Wendy, I am so glad no one got hurt yesterday. Our rear axle collapsed in our driveway. This is due to corrosion from the inside out in the ridiculously thin crummy tubing that Ford used in this critical part.

A rear axle should NEVER fail as these do. NEVER even in a junk yard! As a registered professional engineer and former member of the SAE, I am embarrassed that this sort of failure can even happen in an American vehicle. Whether it is at 100,000 mile or 500,000 mi.

This is an extremely dangerous sort of failure.

Ford however has no response other than to say the vehicle is out of warranty.  Your choices are to either scrap the van or to spend ANOTHER $1100 or so to replace this ridiculous axle.

Suggestion: make sure whoever replaces the rear axle also replaces the drag/torsion link bushings. My local Ford dealer did not replace the silly little rubber bushings and even used the rusty old hardware.  The bushings soon thereafter failed and the new axle starts rattling around every time you start or stop causing you to spend even more money with Ford....

Because of Ford's totally inadequeate (stonewall) response to this we will never again buy any Ford vehicle. Not that they care. this is a faulty design, it has nothing to do with the roads in your or any other state. And as more of these vehicles age, there will be more of these failures.

Again, glad to hear no one was hurt in your episode on I-80. One of these days a family or families will not be so lucky.

Jim at Dawn