Mother Jones tries to relive the Kapton-bashing glory

The article excerpted below may be correct. But it seems most unlikely. Aircraft wiring insulated with a plastic product going by the trade-name of Kapton was the subject of big safety concerns in the 90s and was as a consequence phased out and replaced by double-insulated wiring which added a sheath of teflon around the Kapton. The double-insulated wiring is to my knowledge (and I am no expert) now used on most commercial aircraft. But because they have had some minor role in calling attention to past safety problems, the folks at the Green/Left magazine "Mother Jones" have leapt into glad action now that they have noted another problem that seems to involve Kapton. Apparently a problem switch in some Ford trucks uses the same Teflon/Kapton "sandwich" that aircraft wiring uses. But you will note in the "Mother Jones" article NO mention of the fact that commercial aircraft use it. My guess is that if it is safe in airliners, it is safe in your pickup.

Note that even this anti-Kapton site does not criticize use of the Teflon/Kapton "sandwich" in aircraft. It says: "By 1992, Boeing was out of Kapton and into its new and safe TKT, a Kapton insulation wrapped in a teflon "sandwich" with which there have been no major recorded problems".

It is probably very awful of me but the fact that "unsafe at any speed" Ralph Nader is involved in the latest scare also makes me think it is all hokum.

"So why is Kapton still in millions of Ford cars, trucks, and SUVs? Since the early 1990s, the company has used this DuPont-manufactured material in the hydraulic pressure switch that shuts off cruise control when drivers hit the brakes. Coated with Teflon, Kapton serves as a barrier between the flammable brake fluid and the electric current just millimeters away. Yet years of use can cause cracking in the Teflon, leaving the Kapton membrane and the switch itself vulnerable to ignition from the current—which, in Ford vehicles, continues even when the engine is off. “Imagine your insulating material,” Block says, “which is designed to hold in or contain current, acting like a sparkler.”

But Ford maintains that the root cause of the fires is too complex to fault a single component. Although the automaker acknowledges evidence of overheating in the cruise-control components in some models—attributing it to a “systems interaction” of leaking brake fluid, Teflon corrosion, age and mileage, plus the location of the switch—it has recalled less than a third of the vehicles with the Kapton switches".

Nearly 30 years after the Ford Pinto fiasco was exposed by this magazine, consumer advocates are now confronting Ford for being slow to address this known fire threat. Ralph Nader chastised the automaker in early September: “Ford Motor Company’s sluggish and piecemeal approach to its automotive responsibilities betrays motorists’ safety. If this part has now been recalled on three separate occasions, why isn’t it simply removed from the fleet?” In an open letter to Ford CEO William Clay Ford Jr., Nader added: “How much longer will you allow this $20 part to imperil the public?"


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