Ford Steps Up Tire Battle
Firestone tires recalled by Ford Motor Co. last month had weak bonds between steel belts and inconsistencies in the size of components, increasing the risk of cracking and losing tread, a top Ford executive said Thursday.
In the latest broadside in the feud between the country’s No. 2 auto manufacturer and tire maker Bridgestone/Firestone Inc., Ford said the uneven components could lead to heat buildup and eventual tire failure.
“To run at a cooler temperature is a tire’s first line of defense against tire failure,” Richard Parry-Jones, Ford’s group vice president for global product development and quality, said at a news conference.
Ford Chief Executive Jacques Nasser and Bridgestone/Firestone Chief Executive John Lampe are scheduled to testify before a congressional committee Tuesday about the tires and accidents.
Bridgestone/Firestone claimed Thursday that Ford was using misleading data to justify its current recall. “What they don’t tell you is that data is related to the tires that were involved in the Aug. 9 recall,” spokeswoman Jill Bratina said. “We took responsibility for those tires and took them off the road.”
Examining hundreds of tires over the last eight months, Ford found three main areas that contributed to tire failure: heat buildup, uneven component size and low “peel strength,” or the ability of tires’ two steel belts to resist peeling apart.
The size of a circular wedge that runs around the circumference of the tire, strengthening it in turns and cornering, varied among identical tires made at different Firestone plants, Parry-Jones said.
The wedges in similar Goodyear tires, also sold on Explorers from 1995 to ‘97, were thicker than all the Firestone tires examined, which came from four Firestone factories and had wedges of varying thicknesses and probably was one of the reasons for tires overheating, he said.
The peel strength of Firestone tires also was lower than similar Goodyears, which showed a better peel strength after three years than Firestones did when they were new, Parry-Jones said.
Ford points to only two known claims of tread separation among some 3 million Goodyear tires sold on Explorers in 1995 to ‘97, whereas a similar number of Firestones sold on Explorers during the same period registered 1,183 claims of such separation.
Federal regulators have linked Firestone tires included in last summer’s initial recall of 6.5 million tires to at least 174 deaths and hundreds of injuries in rollover accidents. Last month Ford said it was voluntarily recalling twice that number of different Firestone tires on Ford and Mazda vehicles because of concerns they might fail in the future.
Lampe said Ford is continuing to turn a blind eye to possible design defects in the Explorer that lead it to roll over when tires unravel.
“I’m disappointed they’ve elected not to get to the real bottom of this, not share information on vehicles and that they continue to try to divert attention by trying to put all the blame on the tires,” he said.
