Somebody is going to get killed.
Just a heads up to anyone that owns or rides in a 2000 Ford Windstar van.
I own one, bought it new and am pretty much the sole driver and it has about 80K miles on it.
Friday morning I got in it and started to pull out of the driveway.( I’m glad it happened on Friday because on Thursday I was on I-88 going 75 MPH.) I heard a loud ‘BAM’ sounded like a ball joint popped.
What happened without warning, was a complete, total, and catastrophic failure of the front right lower control arm bracket, which results in loss of drive train response and steering response. The bracket is welded to a sub-frame assembly called the engine cradle. The bracket broke not the weld, which as the control arm moves away from the frame allows the drive alxe to disengage from the transmission and the wheel/axle assembly to move in any directions that it wants.
After a little on-line searching, I found that this is not an isolated incident. Monday morning I will make a complaint report to nhtsa. I did not check for reports on any other model years, but would not be surprised to find more problems with this design.
This defect is going to kill someone, please spread this warning!
Rich
Replies
Rich
I drove a rental Windstar back around 2000 for a day.
I hit a puddle of water at 60 mph and the Windstar pulled so bad to the right it almost thru me off the highway.
Sheer luck I recovered in time.
Scared the Sh.... out of me.
I've never had that happen like that with another vehicle in the same place and puddle.
I bought a Toyota Sienna instead and never had that happen.
I told my wife that it was a death trap waiting to happen.
Jeff
Another reason to avoid Windstars, the V6 engine has big problems. My machine shop guy used to get 14 of those IN A WEEK! I had the same problems with a Taurus. YMMV.
That said, I had two Ford Aerostars and I enjoyed those. Same drivetrain as the Ford Ranger. Too bad they discontinued them.
Jasper57
is it just the 2000? I have a 2005
J.
I did not look up any other model years.
You can look at complaints on 'allworldauto.com' or on the nhtsa complaint data base.
I don't know if they changed the design after 2000 or not.
one poster on the allworld site said he found 12 similiar problems on 1998 to 2001 windstars.
Rich