View Single Post
Old 09-15-2014, 05:29 PM   #1
Terri Kennedy
There and back again
 
Terri Kennedy's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Carmudgeonly Ride: 2003 BMW 325xiT; looking for a new fun car
Location: New York
Posts: 2,939
Get your BMW airbag recall notice yet?

For those of us that still have BMWs, at least...

Since the issue first became public in 2012, I've been corresponding w/ BMWNA about whether my car is affected. After denying the issue for over a year and a half, today I get the dreaded recall letter.

And, of course, it says "At this time we do not have parts to conduct this recall...". Of course not. You only had 18 months to prepare...

There are an additional 573,935 BMWs affected in this "new" recall:

Code:
Model Year / Model                        Approximate Number Affected
2000 - 2005 / 3 Series Sedan                  330,650
2000 - 2006 / 3 Series Coupe                   93,570
2000 - 2005 / 3 Series Sports Wagon            17,527
2000 - 2006 / 3 Series Convertible             94,568
2001 - 2006 / M3 Coupe                         22,341
2001 - 2006 / M3 Convertible                   15,279
And then it goes on to say "... please advise all ... passengers ... that ... metal fragments striking and potentially seriously injuring the front passenger ..."

So now I have to wait for notification that replacements are available, decide which dealer I want to mangle my car, and then pull off the wood trim (Birch Anthracite Individual - NLA) and glove box before I let them attack my car.

The recall was agreed on in July and BMW was supposed to notify customers in August. The letter I got says "September 2014" on the first page. Way to go, BMW. In the past, I'd probably have sided with the automakers when they claimed that the Feds were on a witch hunt to force recalls. But Takata (the airbag manufacturer) knew about this issue since the late 2000's at the latest, and tried to keep the info secret.

Air Bag Flaw, Long Known to Honda and Takata, Led to Recalls (NY Times).

Quote:
Originally Posted by NY Times
Between late 2001 and late 2002, workers at a Takata factory in Monclova, Mexico, had left out moisture-sensitive explosives on the plant floor, making them prone to “overly energetic combustion,”...

...

Takata engineers next linked the defect to its factory in Moses Lake, Wash. Between 2000 and 2002, a flaw in a machine that presses air bag explosives into wafers had made the explosives unstable, ...

...

Takata engineers came up with yet another explanation for the ruptures: Beginning in September 2001, machine operators at the Moses Lake plant could have inadvertently switched off an “auto reject” function that weeded out poorly made explosives that can become unstable,...
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version

Name:	AIRBAGS-superJumbo.jpg
Views:	559
Size:	250.2 KB
ID:	9654  
Terri Kennedy is offline   Reply With Quote