The floor mats and sticking pedal accounts for only 30% of the problems. The true cause of sudden acceleration is still not known so no real solution is possible. IMO it's the electronics.
"In earlier testimony, David Gilbert, a Southern Illinois University professor, tells the panel he was able to produce in a lab environment a sudden-acceleration incident using a Toyota vehicle, in essence by introducing a short between two circuits.
Gilbert, whose research was sponsored by consumer advocacy firm Safety Research & Strategies, says it was fairly simple to confuse the Toyota electronics, but he has so far been unable to introduce a similar failure in the electronic controls for a Buick Lucerne."
"in your opinion"? are you a software engineer? are you an electrical engineer? are you /any/ form of engineer?
and we can find "witnesses" that will stand up and allege that their vehicle's throttle, brakes, transmission and ignition all failed simultaneously. but not as simultaneously as their credibility.
Right. There will be no problem with your gas pedal binding up due to corrosion.
The reported problem is that the area around the spring corrodes, and keeps the spring from returning the pedal to idle position. The shim keeps the spring from binding.
Since your pedal was sourced from Japan, and not CTS in the US, it does not have this problem.
But here's a hint: turn your cruise control OFF when you're not using it. OFF, not just Cancel, or hitting the brakes. OFF.
================= I was referring to the attitude of the bean counters, you knucklehead. That being the case, the only way you could possibly disagree with me is to have read NOTHING in the past 20 years about how airlines & aircraft manufacturers view risk vs safety.
Made in Japan only applies to the accelerator fix. If it is a software problem, all bets are off. Could be in cars no matter where made since they do noit know the cause. How can they say which cars are not affected?
dude, it it were a software problem, /all/ their vehicles would be exhibiting the exact same problem all the time. that may be a hard concept for a paid congressional "witness" to grasp, but it's a logical test you can apply and understand easily.
I see no indication that any expert claims to have proven anything. Maybe you're interpreting something differently than I am. Please highlight the words you read and surround them with five asterisks on either end of the phrase, *****like this*****.
As I understand the explanation, the problem with the CTS pedal assemblies is not "corrosion." It is moisture condensing on the plastic components. This changes the frictional characteristics of the assembly (possibly becasue they are using some form of nylon which absorbs moisture and swells). One thing that did catch my eye was the fact that both sides of the assembly used the same plastic material. I was taught this is a no-no when designing bearings (rotational and linear). When you use two identical plastics on opposite sides of the same frictional assembly, there is a tendency for the two plastics to "stick" together with age. I have a chart (a very old chart now) from Machine Design that lists compatible plastics for these type of assemblies. They never recommend using the same plastic on both sides of such an assembly. It seems to me as these pedal assemblies wear, the plastic surfaces become very smooth, and therefore even more likely to stick becasue of the plastic "compatibility." If the parts are nylon, moisture would likely make the problem worse. Adding the metal shims, would fix this, since plastic sliding friction on hard metal surfaces is much more predictable that plastic on plastic.
This is not the explantion I read. The shims actually change the frictional surfaces from plastic on plastic to plastic on steel. The original plastic on plastic rubbing acted as a damper / drag to give good pedal feel. I don't beleive the problem was related to corrosion at all (see above). There are interesting pictures at:
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Are you sure this is true? I haven't been able to find a decent description of the Denso pedal assembly. Are you sure it is that much different? Got a link to pictures?
Since most current cruise controls (and by most I am including manufacturers other than Toyota) use soft switches (i.e., switches that send a signal, they don't actually disconnect the circuit), I doubt if this makes any difference. Both "cancel" and "off" just send a signal to the computer telling the computer to initiate a function. Off is just a different signal than cancel. In the old days "off" actually cut the power to the cruise control. Now for many autos, off only means, "don't pay attention to other cruice control inputs." Ford got tired of people blaming the cruise controls for UA, so they added the stupid brake line switch to physically cut power to the cruise control actuator when the brakes were pressed. And then this screwed up. Fix a bug, add a bug.... I'd be tempted to go back to vaccum operated cruise controls!
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