Being told you need to take time out of your busy week to return your vehicle to a dealer to have recall work carried out can be a real pain. But having to return it for a recall that’s been announced to fix a balls-up in the first recall is a major PITA.
That’s the situation hundreds of thousands of Ranger pickup owners now find themselves in after Ford discovered that earlier recall work may not have been carried out correctly. The problem stems from remedial work carried out on 2004-2006 Rangers which were recalled in 2017-18 to have their potentially dangerous Takata airbag inflators replaced. The original inflators were at risk of rupturing in normal driving and causing injury to drivers.
But now Ford has discovered during an audit of the recall work that some official Ford dealership technicians and authorized third-party mobile repairers could have messed up the installation of the new inflators, which might mean the airbags don’t deploy in an accident.
Related: Ford Recalls 2023 Bronco, Ranger After Wheel Falls Off, Allegedly Hits Another Vehicle
Ford had supplied the technicians tasked with swapping the inflators with service instructions and a diagram explaining how to carry out the work, but those who were found to have mis-installed the inflators told Ford they hadn’t bothered to read those instructions before making the swap.
Ford has so far only identified eight Rangers whose inflators have been installed incorrectly, but that was enough to trigger a recall for all of the trucks that had previously been updated as a result of the first recall. That means 231,942 Rangers built between 2004-06 will have to return to dealerships for another round of surgery.
Still, it could be worse. At least Ford hasn’t told Ranger owners to not drive their cars while they wait for the fix. This week BMW issued a do-not-drive order for 90,000 older models in the U.S. still fitted with faulty Takata airbags despite the automaker issuing a recall in 2016.