Slotted just below the body-on-frame Armada and QX80, the unibody Pathfinder and QX60 have been hit with a safety recall. No fewer than 12,019 vehicles produced for the 2024 model year are believed to have been produced with improperly secured driver-side lap belt pretensioners.
A missing rivet is to blame for the aforementioned condition, which means that said vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208 for occupant crash protection, 209 for seatbelt assemblies, and 210 for seatbelt assembly anchorages. The suspect driver-side assemblies were supplied by Joyson Safety Systems, a US-based outfit controlled by Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corporation and PAG.
Joyson Safety Systems wouldn't have been possible without Key Safety Systems acquiring Takata Corporation in June 2017. The part number of the driver-side lap belt pretensioner assembly is 868896TA0A in the automaker's parts system.
In case of a missing rivet, the driver won't be restrained as intended in the event of a collision, thus increasing the risk of injury. Nissan became aware of this concern on January 10 during a routine inspection at the supplier's production facility.
JSS quarantined the assembly with a missing rivet and promptly initiated an investigation. The supplier discovered two more assemblies with missing rivets, while Nissan identified a single assembly with a missing rivet. Further investigation revealed that the left-hand river spacer presence sensor at the job station wasn't working properly.
Photo: Infiniti
Adding insult to injury, the programmable logic controller program sensor was also disabled. In light of these findings, Nissan's safety boffins decided to conduct a safety recall to fix the potentially affected Pathfinders and QX60s delivered to US customers. The vehicle population comprises Pathfinder and QX60 crossovers produced in the period between November 14, 2023 and January 11 of this year.
Dealers have been instructed to inspect the assembly for the missing rivet. If it's missing, service technicians are required to replace the assembly as a whole. Owners will be notified by first-class mail beginning April 18 with instructions to bring their vehicles in for the described remedy.
Codenamed R53 and L51, respectively, the Pathfinder and QX60 are front-biased crossovers underpinned by Nissan's D-segment platform. Both come with free-breathing V6 muscle in the form of the VQ35DD, which is connected to a nine-speed automatic supplied by ZF Friedrichshafen AG.
The Pathfinder is rated at 284 horsepower and 259 pound-feet (351 Nm) of torque, whereas the plusher QX60 develops 295 horsepower and 270 pound-feet (366 Nm) at full chatter. Gifted with three-row seating, the mid-sized crossovers are currently priced at $36,080 and $41,000 sans destination.
In front-wheel-drive specification, both are rated by the EPA at 23 miles to the gallon, which converts to 10.2 liters per 100 kilometers. Opting for all-wheel drive in the QX60 means one less mile per gallon, whereas the Pathfinder retains the 23-mpg estimate.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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