As National Highway Traffic Safety Administration officials excused Ford and General Motors from having to recall more than 500,000 units, American Honda revealed late last week it’s bringing back approximately 1.5 million vehicles.

The Honda recall stems from the need to update the software that controls the automatic transmission in about 1.5 million U.S. vehicles. Included in this announcement are 4-cylinder Accords from the 2005 through 2010 model years, the CR-V from the 2007 through 2010 model year and the Element 2005 through 2008 model years.

Without the updated software, Honda believes the automatic transmission secondary shaft bearing in the affected vehicles can be damaged if the transmission is quickly shifted between each of the reverse, neutral and drive positions, as may be done in an attempt to dislodge a vehicle stuck in mud or snow.

If the bearing is damaged in this unusual scenario, the automaker said it can cause the engine to stall or lead to difficulty engaging the parking gear.
OEM officials contend the update to the vehicle’s automatic transmission control module software will ease the transition between gears to reduce the possibility of damage.

The company insisted no injuries or deaths have been reported related to this condition.

“Honda is announcing this recall to encourage all owners of affected vehicles to take their vehicles to an authorized dealer as soon as they receive notification of this recall from Honda,” automaker officials explained and added that notification to customers will begin on Aug. 31.

“When Honda identifies concerns of this nature, nothing is more important to the company than fulfilling our obligation and responsibility to alert our customers,” they went on to say.

In addition to contacting customers by mail, after Aug. 31 owners of these vehicles can determine if their unit requires repair by going online to www.recalls.honda.com or by calling (800) 999-1009, and selecting option No. 4.

No Recall Needed for Thousands of Ford Minivans

A pair of NHTSA investigations determined neither Ford nor GM have to conduct voluntary recalls for units produced from 2004 through 2007.

In regard to Ford, NHTSA analyzed the Ford Freestar and Mercury Monterey from 2004 through 2007 to examine the automatic transmission control module.

Administration officials explained these vehicles suffered from a design issue whereby water could run down onto the cowling under the hood located in the area of the windshield wipers and then drip onto the Powertrain Control Module (PCM).

Had that situation developed, NHTSA believed it could have manifested in a variety of symptoms depending on which part of the circuit board became wet or which of the connector pins shorted out.

In addition to causing an engine to stall — which may or may not then restart — NHTSA said the water intrusion could also cause the transmission to shift poorly, the vehicle to have erratic power, a malfunction indicator light to come on, or result in an inability to start the vehicle, an inability to shift the vehicle into either forward or reverse.

Also, officials said the problem could have caused a higher than normal idle RPM in park, or for the radio to malfunction or the interior lights to stay on.

During the analysis, the Office of Defect Investigations was concerned with the effect of the engine stalling or a drastic and sudden loss of power either of which may create a safety risk.

“In reviewing the actual number of these types of incidents, collectively referred to here as engine stalls, the number was found to be below what would be considered a defect trend,” officials determined.

For example, NHTSA indicated the number of engine stalls identified in Ford’s warranty claims for the model-year 2004 subject vehicles, the model with the most failures, was 200 out of population of 125,865, for a failure rate of 0.16 percent.

“The one crash recorded by a complainant to NHTSA, VOQ 10311522, alleged that the engine stalled due to water intrusion into the PCM while the road was turning and causing her to go off the road,” officials recounted.

“According to the police report, the vehicle then hit an embankment and a tree stump,” they continued. “Ford reported in their response that there were three alleged crashes but none of these were validated as being caused by a problem with water intrusion into the PCM causing a stall.

Accordingly, NHTSA declared that the investigation regarding these minivans is closed, and that a recall of more than 280,000 units wasn’t needed.

“The closing of this investigation does not constitute a finding by NHTSA that a safety-related defect does not exist,” officials acknowledged.

“The agency will continue to monitor complaints and other information relating to the alleged defect in the subject vehicles and take further action in the future if warranted,” they added.

GM Doesn’t Have to Bring Back Tahoe & Yukon

Meanwhile, a NTHSA investigation cleared GM from the need to bring back more than 266,000 Chevrolet Tahoes and GMC Yukons from the 2007 model year.

Officials explained the investigated concern involved chrome plating on interior door handles that could peel or separate from the plastic base material. They determined this de-lamination could result in a sharp edge and pose a risk of laceration.

In some cases, NHTSA found that consumers reported minor hand/skin lacerations. Of these reported injuries, the vast majority of injuries were to adults and 90 percent of claims associated with interior door handle de-lamination were related to the front doors.

In addition to the specific Tahoe/Yukon vehicles, the administration mentioned other GM T900 series C/K vehicles (Avalanche, Escalade, Sierra, Silverado, and Suburban) have a trim level that utilizes the chrome plated interior door handles and were included in the analysis.

“The resultant population group had a total of 746 complaint reports with 309 injury incidents and 43,619 unique VIN regular warranty claims over a combined 451,745 vehicle population,” NHTSA said in a report.

“The door handle supplier was changed in September 2006 with new tooling and process in place by October 2006. The base population prior to the September 2006 vendor change accounted for the bulk (or 89 percent) of all complaints and comparable injury reports and warranty claims,” officials continued.

“Due to the nature of the failure (thin chrome plating peeling off the door handle), only minor hand/ skin laceration injuries similar to a ‘paper cut’ were recorded,” they added. “All but a few did not require professional medical treatment such as surgical or liquid sutures (i.e. stitches)."

NHTSA also pointed out that less than 10 percent of injury reports had specifically involved a 3- to 10-year-old child.

“This was due to the fact that 90 percent of the claims were associated with door handles located in the front seating area (where the window glass panels usually have less solar tinting than rear window glass panels) where children are not normally seated,” officials determined.

In July 2010, NHTSA recounted that GM issued a Special Coverage Policy (SCP 09239) on the base vehicles to extend the warranty coverage to 10 years/100,000 miles.

“Recent data indicate that the base population complaint and injury reporting have subsided since the implementation of the SCP campaign,” officials said.

As a result, NHTSA found a safety-related defect had not been identified at this time and further use of agency resources did not appear to be warranted.

Similar to its Ford report, officials insisted near the end of its GM analysis that “the closing of this investigation does not constitute a finding by NHTSA that a safety-related defect does not exist. The agency will monitor this issue and reserves the right to take further action if warranted by the circumstances.”