AtWhatMileage
Suspension · 53 owner reports

Other suspension problem on the 1999 Ford Explorer

6 crashes 4 injuries 10 of the 53 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.

Only 3 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 53
With an odometer reading 3
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 0%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 10
Typical repair $350–$2,000
What it means when it happens Moderate
Rank among this year's problems 10th

When other suspension problem gets reported

There are 53 reports of other suspension problem on the 1999 Ford Explorer, 3 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 100,000 miles. It is the 10th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 3 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 120,000 miles — —

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Of these reports, 6 a crash and 4 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.

Putting it right typically runs $350–$2,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 24 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2023, at a median of 2,000 miles, and latest on the 2001 at 165,000 miles.

By volume the 2002 carries the most reports, with 203; the 1999 has 53. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

Median
  1. 1996 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 153k
  2. 1997 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 86k
  3. 1998 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 98k
  4. 1999 (this one) 120k
  5. 2000 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 107k
  6. 2001 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 167k
  7. 2002 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 80k
  8. 2003 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 81k
  9. 2004 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 64k
  10. 2005 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 69k
  11. 2006 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 55k
  12. 2007 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 33k
  13. 2008 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 76k
  14. 2009 Ford Explorer other suspension problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  15. 2010 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 35k
  16. 2011 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 109k
  17. 2012 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 140k
  18. 2013 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 106k
  19. 2014 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 88k
  20. 2015 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 80k
  21. 2016 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 70k
  22. 2017 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 50k
  23. 2018 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 59k
  24. 2019 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 46k
  25. 2020 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 18k
  26. 2021 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 6k
  27. 2022 Ford Explorer other suspension problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  28. 2023 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 2k
  29. 2024 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 4k
  30. 2025 Ford Explorer other suspension problem 19k
  31. 2026 Ford Explorer other suspension problem
    no odometer readings given
    —

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

While driving front hub came off the vehicle, side unknown. This caused the consumer to lose steering control. Consumer managed to pull over, and had the vehicle towed. Dealership was notified, but did not resolve the problem. *ak

160,000 miles NHTSA complaint 518398 filed 2005-01-26

While traveling downhill, the vehicle began to swing violently when the brakes were applied. *ph at the time of the incident, the consumer was pulling a 5x 10 single axle trailer on the back of the vehicle *jb

58,000 miles NHTSA complaint 456657 filed 2004-02-25

Also reported on the 1999 Ford Explorer

Other wheel or tire problem

303 reports median 106k

Wiper or washer failure

146 reports median 53k

Other body or interior problem

141 reports median 83k

Other speed control problem

101 reports median 100k

Tire blowout or tread separation

90 reports median 84k

Other powertrain problem

74 reports median 87k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 53 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 53 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does other suspension problem happen on the 1999 Ford Explorer?

Across 3 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 120,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is other suspension problem on the 1999 Ford Explorer?

53 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed