2002 Ford Expedition with 42,159 miles. 8/27/04 vehicle taken into Ford dealership for oil change, brake inspection and tire rotation. Service tech noted front tires a little chopped, rotation should take care of this. 8/30/04 called facility where I buy my tires and have my vehicles alignment performed to ask if this could be a alignment issue. After visual inspection of the tire wear they felt that alignment was needed. 9/2/04 recieved a letter from Ford containing updated inspected proccedures for the Expedition and other Ford vehicles titled tie-rod inspection procedure. 9/3/04 vehicle taken in for front end alignment and was informed that it could not be aligned because of outer tie-rod end wear and these needed to be replaced. Ford dealer didn't check for this even after seeing tire damage while rotating tires. When informed of the tie rod problem the Ford dealership said repair would be out of pocket since vechile had over 42,000 miles. I had both the inner and outer tie-rods replaced at my independent repair facility since the letter from Ford implied that 15,000 miles was the about the life expectancy of the tie-rods they used. The tie-rods were replace with ones having grease fittings unlike Ford's original factory equipment. I feel that this is a repair Ford should cover for the life of the vehicle as long as they continue using parts which seem to have this shortened life expectancy and could result in injury to anyone using these vehicles.

- Ontario, NY, USA