SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20150709-28DF1-2147430410. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Husqvarna YTH20K46 (Riding lawn mower model YTH20K46, product number 96043 0033, maintenance level 01. It has a Kohler engine family 8KHXS.5972GB, model SV600S, spec number PS-SV600-0024, serial number 3802225503. Built date 01/22/2008. OEM product number 409673.). Incident: The gas tank has a very slow fuel leak due to cracks that appear to be the result of a manufacturing defect. Since the machine is kept indoors, this leak is a fire or explosion hazard aggravated by the fact that it took several weeks to find it. The leaking cracks are at the bottom of the gas tank; but, at the top of the tank, there is a set of cracks similar to those at the bottom. The attached pictures show those top cracks where you can see how easy it is for gasoline to leak out if those cracks are at the bottom. This defect should be corrected as soon as possible and in the meantime other users of this product should be warned to look for fuel leaks especially if they detect gasoline odor coming from the machine in an enclosed area. Approximately a week ago (early July 2015), I contacted Husqvarna at 704-597-5000 where a spoke with a person called [REDACTED]. I asked [REDACTED] to report this hazard through his internal channels but he did not sound interested at all NOTE: Sorry, no pictures. Your form did not rallow me to attach anything when I pressed the "Add Files" button but I can provide them by other means if you need them.