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Under pressure from US safety authorities, Ford is recalling about 2 million F-150 pickup trucks in North America, because seat belts can cause fires.
The recall, which covers trucks from the 2015 to 2018 model years, comes about a month after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began investigating fires in pickup trucks, which are the best-selling vehicles in the United States.
Ford said Thursday that there were 23 reports of smoke or fire in US and Canadian trucks, but he was not informed of injuries. NHTSA began investigating in early August after receiving five fire reports, including three reports that trucks had been destroyed.
According to Ford, seat belt pretensioners can generate excessive sparks when they tighten before a collision. This can ignite the gases inside a supporting pillar between the front and rear seats, causing a fire in the insulation and carpeting.
The seat belt pretensioners, which prepare seat belts to gradually restrain passengers, were manufactured by Takata and Takata, a manufacturer of belts and belts that are now missing.
Regular Cab and Crew Cab trucks were built between March 12, 2014 and August 23, 2018, according to documents released Thursday by NHTSA.
Dealers will remove the insulation and install heat-resistant tape to repair the trucks. They will also remove the remnants of tape and modify the interior panels of regular cab trucks. The owners will be informed from 24 September.
In a complaint filed with the US government, a Grand Rapids, Michigan, owner told NHTSA that on July 7, a stag hit the driver side of a pickup truck, causing minor damage. The side airbags inflated and after five to ten minutes a passenger noticed a fire at the bottom of the post between the front and rear doors where the seat belts are located. "The truck is gone in a few minutes and is completely lost," the owner wrote.
Complainants are not identified in the NHTSA database.
Ford said Thursday in a filing with US authorities that the recall would cost about $ 140 million and would be accounted for in the third quarter results.
The company has maintained its adjusted earnings per share guidance for the year from $ 1.30 to $ 1.50.
The problem appeared in spring 2017, when Ford received four reports of post-crash interior fires occurring in trucks between April and October, according to documents filed by Ford with the US security agency.
Ford began to investigate but could not identify any problem with the seatbelt pretensioners of the trucks and the company could not recreate a fire. In November 2017, Canadian safety regulators contacted Ford about a fire in 2015. According to the documents, it received five more fire reports between January and March of this year, but still could not identify the source of the fires.
From April to June, Ford received six more reports of fires in 2015, 2017 and 2018 and found the possibility of excessive sparks in the pretensioners. The company has also begun to analyze the exhaust gases of the seat belt mechanisms. Then, NHTSA contacted Ford about three fire reports, and the agency and the company jointly inspected one of the trucks on June 28th.
NHTSA opened its investigation on August 3rd.
From July to August, Ford conducted more tests and found that sparks could ignite the exhaust, and Ford approved a recall on August 24, according to the documents.
The Associated Press
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