Also in the news yesterday and concerns ME as a parts man ;
Repair replacement parts.
Are THEY up to snuff heretofore ?
When buying ignition cylinders or switches from anyone, parts house or dealer, what are we getting ?
Good enough or still the old bad stock ?
@ken green, apparently that is a real concern:
I wouldn’t trust anything except a replacement part from a GM dealership.
@Triedaq
Please don’t blame me for child abuse but I feel the same way. I taught both our kids how to drive manuals and take their tests on manuals. Yes, we used cones for parallel parking and cemeteries for “close encounter” nmanuevering…but I always included the "surprise " element. I warned them ahead of time, I could reach over and cover their eyes while they were driving and they had to continue driving in a straight line. Obviously, we did it at safe speeds, in safe conditions and with my hand on the wheel. But, the idea was to not over react in unexpected situations. We did a few other strange training regiments…but the idea was to make driving both fun and safe and not a social situation where driving was your number one priority.
More interesting news. An engineer hired by one of the dead drivers’ families found that Delphi had changed the internal design of the ignition switch some time after the 2005 model year car in which his client’s daughter was killed…and yet the part number had not been changed, and the GM engineer in charge of the Cobalt ignition switch said he had no knowledge of Delphi making any changes to the design:
"In one deposition, Mr. Cooper confronted Raymond DeGiorgio, the head switch engineer on the Cobalt, with the differences between the original switch and the replacement. While Mr. DeGiorgio said he saw the differences, he could not explain why the part had been changed without a corresponding change in its identification number.
“I was not aware of a detent plunger switch change,” he said. “We certainly did not approve a detent plunger switch change.”
“But in federal filings for the recall in February, G.M. said that an unnamed engineer had in fact signed a document in April 2006 approving design changes in the switch suggested by Delphi.”
So how could the head switch engineer on the Cobalt not know that someone else had changed the design?
The thought that occurs to me is that with the public dissemination of this knowledge, now might be a great time to buy a used Cobalt on the expected dip in used car prices! (All I’d have to do is be mindful of the weight of my key ring…)
GM decided to recall all Cobalts because of the possibility that some ignition cylinders were replaced with old-style versions that might fail. The story you tell is probably why they decided to do it.
This is old news. I think I said before that an engineer had worked with Delphi to change the design and signed off on it in 2005. Not sure what the revelation is.
@jtsanders, the recall is because the “old style” ones are defective and were never replaced to begin with.
@Bing, this just raises more questions. Who approved the change? Why didn’t the engineer in charge of the Cobalt switches know about change? Why was the change made without changing the part number?
It’s typical in engineering to change the part number, or at least the dash number, when changing the form, fit, or function of a part so that it can be distinguished from the earlier version. Clearly the switch design was changed to improve the function. So it should have been given a new part number or dash number. Apparently that didn’t happen, and now it may be impossible to distinguish an “old” switch from a “new” without taking it apart.
So the whole debate focuses on why a part number wasn’t changed and that equates to a cover-up? I don’t know what procedure is required for a part number change but I’m not sure putting in a stronger spring in the switch would require it. Just not sure this is big news as the onion is being peeled away.
@jesmed, that’s yesterday’s news. I was talking about the expanded recall. The recall now includes all model years of the Chevrolet Cobalt, Chevrolet HHR, Saturn Ion, Saturn Sky, Pontiac G5 and Pontiac Solstice made from 2003-2011. The same part number was used for the old-style ignition part supplied on 2007 and older cars and the newer parts that did not exhibit the same problem. The problem is that there was no way to know if parts on dealer shelves after 2007 were faulty or not since they had the same part number. GM discovered this and decided to replace all ignition switches without regard to year because the switch in a newer car might have been replaced with a faulty one. We might assume that a very few cars had their ignition switches replaced, and GM wants to make sure that no one else is injured.
@Bing, it’s more bad news for GM because, on top of the original problem, as @jtsanders points out, now they don’t know whether defective switches may have found their way into newer cars.
Whatever you want to call it, not giving the new ignition switch a different part number or dash number just forced them to expand the recall and cost them a lot more money. At the very least it was poor configuration management practice.
OTOH, it is good news that the New GM wants to make absolutely certain that no new injuries occur by replacing up to 2.7 million ignition switches. They added an entirely new dimension to the issue all by themselves.
@cdaquila, “Censorship is the last bastion of a closed mind.”
@jtsanders, I agree, it’s good that they’re trying to do the right thing, finally. It’s too bad all this falls on Mary Barra even though she had nothing to do with creating the problem. Cleaning up other people’s mess.
@jesmed Mary Barra is extremely well paid for getting GM on the right track. As an engineer she would know the best way out of a technical problem.
When she said “No more crappy cars!”, she let on that she knew GM made crappy cars in the past, and was prepared to fix the company once and for all.
Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that said “The Buck Stops Here!” He was not paid nearly as much.
I wish her the best and am confident that she’ll fix GM’s problems. The fact that the igintion switch fix has been extended to 2011 models as well speaks volumes. Those models are post-bankruptcy and GM can’t possibly weasel out of those.
The Turbo Cruse models in dealer’s hands have now been frozen until some other problem is resolved. Car companies have come a long way already from the days that the body count of victims had to reach an uncomfoertable level until they did something.
Finally doing the right thing . . .
I disagree with the above sentiment
You guys seem to be praising Barra and GM for finally doing the right thing
This problem existed for years. GM knew about it and basically swept it under the rug. Several deaths have not been “officially” linked to the ignition switch, thanks in some part to GM. 12 deaths, or whatever the current number is, sure sounds better than 300, for example.
Just because you finally do what you should have done a LONG time ago, doesn’t mean you’re worthy of ANY kind of praise.
Let me simplify . . . doing your damn job and being honest isn’t worthy of a pat on the back
I do my job pretty well . . . not perfectly, mind you . . . and I’m honest, but I don’t get a pat on the back because of that
GM decided to hide the ignition switch problem so well that they have hid it from themselves. The latest recall added cars that have been repaired, but GM used the same exact part number on the upgraded switch as the defective switch. They now don’t know which cars were repaired correctly and which were not. I’m sure they used the same part number to hide th problem from owners, dealers, government and especially lawyers that they had a defective part.
@knfenimore
Yeah, it appears GM was so smart, that they’re stupid
Yeah, exactly, it doesn’t make any sense in the end
“I’m sure they used the same part number to hide th problem from owners, dealers, government and especially lawyers that they had a defective part.”
I don’t think so. There is not a conspiracy behind every door.
More egg on NHTSA’s face:
And this:
“The committee also revealed on Sunday that Delphi, the supplier that made the ignition switch, told General Motors in February 2002, before the first vehicle to use the switch even hit the road, that the part did not meet General Motors’ specifications.”
So GM knew from the start that the switch didn’t meet their own spec and decided to use it anyway??