during a drive, we knew what we were smelling.

[Mike Mercury]

apparently not pharts either...

(edited for length)

Ford Explorer Owners Say Their SUVs Are Making Them Sick
Migraine headaches, fatigue and dizziness were sidelining Bert Henriksen several times a week. Evenings were the worst, after his 30-mile commute home in his 2017 Ford Explorer.

His behavior grew erratic. He’d get angry over minor things. “We were getting scared that he had some kind of a brain problem,” said his wife, Megan.

An answer came last March in a phone call from his doctor: A blood test revealed that Henriksen had been exposed to toxic levels of carbon monoxide gas. But how? The result was consistent with someone who’d been in a house fire, his doctor said, but Henriksen hadn’t been through anything like that.

He says his prime suspect was parked in his driveway.

Henriksen is among more than 3,000 Ford Explorer owners who’ve complained to Ford or federal regulators that they suspect exhaust fumes have seeped into their sport-utility vehicles’ cabins. Many fear carbon monoxide gas may have made them ill, and dozens of drivers have complained to regulators that the company’s recommended fix wasn’t effective. Explorer owners have filed more than 50 legal claims nationwide against Ford. And some police departments in the U.S. said in 2017 that Explorers used as cruisers were exposing officers to carbon monoxide.

Nauseated, Sick and Dizzy
Explorer owners have complained to federal officials about various symptoms they attribute to exhaust fumes and carbon monoxide.

The complaints, which cover vehicles built between 2010 and 2018, carry high stakes for the second-largest U.S. automaker. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began investigating drivers’ claims in 2016, then expanded the probe a year later after saying it had “preliminary evidence” of elevated carbon monoxide levels in some driving scenarios. If NHTSA finds a safety defect, Ford would face the prospect of recalling more than 1 million vehicles, costing perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ford, which in January debuted a redesigned Explorer for the 2020 model year, says there’s nothing wrong with the previous version. “All of our testing to date has shown these vehicles are safe,” company spokesman Mike Levine said in a statement. “Ford’s investigation has not found carbon monoxide levels that exceed what people are exposed to every day.”

NHTSA’s task includes evaluating both what might be causing the alleged defect and what sort of health risk is posed to occupants by any pollutants in the cabin, a subject that global experts have just begun to study in recent years.


Ford’s response to the claims has served to deepen some drivers’ mistrust. The company’s first attempt to quell the concerns—through repair instructions the company provided to dealerships in 2012 to respond to customers’ complaints—was followed by repeated updates and several additional instructions. Ford said it’s confident in its most recent repair campaign, which was offered in 2017 and is still in effect. Complaints have dropped dramatically since this latest effort, the company said, and the fix “effectively resolves the matter.”

And yet, for drivers like Bert Henriksen, it hasn’t. He now drives with a portable carbon monoxide detector in his Explorer, and he said it occasionally shows elevated levels of the gas. He invited Bloomberg News along for a ride.

There was very little sign of carbon monoxide during a 76-mile test drive near Henriksen’s home in South Lyon, Michigan, in January. One of two detectors in his vehicle registered only tiny amounts of the gas. The other showed zero.

“That’s the problem—it’s so sporadic,” he said. Ford twice sent engineers to examine his Explorer, Henriksen said, and they found no problem.

Explorer owner Dallas Haselhorst of Hays, Kansas, had a similar experience. Ford’s engineers twice found no issue with his vehicle, he said, even though his own carbon monoxide detector—which he attached to a third-row headrest after his wife said she smelled exhaust fumes—detected elevated levels every few weeks.

“It was a very frustrating experience,” Haselhorst said. “We knew what we were smelling.” Weeks would go by without any exhaust fumes or carbon monoxide readings and then both would appear, seemingly at random, he said. Haselhorst pressed his case nonetheless, and the company bought back his Explorer in December 2017.

In Henriksen’s case, Ford offered to buy his Explorer back after he sued the company under Michigan’s lemon law. He’s in the process of closing that deal now.

As of mid-2016, Ford had bought back roughly 100 Explorers from complaining drivers, according to federal records. “We have made buyback offers to certain customers as goodwill gestures,” Ford’s Levine said.

One came from a Ford manager who was leasing an Explorer. Company engineers tested his vehicle and confirmed what they described as a slight exhaust odor under specific driving conditions: full-throttle acceleration while the climate-control system was in “recirculation” mode. Ford described those circumstances as outside “typical customer usage,” according to a letter the company sent NHTSA in August 2016.

Using recirculation mode created negative air pressure inside the cabin, which could draw in outside gases through gaps in the rear of the Explorer’s body, Ford’s letter said.

That letter didn’t address any potential flaws in the Explorer’s exhaust system itself, but records the company turned over to NHTSA indicate that Ford dealers found exhaust system leaks in roughly 50 Explorers between December 2011 and April 2016—all on vehicles with fewer than 100,000 miles.

That’s a “fairly high failure rate,” said Ed Kim, a senior analyst with industry consulting firm AutoPacific Inc. “These components should not be failing at such a high rate prior to reaching 100,000 miles.”

The leaks were mostly found in the exhaust manifold and the catalytic converter, which in the Explorer are welded together to form a single part. Problems identified in the records included porous welds, cracks and poor fits with other components that allowed exhaust to escape before exiting the tailpipe. The reports indicate that installing new parts resolved owners’ complaints.

In a statement, Ford said its testing hasn’t found exhaust leaks “to be a contributor to the concern.”

Regardless of the cause, Explorers’ exhaust issues made national headlines in 2017: Police officers who used Explorers in California and Massachusetts tested positive for exposure to carbon monoxide. And police in Austin, Texas, pulled almost 400 so-called Explorer Police Interceptors from their fleet over carbon monoxide concerns.

Ford says the police problems differ from civilian complaints and stem from after-market modifications to the vehicles—like holes drilled in their bodies to allow for special wiring.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers argue otherwise. “It is an Explorer defect issue, period,” said Brian Chase, whose client, Brian McDowell, a former police officer, is suing Ford. McDowell passed out behind the wheel of an Explorer Police Interceptor at almost 50 miles per hour in 2015. He veered across several lanes of traffic before crashing into a tree. Ford has denied responsibility for McDowell’s accident or his injuries, according to court papers filed in the suit.

The deadly effects of exposure to high carbon monoxide levels are well

In its August 2016 letter to NHTSA, Ford said the carbon monoxide it had found was well below established limits, but it cited an air-quality standard that experts say they can’t verify. Ford’s letter said the “Global Vehicle Interior Air Quality Standard” allows for continuous exposure to 25 ppm for an hour. But Google searches for that phrase showed no official use of it anywhere—except by Ford in its letter to NHTSA. A spokesman for Underwriters Laboratories, a U.S.-based product-safety certification company, said its subject experts were also unaware of any standard by that name.

Asked for more information about the standard, Ford didn’t provide any. Instead, its spokesman, Levine, said: “There is no single government standard specifically for vehicle interiors. Like all other automakers, Ford references a variety of government standards, guidelines and sources to ensure the safety of our vehicles.”

James and Faith Cassidy filed a lemon-law complaint against Ford, alleging that a defect in their 2013 Explorer allowed fumes and carbon monoxide to seep into the cabin, making Faith Cassidy ill. In non-binding arbitration, Ford representative Bob Gray testified in January 2015 that the Cassidys couldn’t pursue warranty claims because the company had tried but couldn’t solve the problem.

“It’s a design issue, not a defect,” Gray told the arbitrator, according to a transcript of the proceeding. “The fact that it’s being reported across the large number of vehicles would show that it’s not a defect in this particular vehicle.”

Ford now says Gray was a contractor who misspoke, and that there is no design problem with the Explorer.

Meanwhile, proposed class-action suits have been filed in federal courts in New York State and New Jersey, both on behalf of law enforcement personnel who used Police Interceptor models.

In 2017, a year after NHTSA began investigating the Explorer, the agency started a more in-depth review for a potential safety defect, known as an “engineering analysis.” At that point, the agency said, it had found 2,719 Explorer drivers who’d complained about exhaust seepage to Ford or to the agency.

While NHTSA’s probe and Ford’s repairs have focused on model years up to 2017, more than a dozen drivers of 2018 Explorers have complained to NHTSA about exhaust fumes in their cabins, records show. Ford says it continues to monitor customer complaints, including those lodged with NHTSA, and that customers with concerns should contact their dealer for inspections.

The agency said in 2017 it had no proof that carbon monoxide caused any of the crashes or injuries described in the complaints. NHTSA declined to comment on the progress of its probe, but said it’s testing and inspecting several Explorers driven by consumers and police officers and reviewing crashes involving police Explorers. It’s also monitoring the effectiveness of Ford’s campaign to repair the SUVs, according to a NHTSA statement.

The agency has completed about 90 such engineering analyses on various vehicle models since 2008; more than two-thirds of them resulted in manufacturers issuing recalls, according to the agency’s records.

Recalling the 1.3 million fifth-generation Explorers would be costly, but precise estimates are hard to come by—chiefly because it’s unclear what any fix might entail if NHTSA requires a new one. For context: Ford said in September that it would take a $140 million charge to recall around 2 million F-150s for faulty seatbelt components that could cause fires. In 2017, the company took a $267 million charge to recall 1.3 million F-Series pickup trucks in the U.S., Canada and Mexico to correct faulty door latches.

In Michigan, Bert Henriksen is still waiting to complete his buyback. Meanwhile, he’s driving his Explorer to and from work each day and keeping an eye on the carbon monoxide detector that sits on his dashboard. When it registers, he says, he rolls down the windows.



full version here:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2...ing-them-sick/

[Olustee bus]

typical ford response

[mrvette]

Tell the truth, the ONLY vehicles I have always run on recirc are the convertibles......in fact my '72 has the outside air trap door shut/sealed....because leaves/trash gets into the housing and blocks airflow next to the evap coil.....so I sealed it shut maybe 2 decades ago.....

[snide]

Cops in Massachusetts were complaining of the same thing a couple of years ago.

[Black94lt1]

Originally Posted by snide

Cops in Massachusetts were complaining of the same thing a couple of years ago.

I think there were several areas around the country where police were having issues with the explorers

[Stangkiller]

Cops in our areas are having regular blood tests that show carbon monoxide poisoning. Publically I can not confirm that I may or may not be aware of Ford buying back at least one in a lemon law case.