1997 Ford E-350 Body and structure Problems

“Vehicle is a Ford E-350 chassis equipped with a unicel box body. The failure is the mounting of the truck body to the chassis. The design of the box attaching mechanism is inferior resulting in a separation of the body from the chassis. The body is attached only to the plywood floor of the box only with no other structural components. The attachment points are also inaccessible for inspection resulting in the inability to inspect the corrosion of the bolts and the ultimate failure of the mounting to the chassis.”

“The rear passenger compartment outside and inside door handles broke such that rear seating passengers cannot exit the vehicle and are trapped inside. In case of an accident, the emergency responders will have to resort to drastic time consuming measures such as ripping the doors off to save the trapped passengers. Apparently all years of Ford Econoline vans have this dangerous problem because there are numerous fix it videos all over the internet showing how to replace the cheap handle-latch failure prone plastic parts with non-breakable METAL parts.”