins from 1st to 2nd gear and then I have to let go of the accelerator for it to shift again, it skips 3rd gear altogether and jerks into fourth after pressing and depressing the accelerator a series of times. Once it's in 4th gear, it doesn't go past 50 mph. My mechanic says his monitor detected a faulty solender and the entire pack has to be replaced, but that may not be the only problem. If that doesn't do the trick (even though it needs to be replaced regardless) he will have to open the transmission and possibly rebuild or replace some of the parts. I have encountered hundreds of other 2002 Ford Explorer owners with the same problem. Aside from this, I have a list of other dangerous issues that this car has had and that has endangered my family's and my life numerous times: - gear shift breaking off the steering column as I shifted from reverse to drive in the middle of a busy intersection. - ignition cylinder/switch breaking - possible spontaneous explosion recall related to the cruise control - rear latch breaking and inability to use the rear latch. - electrical system failure - doors not closing properly & draining the battery - faulty alarm system - faulty temperature gauge and radiator - Ford not allowing customers to buy just the parts needed for replacement and repair and forcing their customers to purchase entire packages only in order to get the necessary parts at extremely high prices. Ford should be incriminated for selling these vehicles knowing full well that they are flooded with life threatening issues to their customers.

While driving down the road my airbag light comes on. On occasion I am just thankful that my air bag has not gone off yet. Also while driving my door ajar light & dome lights come on.

The interior lights occasionally flicker when all doors are shut securely. Also the door ajar light will flicker at times as well. The alarm goes off for no reason and usually it is in the middle of the night and I am pretty sure it is related to the door ajar malfunction. There is no way to disable the factory alarm so I have had to leave my car unlocked at night just to keep it from going off and waking up the neighbors. Also we have a crack on the lift gate just below the rear window. You can see this is a common issue by looking at other Explorers around town. I have really enjoyed the Explorer up until now but it does bother me that these two issues are very common yet Ford won't issue a recall to fix these issues.

Fords taillight/stop switch illuminates the brake lights, is used to disengage the cruise control and is used to enable the operator to be able to put the vehicle into gear once the brake pedal is depressed. Roughly a year ago I had some intermittent issues with trying to disengage the cruise when using the brakes plus I had trouble taking the vehicle out of park without having to step on the brake multiple times. Lastly having a friend follow me home I was told my brakes lights did not always illuminate when I was slowing down or at a complete stop! going back to my local Ford dealer I bought a replacement switch that had instructions to cut the oe's plug off of their harness and to hard wire the new switch in it's place as Ford had experienced some "issues" with those original components. Just 13 mo's later I had the same problem but this time it failed completely so the vehicle was locked in park in my driveway. Having seen recalls on several other Ford and Mercury products for a similar problem and expected Ford to give me a free replacement. However, after entering my VIN # they said there were no recalls but they would reduce their normal price from $93. 44 to $76. 00 as their compensation. Contacting my local napa supplier I bought another switch from them for just $44. 49 which resolved my problem for even less money. I returned to the dealer to report my finding and strongly suggested that they contact their Ford rep. As I believe this brake switch issue is a bigger problem then Ford is aware of or has owner up to knowing about. I was actually lucky to have the switch fail at my home as had I been on the road I could very well have been rear-ended due to my brakes lights not coming on. I question if Ford will ever take my warning seriously so I felt obligated to pass this information along to an independent source.

The contact owned a 2002 Ford Explorer. The contact stated that the vehicle was parked at an independent repair shop when it caught on fire. The vehicle was destroyed. The contact was informed that the fire originated due to a wire under the dashboard. The manufacturer was not made aware of the failure. The failure and current mileages were 160,000.

Alarm goes off when set and no one is around, cruise control does not always work, light inside do not turn off and sometimes do not turn on, radio does not turn off when opening the front doors, but will turn off when back doors are opened.

None of the windows will work, they were operating properly and just quit. This vehicle is unsafe to drive, in an emergency, (such as a crash). The occupants of the vehicle could become trapped in the vehicle because the windows would not operate. If a fire occurred the results could be tragic. Ford is aware of this problem along with several other problems on this vehicle. Yet they choose not to repair or replace any of the known defective components. My vehicle has a lot of miles on it, but this problem along with other problems on this vehicle happens on lower mileage vehicles also.

Door ajar light and beeping sensor is always going off, causing the doors to unlock while driving and also causing the inside dome light to turn on and off. Must drive at night without instrument lights, including speedometer, as dome light stays on.

I have a 2002 Ford Explorer that is in the shop right now with a torn down engine. I went out to start it one morning and it had a hard start then it started ticking. Come to find out it the timing chain. From what I have read online it is a very common complaint and I am really surprised that this truck has not been recalled again for this problem. I am having to pay for something that Ford made a mistake on. The pulley on the truck is plastic, and it is failing. I also have problems with my electrical parts on it. The lights inside will stay on after I turn it off and get out and if I turn on my rear defrost my truck dings and says door adjar. . . . . This truck is awful.