Mitsubishi Fuso to recall 55057 trucks

Mitsubishi Fuso Truck & Bus Corp said it will recall 55,057 heavy-duty trucks to fix faulty wheel hubs in light of an accident last October involving one of its Super Great trucks.
The trucks - made between October 1990 and December 2005 - are in five Super Great models as well as three The Great models, the company said in a recall report filed with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
The 55,057 include the 12,873 whose hubs were replaced by new ones in a series of recalls since March 2004 necessitated by a 2002 accident in which a wheel that came off a moving truck hit and killed a Yokohama woman and injured her children, it said.
In the recalls, the hubs were replaced by new F2 and F0 hubs. This time, Mitsubishi Fuso is replacing the F2 and F0 hubs with stronger F3 hubs.
The F3 hub would provide strength 10 times that of the two other hubs, the company said.
The cost of the fresh recall will be several billion yen with the recall taking about one year before being completed, it said.
At present, Mitsubishi Fuso's inventory of the stronger F3 hubs numbers some 5,000. It will take until summer before the company can secure the necessary number of F3 hubs, it said.
A hub is a component connecting a wheel and an axle. The F0 and F2 hubs are installed on 150,000 heavy-duty trucks. Of the total, hubs on the 55,057 trucks need to be replaced as forces greater than the hubs can withstand may be applied, the company said.
The durability of the F2 and F0 hubs were eroded mainly because mechanics at Mitsubishi Fuso-affiliated dealers' garages fastened their bolts too tightly, it said.
The company will have engineers at its head office's technology department conduct short-notice inspections of the garages, while instructing mechanics at the garages to fasten bolts more appropriately, it said.
Last October, a right front wheel fitted to the Super Great flew off when the hub ruptured in Shibushi, Kagoshima Prefecture, after the truck had traveled 920,000 kilometres. Abrasions to the hub were found to be 1.5 times the standard set by the company.
In addition, the truck's left front hub was found to have developed a crack covering a quarter of the hub's circumference.
Due to the findings, Mitsubishi Fuso conducted an emergency examination of the hubs of 850 trucks, finding hubs on seven of the trucks to have developed cracks, it said.
Following the findings, the company said its engineers, in designing the hubs and determining their strength, presumed too optimistic conditions on how users may use trucks, including the possibility that the users may load cargo far heavier than manuals say they may load, as well as the possibility that mechanics may fasten bolts excessively.

Source: [url=http://www.smh.com.au/news/Business/Mitsubishi-Fuso-to-recall-55057-trucks/2007/02/08/1170524208509.html]Sydney Morning Herald[/url]