21. The car used an strut-type independent suspension in front with a live axle in the rear. 22. This replaced the non-independent " live axle " rear suspension used in previous model year Explorers. 23. Independent suspension requires additional engineering effort and expense in development versus a beam or live axle arrangement. 24. The rear used a live axle with a de Dion tube, trailing arms, and semi-elliptic leaf springs. 25. This system proved to be rather unreliable and was changed to a live axle setup in mid-2000. 26. The system uses longitudinal leaf springs attached both forward and behind the differential of the live axle . 27. The front wheels were suspension arrangement, where most contemporaries used live axle and cart-type leaf spring designs. 28. One chassis concept that often allows comparatively high RTI is the live axle ( beam axle ). 29. In the attached photo of a 5-link live axle suspension, the different types of links can be seen. 30. The rear is traditionally live axle , but has many variants including independent rear suspension or De Dion tube.
