General Motors Recalls Almost a Million Pickup Trucks

[mikeyb]

WASHINGTON — General Motors is recalling more than 900,000 pickup trucks worldwide due to instances of tailgate cables corroding and snapping, according to the automaker and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Most of the affected trucks — 805,368 — are in the United States. GM said there have been 84 injuries due to the problem, most of them minor cuts and scrapes.

Galvanized steel cables were protected with a plastic coating, but water can get into the coating and cause the cable to corrode and snap when the tailgate is down. The tailgate cable will be replaced with a stainless-steel cable, GM says.

What this means to you: If you own a 1999-2000 Silverado or Sierra, have that tailgate checked out ASAP.

source:http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=109602
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[Hughes412]

They should have seen that coming. While this isn't a big deal now it will cost them.

[p5power]

you know, you wonder if they test stuff like this. when we design an airbag for car at my job, we have to go through all this environmental testing along with the safety testing. salt spray, high humidity, extreme temps, vibrations, etc. Now, i understand an airbag is a little more important legally than just a tailgate cable...but you wonder how much it would've saved them if they would've done the testing, saw the problem and gone to a stainless steel before production. but hey...what do i know?

[1sty]

you know, you wonder if they test stuff like this. when we design an airbag for car at my job, we have to go through all this environmental testing along with the safety testing. salt spray, high humidity, extreme temps, vibrations, etc. Now, i understand an airbag is a little more important legally than just a tailgate cable...but you wonder how much it would've saved them if they would've done the testing, saw the problem and gone to a stainless steel before production. but hey...what do i know?

They probably did but the asshole accountants forced an engineering compromise to save cost. So they had to build with a cheaper material then in the model or they remodeled the test and found that they still had some headroom but not the amount the engineers wanted.

All speculation of coarse

[seanmcsean]

GM?? RECALL?? I'm shocked that this has happened.

[NVP5White]

They probably did but the asshole accountants forced an engineering compromise to save cost.

It was probably the asshole parts supplier. GM hardly makes anything anymore. While this may save money in the short-term, it puts too much power into the hands of the supplier to make decisions about the engineering of the part. We see this in an opposite way in government contracting. Especially for DoD contracts that are written as a specification. By stating "the hammer shall drive a nail after 10,000 strikes and/or 5 years without breaking and without transmitting more than XX amount of vibration into the handle. The hammer shall not weigh more than 17.456 oz., be 15" in length, have a belt-worn holster that will hold it while parachuting out of a plane, and be army green, etc." That's how you end up with a $500 hammer.

The key to how much the item will cost is how detailed you write the specification. If you say just "give me a cable that can support XXlbs weight and has XX type connector on each end," then that parts supplier is going to make it out of the cheapest materials possible. In this case, the supplier used galvanized steel with a non-durable covering.

You can tell by the hammer example above, that writting a less detailed specification can help keep costs low for GM (which is what they were going for by outsourcing in the first place). But it leaves open the possibility that the part will not meet all of the actual requirements, specified or not.

[p5power]

i dunno...gm specs are pretty all inclusive. for airbags, the booklet easily fills up a good 1" binder. There is some wiggle room when designing things for gm, but the engineer you work with at gm has to sign off on everything.

if there is one thing i'm sure of though is that the material choice was based purely on cost. it's amazing how spending a little more initially can save you a bunch in the long run.

[NVP5White]

I guess you have more first-hand knowledge than I do. I could see how an engineer might treat a liftgate cable different than an airbag when approving a design or design change. I do know that detailed specs result in expensive parts, ergo airbag system's cost. Of course, even GM's engineers play second fiddle to the accountants, so I can easily see how cost pressures could have driven them to spec a non-stainless slution. Its the same reason they took so long to make stainless exhausts standard.

BTW, what do you think of Delphi's chance of coming through bankrupcy? I hear they are a huge manufacturer of airbag systems (its one of their only profitable divisions). Would your company think of buying thier airbag division?