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I have heard honda hopes software updates will solve this problem but i am not sure if this is proven over time.
It is good to see Honda stepping up on a car that is well beyond the warranty period. I think you should be happy with this action. I'd be thinking about trading it though soon after it is repaired.
'Rings' refers to piston rings that seal the cylinder walls during piston movement keeping combustion elements out of the crankcase and crankcase oil out of the combustion chamber. Note that piston rings were "upgraded" for MY 2011.
All said, I still believe that these "fixes" are merely bandaids on a bad technology. GM learned it's lesson the hard way but Honda seems intent on betting the ranch on cylinder deactivation. It's a cheap route to gain a little CAFE fleet average bump but the problems created by temperature and pressure differentials and who knows what else empirically reduce life expectancy of this engine. Honda began by stonewalling all their loyal customers and have lost many for good. It appears now they are quietly fixing these engines as they fail. They will never know how many people like me never even considered their product when shopping for minivans earlier this year.
The vibration is better at 22mph - but worse at 71-72mph.
Not good for a @$34,000 2010 Honda Crosstour..
After I kindly explained the history and similar diagnosis from the other dealer last year, I asked them to dig deeper and call me back with a root cause or they could keep my car. They called back many hours later and after spending some time on the Honda tech line. Apparently, they took some things apart and sent photos to Honda who in turn recommended a short block and rings free of charge. When asked why, they explained that there are issues with the VCM getting oil to specific cylinders which is causing misfires and fouled plugs. Who knows what else could be affected. Their fix seems a little more permanent than replacing plugs every few months but I am not keeping my hopes up. I am re-opening my original case with Honda from last year and going after a full reimbursement on the original PCM software upgrade and spark plug job.
I am now worried of new issues down the road, which may not have manifest yet, due to the oil not getting everywhere it should for over 70K miles. Any ideas about what they could be? Part of me wants to keep the car in hopes that the next repair will be the last related to this. Another part of me wants to give this lemon back to Honda and get my money back to buy a more reliable car.
Any ideas what else I could expect down the road related to this issue? I drive about 20-24K miles every year. I need reliability above all else. That's why I bought this car in the first place and so far, the plan has backfired.
Right now the car is smooth, i never noticed significant hesitation from VCM either now or previously.
Honda - Please get a clue - I'm also seeing people complaining with the Acura RDX - which just received the new VCM. :sick:
Bottom line, you can submit related out of pocket expenses for reimbursement and everyone gets an 8 year warranty against this problem.
Of course, Honda is hoping very few people bother so that their expense and damage to their reputation is minimized.
Honda looses countless customers because of VCM. I bought 4 Hondas since 1994 (1994, 2001, 2008 and 2012). Unfortunately I get chest pain (because I get mad) when the VCM computer changes the engine power without input from me (by varying the number of active cylinders). It's simply a health hazard for me to drive a VCM car (my 2012 Accord is manual transmission, so there is no computer changing the engine power or the gears for me). I can't stand a computer driving the car for me. I get chest pain.
Now oil consumption issues do damage catalysts, the question is why are you experiencing oil consumption and the most common cause is sticking piston rings caused by the oil leaving deposits behind. That is primarily caused by engine oil that fell short of a manufacturers specs, and a secondary cause is over extending the service intervals.
If you follow a number of my posts you are going to see a perspective that is only gained by doing repairs like this first hand, and yes I have personally repaired a number of cars that have had similar failures to yours and the primary cause is in fact found in the service history, and even if oil changes were timely that doesn't mean that the products used actually met the engines demands. The API and ILSAC specs are in fact a minimal standard and the fact that they have fallen short of consumers needs should be what is being taken to task here, not manufacturers like Honda, GM, etc.
At 100K your car still has 100K to 150K life still in it. At this time you should fix it, and then start making a payment to a new savings account as if you did indeed replace it. Ten years from today, when you still have your car and ten years worth of savings in the bank, lets talk again.
Go look at the history and hoopla surrounding the introduction of the GM dexos spec. The negative pressure trying to say that it wasn't necessary succeeded in having quite of number of cars get serviced incorrectly at dealers and many other shops. Just look at the other threads on this very page discussing GM's engine oil consumption issues. Almost everyone ignored what the owners manual actually said which was "Use an oil that meets API SM, ILSAC GF5, and is approved for GM spec 6094M (or 4718 the full synthetic version) or an equivalent. The trap from there was in actually finding a product that really was in fact an equivalent and understanding that anything that was only approved for the API and ILSAC ratings fell short of the actual spec and in fact wasn't an equivalent. The dexos licensed products solved these issues for GM because putting the licensed logo on the front of the bottle made it simple to know what really was the right product. Honda allowed the API and ILSAC minimal standard as their specification and for the most part it worked just fine, but there were exceptions and I have little doubt that yours was one of them. Your oil change intervals, combined with some aspect of your normal trip allowed the oil to degrade faster than was typical based on the original failures you described. Had someone have realized that early on and gotten you to switch to a more appropriate product you would not have suffered the failures that you did.
Of course at the same time can you just picture what typically happens when they would have tried to get you to use a synthetic back then when your car's spec didn't call for it? This has to be the only job in the world that would have had them labeled rip-offs if they had done that, and of course they are now wrong as well since they didn't.
So yes, IMO your car wasn't serviced correctly, and yes they likely would have been treated like they were wrong if they had in fact tried to do it right. In the end you end up fighting with them and the people who influenced the perspectives at play go on unscathed.
If there was knowledge of an engine defect, they would have dealt with the engine at 40K miles. If the car came in with a misfire, and a spark plug issue was discovered as the cause the right thing to do is to take care of the spark plugs.
Things happen to cars that quite often don't offer up much more than what can be immediately detected. If there wasn't legitimate proof that an engine problem truly existed at the 40K point, what do you think would happen to a tech who for no verifiable reason wants to replace the engine? Besides there is another whole level to this that everyone pooh-poohs because they simply don't care to see the connection. Under warranty that dealer technician probably got paid about .5hr to diagnose and replace the spark plugs. That same job, customer pay would be almost triple that and he/she then has time to be a lot more disciplined and thorough. Under warranty they are only allowed to do exactly what is needed in order to get you back into your car, and the time that they are paid to do it is often less than it really takes.
You have one part of the above correct, without a trouble code providing a reason for direction no one would, OR SHOULD be looking at the catalytic convertor when you were at the 40K and 70K intervals.
So then your engine was proven to be failing (for whatever reason) and they replaced it under warranty. The technician who fixed your car was probably paid around seven hours to do so. Now had that same job been customer pay he/she would have been paid around fourteen hours. The reality is that it takes an experienced tech just about ten hours on average to do that job. When an employee makes a mistake, some businesses dock their pay as a punishment. Exactly what did the tech do wrong to deserve getting his/her pay docked when he/she replaced your engine?
Once completed there was no indication from the system that there were any other issues were there. At least not until some 30K+ later when the system has detected that the catalyst efficiency is below the specifications.
So now, 105K miles. (25K out of warranty) the catalyst has failed. Here are the rest of the details. If they do the repair customer pay, you foot the whole bill and the tech will be paid around 1.7 hours. If they do anything other than that the technician will be paid .8 hours for the exact same job. Now it's not likely that the same technician would have worked on your car each visit, and regular maintenance is probably done quick lube fashion so what exactly did the last technician do wrong to deserve getting his/her pay docked?
Under the flat rate system today the best that can happen once the car gets into the come-back category is that the tech now does get it right, the problem is solved and the customer is happy with the car. Then maybe the next couple of cars that the tech works on are customer pay and they subsidize the loss of income that the tech experienced for that previous repair. If not then those work hours are simply lost to the technician and that is just one of the reasons that there are so many ex-technicians and no one coming into the trade to replace the next one that leaves it.
Typical consumerism considers that aspect of all of this to not be their problem and so it gets no attention. The genuine costs of this are making themselves known and you see it with every consumer who has had to go through multiple service visits to have an issue corrected. The consumer does recognize that as a problem when they have to take the car back, and back, and back. They also see the problem when the upsells of the services start piling on when the techs are forced to sell work or lose their jobs of they aren't producing enough income for the shop. All of the complaining and attention is going to the results of the real problem, instead of addressing the prime cause.