Fireman obviously did some damage here, but they were putting out a fire caused by short-circuited wiring in an un-fused circuit.
A Chinese-made vanity mirror from Daimay under investigation since August of 2013 by NHTSA for causing headliner fires has finally persuaded Chrysler Group to recall about 895,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs from the 2011-14 model years. The safety defect recall includes 651,000 in the United States, 45,700 in Canada, 23,000 in Mexico and 175,000 outside North America.
Chrysler originally and for a long time maintained that it had received no reports of injuries and that there is “no unreasonable risk” safety. Chrysler opened its initial headliner fire investigation in March of 2011 after a customer complaint. NHTSA forged on and forced the issue.
“If a resistive short does occur, it does not
always result in a fire risk due to the variability of the resistive short,” said NHTSA.
Customers reported to NHTSA a variety of headliner fires, ranging from minor overheating to an open flame at the headliner and/or sun visor material while driving the vehicle. In some cases, the fire spread to the front seats and/or door panels of the vehicle. In one report, the sunroof was damaged causing the glass to shatter.
An electrical short in the vanity lighting wiring circuit that is routed to either one of the sun visors causes the fires. The sun visors are mounted to the roof of the vehicle through the headliner with three screws. The sun visor wiring may be penetrated or pierced by one of these screws during initial vehicle assembly at Jefferson North or subsequent headliner area repairs. The piercing causes an electrical short that could result in a fire.
NHTSA noted that there is no dedicated fuse for the affected circuit, so the electrical short can continue until the short clears or the vehicle is turned off. (or it burns) The Dodge Durango uses the same headliner assembly, and Chrysler says there are similar headliner fire incidents affecting this model.
