New broken bolt case not subject to Toyota recall
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A Fortuner car last week had its bolt broken but it turned out the vehicle was not subject to Toyota Vietnam’s current recall, suggesting there could be more cars suffering from technical issues than the rough 66,000 figure.
Duong Quang Phap yesterday brought his Fortuner car (license plate 43A-010...) and the broken bolt to a Toyota distributor in the central city of Da Nang and was told his car did not fall under the scope of the recall program that kicked off yesterday.
His Fortuner G was checked replaced with a new camber bolt on the left. But as the car is non-recallable, the distributor rejected Phap’s request to replace all bolts with new ones.
The distributor said it has sent the broken bolt to Toyota Vietnam for inspection.
It also performed a technical test on the camber bolt on the right that shows the bolt sustains a force of 1,800 kgf.cm.
According to engineer Le Van Tach, such force is not safe.
Engineer Tach who earlier exposed the technical flaws leading to the mass recall, told Tuoi Tre that the force on each camber bolt must be lower than 1,700 kgf.cm.
A force of 1,400 kgf.cm is the norm, he revealed, adding that a force beyond 1,700 kgf.cm would make the bolt stretched, loosening it and causing the vehicle to shake and difficult to control.
When such stretched bolts were tightened back, they could easily break, he warned.
Fortuner, Innova and Camry recall
Toyota Vietnam started its recall program Monday on 65,703 Fortuner and Innova cars regarding three technical faults: oil pressure at the rear wheel being higher than standard, bolt No 8 that is used under rear seat and camber bolts that are beyond standard.
Toyota Vietnam admitted to a number of faults in manufacturing and will repair free of charge Innova and Fortuner vehicles that were produced from December 23, 2010 backwards.
Regarding oil pressure problem, the company will check Innova J (produced between January 19 and November 24 2010). It will take at most two hours to fix this problem for each car, the company said.
Regarding bolt issue under the rear seat, it will check all Innova (produced between December 26 2005 and December 23 2010) and Fortuner (produced between February 16 2009 and December 23 2010).
This bolt problem will take a maximum 12 minutes to fix on each car.
Regarding camber bolt issue for Innova J and Innova G (manufactured between December 26 2005 and October 13 2006), it will take at most one hour to fix.
There are 65,703 vehicles subject to this recall, much higher than the 8,830 figure that Toyota Vietnam’s production director Tadashi Yoshida announced at a press conference on April 1.
Toyota Vietnam last week also announced to repair free of charge 278 Camry 3.5 and Camry 2.4 cars having their bolts on the front tightened too much beyond standard.
Such defective vehicles were produced between January 27 and March 24 this year.
Camry 3.5 bears Vehicle Identification Number lying between XXB 6001801 and XXB 6001810 while Camry 2.4 XXB 6008875 and XX 6009175.
In all the company’s press releases, the word “recall” or “triệu hồi” is avoided.
Instead, it is a “program to freely inspect and fix vehicles” (chương trình kiểm tra xe miễn phí).
