general problems of the 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse

The crankshaft sensor is faulty and isn't working properly so my car has been shutting off randomly while I am driving it.

Takata recall: my vehicle is involved in the NHTSA campaign number 15v338000. On October 29, 2016, I was driving towards my home. After being in the stopped position for the duration of the left turn signal at the intersection of fm 518 and fm 1128 in pearland, texas, the light turned green and I proceeded down 1128 toward my home. After proceeding about1 block, my passenger airbag suddenly deployed. There was no passenger in my vehicle and nothing on the passenger seat, either. There were no other cars on the road. I had the windows open and the top down. The airbag was blowing in front of my face, blocking my vision. The passenger visor flew off, hitting my left arm, as I was trying to keep the airbag out of my face to get safely off the road. I pulled over to the right, into a parking lot. My vehicle stopped on the edge of a ditch at the side of the parking lot, due to my vision being blocked. My driver side airbag went off when I hit the culvert of the ditch. Fire came out of my steering wheel and I smelled chemicals. The fire promptly went out. My left arm was on the armrest of the door with both forearm bones visibly broken. The arm was swollen and deformed. I only had the vehicle 26 days. I was taken to the nearest trauma unit. The radia and ulna in my forearm have been put back together with rods and screws. My vehicle has major damage to the front end, radiator, transmission, steering, axle, etc. 9 months later my armis not healed and I am still without a vehicle.

The main issue seems to be a manufacturing defect in the wave/cushion spring located in the transmission. Mitsubishi has designed the wave spring as a fragile two coil piece which has been known to repeatedly break causing catastrophic failure in the transmission. This in turn poses a threat on the driver and passengers. When this wave spring breaks, actual pieces of the wave spring make it through Mitsubishi¿s also faulty transmission filter and lodge themselves in the pump gear, causing the gear to actually break. After the pump gear has been broken inside the transmission, all forward and reverse gears immediately stop function and in most instances the vehicle shuts off. This could result in potential harm or even death of the driver and/or passenger as the vehicle loses all moving power which can cause an accident with other vehicles on the road. Mitsubishi has recently created an updated version of the wave spring without issuing a recall, which now is a one piece instead of the coil setup and has a less chance of breaking. To many Mitsubishi/Dodge owners this update was discovered after they have had their vehicle in a transmission shop with a hefty bill to pay even though it was Mitsubishi¿s fault for engineering a faulty part in their transmission. All one person would need to find out about this issue is search the internet with the transmission code (f4a51) and this issue is well documented, even researched by transmission digest (a specialty magazine). Not only is this a large inconvenience to most, it is also a hazard to ones life. Mitsubishi should recall all vehicles which contain the f4a51 automatic transmission to perform the wave spring and filter update or reimburse those who have already had it done at their cost. This is an issue that needs to be addressed as if you own a vehicle with the f4a51.