Firestone tires and suv roll overs, what did we learn?

I own a exteded body cargo van now and want to air up the tires and look over trhe front end, etc and tires conditions before driving it.

A few weeks before I bought it someone rolled the passenger version near where my folks live and I think its fairly common knowledge 15 passenger vans are unsafe and prone to roll over anyway.

What I was wondering was, what tire pressure should I use? I think from what I heard on tv, if you used the tire printed rated max pressure you were fine. If you used the pressure on the door panel inside the drivers door it would over heat, fail and come apart.

From my experience, Ive yet to hear of a tire fail from over inflation, but tones from underinflation.

What should I do?

THanks

The Firestone/Explorer thing was a combination of what should be non-issues. Ford recommend very low tire pressures from the factory, along the lines of 24/28? or something to that degree. By itself that is fine, but when tires slowly loose air, down beloe 20 PSI you can have issues. When a tire is inflated to 40, what's loosing 5 lbs, not much.
Then the fact that SUV's are NOT CARS. They have a higher center of gravity and you must drive them accordingly. The biggest problem people have is if they have a blowout, they freak out, and over correct the car, causing it to become unstable.
FWIW, my family drove those recall Firestones for ~45K until they were bald and never once did a tire blow out and cause us to crash. We also ended up with a set on our Toyota 4x4, same thing, no problems, then they were recalled and replaced.

With the van, just use common sense. I see you want to make sure the tires are inflated properly. Are they factory tires? If so use the door pressure, if they're not factory then ask the tire shop about the pressure, as many of those vans get outfitted with super high load capacity tires, and 80 PSI might not be needed for your usage. Also don't drive it like a race car and you won't roll over.
Please don't take any of this as a flame, I'm just trying to help spread information

I drive several different VERY heavily loaded Ford E350 vans as part of my job on a daily basis. They are at or very colse to the maximum design weight for the vans. I run those tires at 80psi for the rears, and 65 psi for the fronts. This is the recommended tire pressure for the after-market customizers of these vehicles for the load conditions the vans are setup with. What is recommended for your van will depend upon the loading, the tires, the weather conditions, and the road conditions. The suspension of the van and the spring sets they are equipped with will also have an effect upon handling under different load conditions. If you bought the van used, and it was customized for a particular application, such as an ambulance, conversion van, or handicapped assistance vehicle then you might contact the customizer and get their recommendations. If the loading you are putting on the van is dractically different from it's designed capacity then it will ride much rougher due to less deflection of the springs it has more spring leaves than needed for your application. A spring shop that specializes in heavy duty vehicles might be a good place to check.

As to what we learned...

Uh, Er, how about tire inflation? I would not use less than 35 in a passenger car tire or LIGHT truck. My Ram has 65psi front and 75psi rear.

Also Uh, Er, how about NOT wrenching the wheel and wacking the brakes when a tire fails? I was driving a 1500 gallon tanker bobtail with 800 gallons in it, and lost the right front. All I did when it happened is said "Oh SH*T" as I was gonna have to hike over a mile to call it in. No drama at all. Same deal when the Beast (8K pound 1990 F350 Crew) lost rears. Whether "BANG!" flop flop or "Hiss!" flop flop... no Drama.

Keep them tires up and drive cool. You'll be fine!

35 PSI as a lower level covers most all passenger cars. Only the really light cars will I air them lower, 32...even 28 on Geo's and such.

You should also keep in mind that those vans roll over because their centers of mass are high. Combine that with high speed, a curve, and other driving conditions, and you're more likely to roll over. Drive slow and carefully. A loaded vehicle drives differently than an empty one too.

Oh yeah, I am sure the van is just waiting to get me. I have the upmost respect for it and try to be smooth in my steering, use both hands and take it easy on turns and braking leaving a good 4 second gap between me and anything in front of me.

I am not sure what tires are on it, but according to pep boys it uses from 215 70 r16 to 245 70 r 16 class d load rating. Looks like I need at least one tire and the spare looks like it was never used.

I am going to look them all over, and put the best two up front and moderatedly worser, but still good on the back. I may just buy one to match the spare, but those two on the front. Put two of the others on the back and use the worser one for the spare. I rather buy 4 new tires and balance them, but I dont think I can swing 400 bucks right now.

Ive also entertained the idea of buying a steering stablizer kit from jc whitney. Its one of those shock dampener thingies mounted to the steering assembly like you see on a large jacked up 4x4 truck. Its about 50 bucks.

One thing that worries me is the fact it can grab the wheel out of my hand on bumps, where as my dads mercedes 240d was not like that.

Also talking to my driving instructor, he said to swerve without braking or accelerating for better traction as doing both at the same time puts cross tension on the tires and its more likely to break traction.

Right now the van is empty with just one row of seats behind the front two. I may use it with my friends of a friends carrier service for extra money for delivering medical supplies adnd test tubes.

I think dateline did a test with the passenger model with 15 200 lbs sand bags in the seats and with a safety roll over dolly and sure enough a quick lane change and correction at highway speeds made it go onto two wheels.

On the right side, it has a drivers air bag and its big and weights 4588 lbs.

It might help to have the stiffest shocks on it that you can find. Fords used to be real bad for putting poor shocks on their vehicles. They would not last very long and would have very little damping after a few miles.

Cobb,
In your post you referred to tire size and load range. If it's an F250 or F350 extended or a Chevy/GMC 2500-3500 extended it should take a load range "E" tire not a "D". IF that's the case and you load the vehicle to the door sticker max GVWR or even less but have "D" range instead of "E" then you could easily have a blowout. If a it's an F150 or 1500 then I believe "D" is correct.


Try tirerack.com or a similar site for the correct tire just to be sure.

FWIW I think the Firestone tires were fine. IMO the super light steering on the older Explorers was the main cause of the wrecks.

FYI, 2005 was the last year Chevy and GMC made the 15 pass. vans. For 2006 you can only get a max of 12 pass.

The GM extended vans had longer wheelbases so were more stable than Ford and Dodge, who just tacked on more overhang past the rear wheel. The longer wheelbase improved stability at the cost of increasing the turning radius. And the new vans use software in the form of stability control algorithms to prevent rollovers.

With older vans, the only available solutions are mechanical: the popular Roadmaster setup http://www.roadmasterok.com/van_safety.htm is probably not as effective as adding dual rear wheels http://www.publiccitizen.org/autosafety/passengervan/index.cfm but at least it won't widen an already large vehicle.

Personally, I'd just leave it as-is. There are millions of such vans on the road and a cargo van doesn't have all that heavy glass and passengers up high, so it should be fine unless you strap cargo or an air conditioner on the roof.

bjn70, the suspension seems fairly firm and little bounce, but the former owner threw in some used gas charged shocks he never got around to installing them. Going to look and check, switch those while under there.

DieselDave, it is, that website also said a minimun rating of D.

bfg9000, thanks, no plans to install a roof top ac unit. Interesting device to prevent it from rolling. I didnt notice much of a roll to me when driving it, then again I didnt push it. Interesting how putting weight after the rear wheels makes it worse. I had planned on putting my tool box and some other junk in the very back just to get more weight over the rear for more traction.

When I was a teenager I did a lot of jobs. One job was to load an Econoline van with over a ton of milk and deliver it 100 miles away. I didn't know anything about tires and loading and pressures. The outbound trip was very hairy. The roads were slick with dew at 3:30 am and the van wandered all over the road. After unloading I checked the tires, and they appeared to be fine.

The next day I checked the tires before setting out, pumping them up to the recommended pressure based on the sticker (Door? Glove box? I don't recall where the sticker was) since they were a few pounds low. The outbound ride was still scary, and I had to keep the speed down to 45 MPH to keep it in control.

It was not until my second week on the job that I checked the tires AFTER loading. The (roughly) 3,000 pounds of milk had squashed the tires down so low that the rims were almost at ground level. I called the boss to find out what to do and found that they had retrofitted it with heavy duty suspension and tires, and that they should be 85 PSI, not 35.

OK, the fun part. If you are not carrying a load, 35 -45 PSI may be just great and provide a better (smoother) ride. If you are carrying a significant load you will want to pump up the tires to compensate.

I don't remember the formula, but it was something like "contact area (in sq inches)* PSI * 4" has to exceed the weight of the car plus load.

Daniel

That sounds like part of the arguement when the stuff hit the fan a few years ago about the tire blow outs. Firestone tested with their ratings and it was fine, where as ford used their ratings and it failed.

I know with my experience with wheelchairs, Ive found the tire max recommended pressure performed way better than the wheelchair recommendations for tire pressure. I was on the upper end of the weight scale, plus the tires seem to have a slow leak and I hate to top them off weekly.

I dont know what they recommend at the shop I work at, but it seems to vary from 50, 65 up to 175 psi depending on size and configuration.

Thanks, just wanted to get a heads up on this since it is a large cargo van, a ford and possibility has firestone tires on it. This is my first real time driving, possible speeds up to 65mph for 38 miles, 90 minute trip at 57 miles back home in all. Afterwards just 11 mile round trip in the city to and from work at upwards to 35mph. Turns out I was wrong at my daily commute, I thought it was 22 and not 11miles.

I am going to this weekend flush the cooling system, replace the thermostat, if that doesnt fix the cold problem, check and or replace the sender. Then get down on all 4s with the floor jack and some jack stands, look the tires over, see how many need replacing, check and air them up, swap out the shocks, shake the front end and replace any loose parts and make sure I have a usable spare that holds air.

Well, the van does lean a little in turns, but its rather rock solid. I take on and off ramps at 45mph and frequently take turns in the city at 25-35. Everything loose in my van flys to the other side, so got to keep it in a pocket or on the floor.

Ive even swerved at 65 on the highway to avoid a hay animal and it was fine, no fear of loosing control. Infact I enjoy what little highway driving I do as its soo smooth and the van doesnt wonder like it does on the city streets.

The only down side Ive had was with two lane roads. I find its easy to get the edge of the van off the edge of the road and it can take 15 degrees of steering off center to keep it on the road while riding the edge and to come on the road. I can see where it would be easy to over steer in that situation and roll it, cross the center, etc. In those cases I just let off the brake and gas and just steer it gently.

I do introspect how having 16 200lb passengers squirming and wiggling, etc could make it a hand full to drive.

I started with 65lbs of air in the tires and went to 80. 80 is awesome, they do not look flat and it rolls better.

It's interesting that the noise was made about the explorer/firestone combo and no comparisons were made between that and the Mercury Mountaineer. Except for bells, whistles, badges, and tires(?) they are identical.

I can't rent a trailer from Hertz to tow with my explorer, even though it is the one featured in the last poster I saw, but I can rent if I own a Mountainer.

We learned to check our tire pressure often and in case of a blowout do not slam on the brakes and/or turn the steering wheel.

The Bridgestone / Firestone issue was a bit larger than noted here. IMHO, Bridgestone and Ford drove the price to build the tires so low that they were likely to fail under conditions common to US consumers.

I remember hearing testimony from another tire maker (Michelin or Pirelli) that $ 5 more of rubber quality would have prevented the incidents / deaths.

I will not do business with firms who steal basic rights (Sony) or cut quality to the point of causing deaths (Bridgestone / Firestone).

My suggestion is to consider tires which exceed the demands of the job. There are plenty of good quality tires out there for only a little more money.

Sorry for the rant.

Interesting, considering that Hertz was a wholly owned subsidiary of Ford Motor Company until the beginning of this year.

Mike Painter said:

I can't rent a trailer from Hertz to tow with my explorer, even though it is the one featured in the last poster I saw, but I can rent if I own a Mountainer.

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I always run my tires at max PSI that's printed on the tire. Reason being is I look at how the tire wears, how my rolling resistance feels (affects accerelation and mpg) and how much sidewall flex I get. Running at the car's specs has always resulted in heavy wear on the outside edges of the tires (meaning too low air), and the sidewalls are scuffed up from rolling under themselves. Airing them up to max tire psi, and those problems are gone and acceleration is more peppy. Also for some reason (I'm guessing more tire is contacting the ground) aired up higher they don't spin as easy/burn out as much.

Add to the fact too that factory ratings don't take in account that you may use a different brand/model tires. For exampe, my previous tires had a stiff sidewall and were 35 psi max. Now my new ones are 44psi max with less stiff of a sidewall. Same tire size. Now factory car recommended PSI is 30. If I were to run 30psi on the 44max tires, they would be WAY under-inflated.

Me too. Have run my tires at maximum rated pressure for the last 30 some-odd years since the '73 "Oil Crisis". Average life for a set of tires is around 70,000 miles (except Michelins where there is plenty of tread but the sidewalls wear out soley from age after 8-10 years.) With the lower profile larger wheel size tires that have a lower estimated tread life, I'm still getting 55-60K miles on a set of tires.

The only downside, for those like a soft ride, is that the ride does become a little harsher. If you drive a truck or truck based SUV, you'll know it when you reach a speed bump.

IsaacHayes said:

I always run my tires at max PSI that's printed on the tire.

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