It's deja vu for more than a million Honda and Acura drivers who are being asked for a second time to bring their vehicles to the dealership to replace a faulty Takata Corp. airbag inflator.
Some dealers already have the infrastructure in place — loaner cars, trained techs and such — to handle the recall, which American Honda announced last week.
"We're ready to go," said a service adviser at Ferndale Honda in suburban Detroit.
The automaker decided to recall 1.1 million Honda and Acura vehicles made between 2001 and 2016 after it was notified in March 2018 of an accident involving a Honda Odyssey minivan. The driver-side front airbag deployed, injuring the driver's arm. Honda discovered the airbag inflator in that vehicle had been replaced as part of the original Takata recall.
When Honda engineers examined the inflator, made by Takata, they determined that a manufacturing mistake allowed excess moisture into the inflator, which could lead to degradation of the propellant. That could cause the inflator to rupture and shoot metal fragments inside the car, Honda said.
Chris Martin, a spokesman for American Honda, said the vehicles had been considered fixed after the first recall.
"The replacement parts were desiccated Takata inflators that were not subject to recall at that time, and we had no reason to believe that they would later be subject to recall when we started using the inflators in 2014," Martin wrote in an email to Automotive News.
By mid-2016, Honda had stopped using Takata inflators for its recall effort that involved 12.9 million vehicles and about 21 million airbag inflator modules.
Honda said dealers should be able to replace a faulty driver-side inflator in a day. Loaner cars will be available.
Honda said the defective inflators were manufactured at a Takata plant in Mexico.
