Hose may be at fault in Ford truck steering, brake problems

WASHINGTON (July 26)—The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating 249,000 Ford Super Duty F Series trucks, model years 1999 and 2000, for alleged loss of power assist for steering and/or brakes. NHTSA and Ford Motor Co. together have received 233 complaints about the trucks, including 13 crashes which caused one death and four injuries. Ford told the agency it knew of two occasions of power steering contamination at the company´s Kentucky Truck Plant, in January 1998 and May 1999, caused by insufficient cleaning of power steering hoses at an unidentified supplier plant. But NHTSA said only 7 percent of the trucks involved in the complaints were built at the plant during those months, and that further investigation was needed to determine the cause of the vast majority of the problems.