Nissan has recalled over 200,000 of its 2007 and 2008 Nissan Altima, Nissan 350Z, Nissan Murano, Nissan Rogue, Infiniti G35, Infiniti G37 and Infiniti EX35 vehicles for a safety defect in their advanced air bag systems. The safety recall stems from a manufacturing defect (out-of-spec varistor) within the Occupant Classification System (OCS) manufactured by Continental Automotive Systems.
The OCS is part of the advanced air bag system, and is intended to help the system decide whether to deploy the air bags, and if so, with how much force they should deploy.
In some situations, the defect will cause an interruption of the signal between the OCS and the airbag control unit (ACU). When that happens, the safety flaw can prevent air bag deployment in a crash when you need it most.
The government’s recall number is 08V-521.
Airbag safety recalls are just one of the huge number of parts defects our automotive industry is facing. Since there are only a few manufacturers of airbags, if one car company has the problem, chances are there are a host of others. I wonder if the manufacturer and the part are being cited and cross referenced with all auto manufacturers across the board. This could be a 1 in 10 cars has a defective airbag and you won’t know until you need it!
http://everythingcars.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/nhtsa-recalls-hurt-car-sales/
That’s absolutely true for defects that stem from component problems or from many manufacturing defects. For example, during most of the past decade, there were only a few major suppliers of air bag modules: TRW, Autoliv/Morton, Delphi/Inland (GM’s former in-house division) and, to a lesser extent, Takata and Allied Signal. Often, air bag modules for different car companies are produced on adjacent assembly lines at the suppliers’ factories, and use many of the same engineers, manufacturing methods and quality control. Some of the internal components, such as airbag inflators, actually use many of the internal same internal parts for parts shipped to different car companies.
What surprises me is how differently certain car companies react when a supplier reports a safety defect. For example, when one of those major suppliers reported a manufacturing defect in its air bag inflators that it supplied for one of my airbags, I did not hesitate to recommend a recall, which was actually conducted. However, I know that substantially similar inflators were delivered to other car companies, who did not conduct a recall on their vehicles!!