More on the ongoing recalls involving faulty Takata airbag inflators - earlier in the week, it was reported that Fuji Heavy Industries (FHI) had issued a recall for Subaru Imprezas built between 2004 and 2007 over the issue. News reports had indicated that 91,151 Imprezas were being recalled in Japan, while 33,548 units were being recalled in Australia.
Now, FHI has stated that 320,000 2004-2007 model year Subaru Impreza / WRX are being recalled across Asia Pacific, America, China and other markets. Following this, Motor Image has announced vehicles in the following markets have been affected by this recall: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines and Thailand.
The company says that affected vehicles are equipped with front passenger airbag SPI inflators which have been found to be defective. As already known, Takata has acknowledged that a defect exists in its airbag inflators - the units in question were assembled with propellant tablets that can degrade over time.
Originally, it was reported that these propellants were affected by exposure to moisture, which changes the structure of the chemical propellant that ignites when an air bag deploys – the degraded propellant ignites too quickly, producing excess pressure that causes the inflator to rupture and sends metal shards into the passenger cabin that can lead to serious injury or death.
During the investigation of airbag cases involving other vehicle manufacturers, Takata observed a small number of tape seal leaks in SPI inflators (the Takata inflators at issue are SPI, PSPI, and PSPI-L units) manufactured prior to 2007.
These leaks were discovered during a leak test in 2014 - FHI concluded that this would be a safety issue, and is recalling the affected vehicles to replace the front passenger airbag inflator. Motor Image says it will be contacting affected customers to have the particular airbag inflator in their cars replaced.
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