Carrier/rack problems of the 2000 Ford Windstar

Rear axle cracked.

I like to bring to your attention a still ongoing life-threatening safety issue with the Ford Windstar 2000 rear axle. As you know, the Windstar's were recalled for this safety issue in 2010. My particular car was reinforced with 2 brackets under safety recall 10s13 at the most critical part of the axle and I think in the area were the brackets are installed the axle will hold up even with a lot of corrosion present. The problem is the axle is cracking just 1 inch to the right beside the reinforced bracket in my case the driver's side of the car. The only reason I found out about this, a few weeks ago I had my car serviced and I did an inspection on the axle and that's when I found that big crack half way around the axle!!! that same day I went to my Ford dealer (bill brown) to bring it to their attention, unfortunately for the service manager this was not a recall matter anymore and he had no interest of inspecting the axle without charging me $ 125. 00. Naturally I refused to pay that amount.

I bought my van used just a month before I noticed this defect, I came outside to get in the van and noticed the rear wheels leaning slightly inward at the top. My son in law inspected it further to discover that the rear axle had bent. Upon further investigation we discovered that there had been a recall on all Ford Windstar models between 1998 and 2003. We notified Ford and they told us that this vehicle had already been recalled and repaired in 2011 and the repair had a 12 month warranty. My son in law checked and sure enough there were repair sleeves wrapped around the rear axle at both ends. This repair did not fix the original problem because the rear axle had cracked right under where the repair sleeve was placed and had bent bad, bad enough that both rear tires were rubbing the inner fenders at the top and the van was sitting much lower in the rear end than it should have been. Thank god I had noticed the problem before the axle completely cracked in half the rest of the way because there is nothing else holding the rear wheels onto the vehicle and if I was driving the wheel and part of the axle could have flown off to who knows where and possibly killed me and whoever else was in the van. I've had to completely replace the rear axle with another part from another van which is also defective and will soon have to be replaced again. Ford takes no responsibility for this past the original "fix" which was warrantied for only 12 months. The recall was not a good fix and seems to have only been a band aid to keep customers quiet until the warranty on it runs out. I have done research online and found that this is not an isolated incident and in fact has happened to many hundreds of people, coincidentally around the same time as my incident happened.

I was driving and without any warning the van just made a huge sound, and went left to right and back several times. Very scary! I almost lost control of it. I had just left the highway! I managed to slow down and move the van by the side of the street. After full stop, went to look and noticed that the rear axle was almost touching the ground and looked broken in half! I remember the van went thru a recall in 2012 (07-19-2012) and had been taking care by suntrup Ford. I found the papers today about that recall and the invoice from the dealership with the listing of the work done per Ford. My take is that the recall was not done properly or the recall was not demanding enough. The brackets installed did not do the job to make this vehicle safe! I took photos.

Abs light comes on and off while driving, cruise control does not work, speedometer and rmp guage goes crazy and stops working, leaking break fliud but can't seem to locate problem, interior lights flicker on and off, door locks will start going up and down while driving, rear passenger door does not close all the way and will sometime pop out but not completely open while driving, makes noise when turing left I had the rack and pinion changed but that did not solve the problem the noise just got worse.

Work was performed on the sub frame of the 2000 Ford Windstar referenced above on April 16, 2012, as a result of a Ford recall notice, number: 11s16. The recall description is as follows: "corrosion-related fractures of the front lower control arm rear attaching brackets and body mount attachments may occur. A separation of a front lower control arm rear attaching bracket may result in a lower control arm separation. A separation of both front subframe rear body mounts may result in separation of the steering intermediate shaft. Either condition could result in significant loss of steering control, increasing the risk of a crash. " the work done on April 16, 2012 was performed by sheehy Ford in gaithersburg, MD. Who installed new brackets on the sub frame, to prevent the sub frame from breaking and/or eroding. At the time, there was a great deal of advanced rusting on the sub frame. On August 30, 2014, the car was taken back to sheehy Ford, after loud knocking noises could be heard under the hood. Sheehy Ford looked at the car, consulted with their technicians and reported back on September 4, 2014 that the sub frame had rusted through. The sounds coming from the car were due to the unstable sub frame, which holds the parts of the car in place. They also advised the car was unsafe to drive. After an additional review, sheehy Ford concluded that the previous work in April of 2012 was sufficient to hold the sub frame. They have since held fast to their claim that no further "programs" are available to be able to repair the current problem of a rusted sub frame in the car. A complaint was also made through Ford motor company customer service center. They took the complaint and provided a case number 5190828l6x2x4x, but ultimately their decision is the same as sheehy: no other programs are available to cover the cost of any additional repair to the car. 1/5/15.