Zoom Zoom Spider...

[ash]

Spiders prompt itsy-bitsy Mazda recall

Is this the strangest car recall ever? Mazda has been forced to recall 65,000 of its saloon cars in the US, Canada and Mexico after spiders were discovered nesting in their fuel pipes.

Nobody can explain why the spiders have chosen the Mazda6 but there have been enough incidents to prompt a wide scale recall.

What's even more unusual is that the spiders have only appeared in cars with four-cylinder engines

The first incident happened in October 2009, when a Mazda6 was brought to a dealer with a fuel leak. A spider had spun a web in a fuel tank vent pipe, which created a vacuum in the tank, eventually cracking it.

There have been 19 further episodes since then, not restricted to any region, prompting the recall.

Mazda will check each car for evidence of spiders or webs, and fit a part to prevent spiders from entering any pipes around the fuel tank.

Speaking to AFP news agency, a Mazda spokesperson said: "There doesn't seem to be any particular reason why he's chosen the Mazda 6."

There's a chance that a leaking fuel pipe could cause a fire, though none have been reported so far.

No cars in the UK have been affected.

Mark Nichol

[nexus]

damn i feel sorry for mazda

[evergreen]

damn i feel sorry for mazda

shitty things happen to everybody. including toyota.

[nexus]

shitty things happen to everybody. including toyota.

yes evergreen but spider only with four cylinder engines and in their fuel pipes it is something never heard of

[heavyD]

shitty things happen to everybody. including toyota.

Hmm, quite a lot in the recent past too.

[jdnet]

Hmm, quite a lot in the recent past too.

Not really. If not for the whole toyota scandal, most of these recalls would have gone unnoticed or recieved minimum media coverage. The whole toyota mess just put everything under the radar of the media. If you look at the past there have been quite a few recalls and some of the problems resulted in deaths. Even toyota itself had some pretty bad recalls before the floormat/brake pedal incident which didn't result in much exposure.

[dillongt]

this is nothing…but we found it first. Mazda north america found not even 100 cars with this spider issue... all the fuel pumps has been already replaced. this can happen to any car manufacturer. it's better than toyota's recall of 1.53 million cars for brake pedal last december ( more than 250,000 accident and 5 dead ). Again they recall 200,000 cars a month a go. nissan 2.14 millon third largest recall last december. honda almost every month 38000 cars at least accord, odyssey, civic

[mazdaspeed]

Well there you go – Even Spiders love Mazda so much so they want their kids to be born inside one of them.

Besides this recall was not due to a technical fault like the other brands out there