KPRC:
Hyundai announced a recall of 180,000 Tucson SUVs and is advising owners to park their vehicles outdoors. The automaker said that corrosion can cause a short circuit that can result in a fire even if engines are off. The car company said that if drivers see the anti-lock brake warning light come on, they should stop driving the vehicle immediately and disconnect the positive cable on the battery. The recall impacts all Hyundai Tucson SUVs from the 2019-2021 model years.
The car company said it has identified at least a dozen fires caused by the faulty circuit boards but noted that there have no been reports of injuries.
if it isn’t broken don’t redesign it. They never learn.
That burns me up….
How long do they test this crap before they roll it out to explode in flames?
Corrosion issues bad enough to cause serious malfunction on electricals, after only a few years? Amazing.. That would be hard to accomplish even if one tried to.
Garage fires are great, because folks store ALL the flammables out there. Kerosene, gasoline, Coleman fuel, Tiki torch juice, propane for the grill, paint cans, turpentine…if it smells of VOCs, it’s right out there with the car to help burn things down.
The stupidest arrangement by FAR is the “tuck under” garage, that puts the things that burn under the house, usually under a bedroom. I have one but I’ve never put a car or gasoline in it, but the idiots that built the house in 1937 didn’t know better, plus it’d be a squeeze to put a full-sized truck in there anyway.
One of my biggest (funny) regrets comes from a fire in a tuck-under. This one was a 2 car with a vehicle that burned pretty good in the engine bay, but we got it out before the house got involved.
Thing is, it smoked a LOT of toxic chemicals into the house, and the smoke was pretty dense, so we had to do a SAR sweep of the rest of the house (even though no one was reported in it, because the kids don’t always announce their comings and goings), and place ventilation fans so we could clear the smoke and also check for any hot spots in the walls or above the garage.
Anyway, I was on the interior doing the sweep with a partner in full turnouts and SCBA when the phone started to ring, landlines still being the primary mode of communication then. I stood by the phone a moment as my partner and I exchanged glances, thinking (very briefly) how much fun it would have been to answer it with the breathing apparatus making all the Darth Vadery sounds and telling the caller “No he can’t come to the phone right now (air regulator sounds) because his house is on fire (breath sounds) and we’re trying to put it out. (Wheeze of regulator again) Please call back later.”, and hanging up. There was no fire, no life hazard, and I was (almost) young and stupid enough to do crazy things for a laugh, and the reaction of the person on the phone would be PRICELESS.
But UNBELIEVABLY crass and stupid.
Of course I did NOT do that. We had MUCH more important things to do even though the house wasn’t actively on fire, plus it would have been EXTREMELY unprofessional, frivolous, and making light of someone’s personal hell to a complete stranger who didn’t need to know about it anyway.
So I didn’t do it.
Doesn’t stop me from wishing I HAD, though, and wondering JUST how fired I would have been later…
@ Supernightshade September 14, 2020 at 1:28 pm,
“Garage fires are great, because folks store ALL the flammables out there. Kerosene, gasoline, Coleman fuel, Tiki torch juice, propane for the grill, paint cans, turpentine…if it smells of VOCs, it’s right out there with the car to help burn things down.” Not to mention the reloading supplies and cases of ammo.
Nothing ever turns completely off anymore. I hear that people in the CA blackout zones are being asked to unplug appliances which are not in use. That tells me that the cumulative current drawn by unused appliances must be pretty significant.
Crackerbaby
SEPTEMBER 14, 2020 AT 1:53 PM
” Not to mention the reloading supplies and cases of ammo.”
…speaking for myself, I keep my ammo where I am, and my garage isn’t the place I’d make a stand anyway. Too small.
In my district folks would NEVER tell you where they stored their rounds even though you always asked, but they were generally in a hall closet or, for some reason, under a bed, which we usually discovered during hazard searches that were in conjunction with SAR.
Could have been some in nightstands and such, too, but it wasn’t my job to search anywhere other than immediate threat areas, so I’ll never know.
Never saw a reload area fire. Guess those folks are maybe a bit more careful than some…
I have a battery switch on my 50 year old mustang. I added it because I couldn’t trust the wiring after finding multiple botch-job electrical fixes from previous owners.
https://www.amazon.com/MNJ-MOTOR-Battery-Disconnect-Switch/dp/B07VRZWYDG/ref=sr_1_18?_encoding=UTF8&c=ts&dchild=1&keywords=Automotive+Replacement+Battery+Switches&qid=1600125522&s=automotive&sr=1-18&ts_id=15719961
.
See Galvanic/dissimilar metal corrosion – happens a lot, especially when you have, for instance, aluminum and copper touching, or one type of metal grounded to another.
I have been servicing HVAC for 32 years. Some units I have worked on were 50 years old. The one thing I truly believe is that modern engineers do not know what the terms Durability & Serviceability mean.
Sad