GM recalls nearly 474,000 cars over gear shift problem

[frankxbe]

(Reuters) - General Motors Co is recalling 473,841 Chevrolet, Pontiac and Saturn sedans globally to fix a condition that could lead the cars to roll when the drivers think they are in park, the No. 1 U.S. automaker said on Friday.
GM said it was aware of four crashes that resulted from the problem, but no injuries. read more here

My post @yahooligan
Ford had that same problem on untold millions of cars for decades they would drop out of park into reverse with the motor running or from neutral into drive as well .Not safe to scrape ice off of your windhirld while the motor and heater were running! They could start in gear also. Poeple were getting run over by their own cars ! What did NHTSA do ? They made Ford give out stickers telling people to keep their foot on the brake when the car was parked and running and to use their parking brake. Problem was the parking brakes mostly did not that work that well either. Found On The Road Dead or in your driveway
could certainly apply here.
Good reason for starter/brake pedal interlocks and clutch safety switches that we have now.

To be fair Ford and GM are not the only car makers with safety issues then or now.
There are/were plenty to go around . Other cars has doors that would fly open when going around a corner ! ( Believe me you wanna be belted in when that happens !) , or seat backs that would break while you were driving ,suddenly you are reaching for the wheel ! GM had millions of bad motor mounts causing throttles to stick they never fixed the motor mounts but they did retro fit restraining cables. All the car companies had cars that would frequently stall on the highway without warning early electronic ignition system reliability problems .Some were recalled most not. Just a couple of many reasons in addition to crash safety is why NHTSA came into being.

I think Honda,Toyota and others have some stuff going on now also.

Ford according to this has a steering issue with the crown Vic's

Good idea to check your vehicle once in awhile some issues don't surface for years .
Here is good place to check your vehicle for recalls/equipment and safety issues.
http://www.safercar.gov/

 

[Sandy G]

Yeah, my '69 Lincoln EASILY pops outta "Park" into reverse...I think in its case, the problem is more one of age & mileage...

 

[parman]

My brother in law had a girl friend with a Subaru that did that. He said one time he stopped it in the driveway, put it in park and got out to open the garage door and the car passed him while he was walking up to the garage!

 

[nasadowsk]

Is it too hard to set the parking brake on a car? It's just step on the pedal or pull the lever up...

 

[33&athird]

Yeah, my '69 Lincoln EASILY pops outta "Park" into reverse...I think in its case, the problem is more one of age & mileage...

Yeah, our '68 mustang had that for a bit. on the older cars it really is age usually. I'm not sure how the shifter on the lincoln works, but in the mustang is had a plastic washer between the body and linkage that was gone, and it would drop from drive to second and so on. easy fix, but a pain:yes:

Is it too hard to set the parking brake on a car? It's just step on the pedal or pull the lever up...

A lot of people don't do that, and with a automatic transmission they normally wouldn't need to...and a lot (i'd say at least 85%) of US drivers are conditioned to just put it in park, they may have never driven a manual (where you have to use a parking brake).

Granted, I use it in my manual beetle, but not on the automatics, unless it's a big hill or something:scratch2: Always have the foot on the brake when starting, just makes sense.

 

[RamblinE]

Yep.. I don't understand why people just don't set the e-brake. It's a habit. Even when I had an automatic.

 

[frankxbe]

Yeah, my '69 Lincoln EASILY pops outta "Park" into reverse...I think in its case, the problem is more one of age & mileage...

The C 3, C-4,C-5 and C-6 and earlier FMX transmissions were the worst offenders .
That part of the design was never vetted properly as they say. The C-6 also had
a litany of other problems through the years as they got worked out the later ones were pretty stout .they later morphed into the E4OD and later into the 4R100

 

[Dr Tinear]

(Reuters) - General Motors Co is recalling 473,841 Chevrolet, Pontiac and Saturn sedans globally to fix a condition that could lead the cars to roll when the drivers think they are in park, the No. 1 U.S. automaker said on Friday.
GM said it was aware of four crashes that resulted from the problem, but no injuries. read more here

Kudos to GM for stepping up and ordering a recall before someone was injured or killed. That puts them miles ahead of Toyota IMO.

My post @yahooligan
Ford had that same problem on untold millions of cars for decades they would drop out of park into reverse with the motor running or from neutral into drive as well .Not safe to scrape ice off of your windhirld while the motor and heater were running! They could start in gear also. Poeple were getting run over by their own cars ! What did NHTSA do ? They made Ford give out stickers telling people to keep their foot on the brake when the car was parked and running and to use their parking brake. Problem was the parking brakes mostly did not that work that well either. Found On The Road Dead or in your driveway
could certainly apply here.
Good reason for starter/brake pedal interlocks and clutch safety switches that we have now.

If memory serves, that recall took place around 1980, when NHTSA was less aggressive in ordering or recommending recalls than it is today. The brake/shift interlock regulation came out of a later Audi problem in which a number of customers complained of unintended acceleration in their Audi 5000s. The allegations were never definitively linked to a root cause, but the bad publicity and the recall nearly killed Audi in the U.S. market.

To be fair Ford and GM are not the only car makers with safety issues then or now.

You got that right. I remember a recent Toyota recall of 14 million vehicles for unintended acceleration. Toyota stonewalled on the recall until the number of accidents and fatalities made the problem impossible to ignore.

There are/were plenty to go around . Other cars has doors that would fly open when going around a corner ! ( Believe me you wanna be belted in when that happens !) , or seat backs that would break while you were driving ,suddenly you are reaching for the wheel ! GM had millions of bad motor mounts causing throttles to stick they never fixed the motor mounts but they did retro fit restraining cables. All the car companies had cars that would frequently stall on the highway without warning early electronic ignition system reliability problems .Some were recalled most not. Just a couple of many reasons in addition to crash safety is why NHTSA came into being.

I think Honda,Toyota and others have some stuff going on now also.

Ford according to this has a steering issue with the crown Vic's

Good idea to check your vehicle once in awhile some issues don't surface for years .
Here is good place to check your vehicle for recalls/equipment and safety issues.
http://www.safercar.gov/

 

[twitch54]

My brother in law had a girl friend with a Subaru that did that. He said one time he stopped it in the driveway, put it in park and got out to open the garage door and the car passed him while he was walking up to the garage!

that dosen't even make sense......if the car came out of park it would go into reverse first.

 

[frankxbe]

that dosen't even make sense......if the car came out of park it would go into reverse first.

Good point
maybe he meant the car passed him in reverse ?

As originally stated the incident does not make sense you would think?
but .....................

I can also tell you that I almost got pinned to a wall once by a 60's mustang
with a C4 automatic it dropped all the way from park into drive
with the motor idling. I dont know about Subarus but I can assure you it was possible with some Fords. I know this because I started the car and got out of it to check something with the motor running while I was working on it. the other makes had better detents then. but then they all had their different problems. I was a journeyman Lincoln Mercury tech at the time .

regards

 

[Cruzah]

No problem like that with my big buick.
You gotta damn near be Superman to shift into drive, Because the shifter is connected to the automatic Door locks.

 

[sebrof]

You got that right. I remember a recent Toyota recall of 14 million vehicles for unintended acceleration. Toyota stonewalled on the recall until the number of accidents and fatalities made the problem impossible to ignore.

I never paid too much attention to it, but I thought the Toyota thing was a bunch of BS and there were no systemic problems found with those cars. I know here in Austin a maid borrowed her employer's car and wrecked it and said the accelarator stuck, then it was found she lied and just crashed.

From Wiki: On February 8, 2011, the NHTSA, in collaboration with NASA, released its findings into the investigation on the Toyota drive-by-wire throttle system. After a 10 month search, NASA and NHTSA scientists found no electronic defect in Toyota vehicles.[28] Driver error or pedal misapplication was found responsible for most of the incidents.[29] The report ended stating, "Our conclusion is Toyota's problems were mechanical, not electrical." This included sticking accelerator pedals, and pedals caught under floor mats.[30

 

[ccheath]

This is what happens when the manufactures tries to "improve" what is already working fine. MORONS!! Just giving designers something to do.

 

[Sandy G]

The C 3, C-4,C-5 and C-6 and earlier FMX transmissions were the worst offenders .
That part of the design was never vetted properly as they say. The C-6 also had
a litany of other problems through the years as they got worked out the later ones were pretty stout .they later morphed into the E4OD and later into the 4R100

Yeah, its got a C-6 in it...Had it rebuilt once, the guy said it was different than latter-day C-6s- had lots more little bearings & stuff in it.

 

[frankxbe]

Yeah, its got a C-6 in it...Had it rebuilt once, the guy said it was different than latter-day C-6s- had lots more little bearings & stuff in it.

Oh yea putting more gears in a similar trans would be a lot different
The C6 went through some revisions had one in an older F100 73 pretty stout .
trans made 188k with fluid/filter changes was still working when I sold the truck.
the 390 however was a different story .
like the GM700R4 vs the TH400 related maybe a little and all but mostly different.

 

[CougarXR7]

I had an older Ford with a C5 (column shift) that had pretty sloppy detents in the linkage. It took very minimal effort to get it out of park.

I had another one with a floor-shift AOD transmission which was more stout, but you could still get it into gear without touching the brake pedal. These cars were obviously built before the mandated shift-interlock feature. You could pull the car into gear from the passenger seat if you wanted to.

 

[electroking]

That says something for using the parking brake on all cars, automatic or manual...

 

[hypertone]

^ I agree.

The parking pawl doesn't really do a good job of keeping a car from rolling, and should not be thought of as such. I got in the habit many years ago of using the parking brake from driving manual and I still use it even in an automatic. It would be super easy for a bump from another car to break the pawl in a parked car and send it into motion.