General Motors (GM) has announced a recall of 324,000 heavy-duty (HD) pickup trucks equipped with the 6.6L Duramax V8 engine due to a fire risk caused by short-circuiting of the engine block-heater.
The short circuit could happen in the system’s cables or terminals, and it could lead to damage to engine parts as well as increasing the risk of a fire.
The problem was first discovered last year by a GM engineer carrying out quality control work. The engineer noticed that a block-heater module was leaking coolant. A follow-up inquiry turned up five cases of fires related to the issue in 2018 GMC Sierra 2500 and 3500 models.
In all, GM has now tabulated 19 cases of fires caused by the defective block-heater.