The News Wheel
No Comments

Mazda Announces Recall With Permanent Fix for Temporary Takata Replacements

Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size Text Size Print This Page

The Takata airbag recall has gone on for a long time, now, representing the largest recall in history. Now, Mazda has a new recall of about 205,000 vehicles to make airbag replacements on vehicles which were already recalled and given a stopgap repair.

2009 Mazda CX-7

The vehicles affected are 2007-2011 CX-7 and CX-9 SUVs and 2009-2011 Mazda6 sedans, which originally were called back in May 2016, but were temporarily fixed with “like for like” repairs. The Takata airbags in the car, which used a propellant that, after years of heat and humidity without some sort of drying agent, may explode with too much force and throw metal shrapnel, were replaced with new airbags using the same propellant that caused the problem, but were not degraded.

This temporary repair was done because of a shortage of permanent replacement parts. Mazda has now said that it has permanent replacements which use a different, safer propellant, so it released a new recall to supersede the old one.

The new recall first covers vehicles which weren’t repaired yet under the original stopgap measure and then will expand to reach those which have the temporary airbags.

This new recall comes as Takata has gone bankrupt, with the defect having caused 17 deaths worldwide, with a potential further death in Australia reported this week. Also, it comes as 2.7 million older airbag inflators have come under scrutiny in older Nissan, Ford, and Mazda vehicles, which used a drying agent that is no longer used.

Ford has questioned this measure, asking for more data showing that there is a real danger of failure in these older inflators, and Mazda is following Ford’s lead on the issue, since this would affect about 6,000 Ford Ranger-based pickups that Mazda built when it was controlled by Ford (Mazda’s B-Series trucks).

News Source: Cars.com