U.S. regulators approved shim to fix Toyota gas pedal - Supplier can crank out 120,000 shims/day

[concerned1]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704491604575035620392093224.html

JANUARY 31, 2010
Toyota Gas Pedal Fix Clears Regulators
By KATE LINEBAUGH

DETROIT --Toyota Motor Corp. received clearance from U.S. federal regulators for a repair to sticky accelerator pedals that caused the company to recall 2.3 million vehicles, and will make an announcement as early as Monday morning about the fix, according to people briefed on the plan. Toyota plans to ship the repair parts to dealers by Feb. 8, when the company will also resume production of the eight models affected by last week's recall, two people who have been informed of the plan said. The replacement parts could possibly come late next week, one of the people said. Toyota still could make changes to the plans, the people said...

Also on Saturday, French auto group PSA said it was recalling some of models of its vehicles produced in a Czech plant which it shares with Toyota. A spokesman for the company said the recall which affects the Peugeot 107 and Citroën C1 will concern fewer than 100,000 vehicles, or less than 10% of those vehicle models that are on the road. Toyota Friday recalled up to 1.8 million vehicles in Europe. And earlier in the week, Ford Motor Co. halted production of one model in China that uses the same part...

Production at five North American assembly plants is also slated to resume Feb. 8 after a one week shut down starting Monday. Newly produced gas pedals assembled by CTS Corp., the supplier of the faulty pedals, are being shipped to Toyota's plants and will be installed in cars and trucks when production restarts.

Elkhart, Ind.-based CTS said Friday that the sticky accelerator pedals should not "be linked with any sudden unintended acceleration incidents." The company said it is not aware of any accidents and injuries caused by the rare slow return pedal condition. CTS has also stated that it employs Toyota's design in the production of the pedals.

The repair that U.S. regulators cleared is a "selective spacer," or shim, that would be inserted into the gas-pedal assembly to increase tension within the pedal to prevent the accelerator from remaining in a depressed position. Toyota has told dealers that it can produce as many as 120,000 of the shims a day.

[MindPilot]

1. Show of hands...who believes this is going to fix the problem?

Me neither.

On edit: This is not to correct the sudden acceleration problem; this is for a sticky pedal. That it probably will correct, but the sudden acceleration issue remains.

[dems_rightnow]

3. I believe it will

*raises hand*

[w4rma]

4. It probably fixes it fine. This is a pretty simple engineering problem. (nt)

[madrchsod]

2. hell i`d use a can of teflon spray....

teflon spray fixes everything!

[thecrow]

5. It's pretty weird that this has been a reported problem for so long

and they "fix" it within days of the recall.
Why couldn't they have done it sooner?