GM last month issued a recall for more than a million older vehicles powered by its venerable 3.8-liter V6 engine. The campaign aims to prevent fires caused by oil leaking from the valve-cover gasket onto the exhaust manifold.
Notably, the company attempted to resolve the same issue with three different recall campaigns ranging from 2008 to April of this year. The ‘remedies’ typically focused on replacing flammable components near the exhaust manifold — theoretically stopping the fire from spreading, but without resolving the source of the fires.
“Service procedures under prior recalls … involved removal and/or replacement of spark plug wire retainers and, for certain engine configurations, replacement of the front valve cover gasket,” GM wrote in its latest recall documents. “In some cases,
these remedies were not sufficient to prevent subsequent engine compartment fires in the affected vehicles relating to this condition.”
Such revisions are not uncommon, however safety advocates are now asking why GM and government regulators did not see ongoing problems in the seven years since the first recall campaign was launched. GM only opened a new investigation in September 2015 after continuing to be sued for fires involving ‘repaired’ vehicles.
An AP report claims at least 1,345 vehicles caught fire after receiving service for the original recalls, resulting in 19 injuries and 17 structure fires.
“Over 1,000 fires is a huge number that should have generated a safety recall by GM before now,” said Center for Auto Safety director Clarence Ditlow. “To make matters worse, NHTSA missed the defect in its complaint database.”
Despite re-recalling a million vehicles, GM has not yet announced a final solution to the problem. It is unclear if the company is under investigation for failing to report the ongoing fires to the NHTSA.
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