I was changing the oil on my 2000 F250 when I noticed that 2 of the leaves of the left rear spring were broken. My truck has never been abused or even worked that hard. How could a spring fail? I called Ford customer service asking for their assistance and they claimed that they get very few complaints. I believe that this is a critical safety issue that only shows up after the warranty expires and therefore Ford does not collect data. Text REMOVED by moderator krewat

 

From the Guidelines...which of course you agreed to read upon registration.....


8. Legal Actions .

* You may not use this site to discuss or organize any legal action including, but not limited to, class-actions. FTE does not give legal advice or host legal discussion. If you have any legal questions or concerns, please consult your attorney.

 

Tim, I do not think he was remotely considering any kind of legal action. I think he was just trying to make people aware that us common folk can report these failures to the NTSA. Enough failures and they could turn into a recall.

 

First post...

He is making a point..... The Guideline is clear.

 

I am NOT suggesting any legal action. My limited investigation strongly suggests that this problem is much larger that Ford realizes. If there is a real problem, then it is vital that the NHTSA have the data. It is particularly important to know if this problem has resulted in any accidents or fatalities. I am a degreed Mechanical Engineer and a back yard mechanic for 40 years. I was preparing my truck for a 3000 mile trip with a heavy trailer and found this problem by accident. I can not imagine what would happen if the remaining 2 leaves had failed at Highway speed with 10,000 lbs of trailer behind me. I rarely champion any cause, but my best engineering judgment tells me that this problem is dangerous and occurs much to often. I had hoped to find someone at Ford who would listen but their customer service creates a very effective wall. I am only asking for help in forcing the ostridge to take his head out of the sand. I fear for all of the owners who are not so lucky or well informed. That is why I made this appeal on this forum because the readers here probably have a greater than average understanding of their trucks and could provide intelligent data. I don't want to be a preacher, but I do believe that lives are at stake. Use the power of the internet and provide the data.

 

Keep it within the Guideline's you read....

 

I own a 99 with a broken leaf spring, nothing I'd consider losing sleep over. I just plan to have it changed when I get the helpers put on

 

I've got 249k on my springs, and while they're worn out and sagging (fixed that with air bags) I have no cracks or broken leafs. I've also got 3 other 99-02 super dutys, and 5 05 - 07 super dutys with no cracked or broken springs.

I really don't know how wide spread this spring issue is. I do have an extra set of 99.5 rear springs I'd give you if you didn't live so far away. I'm sure shipping would be cost prohibitive.

 

First, I removed the reference to that agency, for obvious reasons.

Second, I want to say the following, but please understand, I have a smirk on my face, this is to be taken very lightly...

There is a reason any manufacturer puts a time-limit on warranties, not just mileage. Because over time, something will weaken. My '01 has only 30K miles on it, but the fronts are sagging big-time. Because of age. I've stressed the entire truck quite a few times, but nothing like any of the higher-mileage trucks some other guys have here.

I'm surprised I haven't cracked a leaf yet.

Has anyone ever driven the truck? Even for an oil change? One thing will crack rear leaf springs, and that's dropping it into gear with your foot on the go-pedal. The axle wrap-up will crack it pretty quick. I know The oil monkey could be to blame.

Are the two leaves both broken at the same spot?

Is the entire leaf pack rusty, or are just the leaves that broke rusty around the edges?

Is the other side rusty too?

Any work ever done on the truck? Did you buy it brand-new?

There's all sorts of reasons for it, besides abuse, and most of them point to a manufacturing defect. But 8 or 9 years later, it's not unheard of...

 

TechGeek....not sure where you live, but I have an extra set of rear springs just laying around. Depending on where you live, cost of shipping could be cheap...or could be crazy. Where are you located?

 

Thanks for the offer of the springs, but I will be changing the springs early this week while my son is home from school so there is not time to ship them. Also, if I am doing this much work, then I prefer to do it with new parts.
It is not obvious why my original message was changed. The "agency that must not be named" was created specifically to investigate this sort of problem. Reporting information is not taking legal action. Only the "agency" has the authority to do that.
The database of all recalls since 1966 is available for download. There are hundreds recalls that have been issued for springs and related parts. This include defective welds, nuts that crack, springs that break, Bad heat treat on bolts, and improper torque. In all of these cases, the agency ruled that the failure could lead to loss of directional control and an increased chance of a crash. The broken spring problem is certainly equal to many of these.
The design of springs is one area of machine design where the equations actually do predict the springs characteristics. The service life of a spring is mainly determined by the maximum stress it sees on each cycle. The spring in your ball point pen is designed to last 1000 cycles. The springs on your garage door last about 10,000 cycles. As the max stress is reduced, the service life increases exponentially until you get to what is considered infinite life. This is what automotive springs are designed to. Think about the rocker arm springs in the engine. At 2000 RPM, a spring will complete 1 million cycles in 1000 hours or about 65,000 miles. We all know that they last much longer then that.
The manufacturer's warranty is intended only to cover initial failures. The reliability of all complex systems follow the "bathtub curve". If you graph the number of failures vs time they start high and then decrease. Then there is a flat area with much fewer failures, then here is an increase as the system reaches the end of its life. However, parts of the system need to be designed for infinite life because a failure would be dangerous. If they can't reasonably be designed for infinite life then they need to be replaced on a regular schedule. This is how airplanes keep their remarkable safety record and 40 year old aircraft are still flying.

Springs can fail for several reasons but the basic ones are improper design, use outside of design parameters, or the part was not manufactured correctly. I have no reason to believe that the design is bad. And my truck is completely stock. I have an automatic transmission so I can't just dump the clutch and wrap the spring. This leaves us with the more likely cause of a problem in manufacturing. If there was an error in the metallurgy or heat treat, then he springs strength would be reduced and they would not achieve infinite life. Corrosion can cause a failure but this is within the design parameters. There is no warning in my owner's manual against driving in winter. My 95 Subaru Legacy was recalled in the northern "salt belt" states because the paint on the coil spring wasn't good enough and the spring could corrode and fail. There were reports of the broken spring blowing the tire causing "loss of vehical control".

We have the right to expect that springs don't fail unless it has been misused. I came to this forum looking for support but I see no evidence of that. I will continue to pursue this until it is determined if there a real problem or not. However, if I am the only voice, it probably will not get the attention it needs. I hope that there are people that have made a report without making a post here.
Thanks for reading all of this. This will be my last response.

 

Too bad you're running off and leaving so soon. I don't know what kind of support you were looking for. All we can do is share our own experiences and those of others we have read about here. As I mentioned above I've never had an issue with cracked springs. We're not debating that your springs are cracked, we just haven't seen this to be a common occurrence.

Now the CPS issue that we've all complained about for years is another story. Perhaps if we had been more proactive like you are trying to do this recall would have come about much sooner.

I hope you change your mind and spend some time browsing around here. There's a lot of knowledge to learn. Besides it would be interesting to hear what response you get back. Good luck on your spring swap.

 

If you see no evidence of support you are completely BLIND. Chris.....you are much nicer then me I guess. TechGeek.....you have a total of three posts here. THREE! And you have had two of us pretty much offer you FREE springs to help you out in your problem, if that's not support......then I have no clue what is!!?? I have been wrong plenty of times, and so have lots of others on here, that's what the forum is about. You ask questions......you get answers.......you don't whine when things don't go your way either. You seem like a very intelligent person, you should know we are all here to help, but you're not going to get any by shunning it away. NUFF SAID

 

There is a difference between looking for support for a problem, and trying to gain "support" for a personnal crusade. If you had come here trying to gather realistic information about your problem, you would have found a ton of people willing to help answer questions; however, you came here looking to gather an army of people willing to take up your banner and join the good fight against the faulty spring gods over at Ford.

You did not ask and questions, you only gave statements. You had already reached your conlcusions and decided a course of action. It is too bad, someone with your obvious intelligence would have been a good asset to this community.

 

I specifically told you why, as did IB_Tim. Maybe you missed it.

What "broken spring problem" ? You are the first in a long while even ASKING about it, and the answer usually is "it can happen".

And we have no way to determine how many cycles your springs went through. Do you? Does Ford?

Wanna bet?

Exactly. But is it a widespread problem? I haven't heard about it. Not that I know it all, see my signature ... I don't even remember the last time someone complained about a broken spring.