We have the 03 Odyssey with the a/t and have had a recall on the thing for a patch up fix of the transmission problem. Seems there is a gear and shaft that is running dry in the system, overheats, and eventually creates a full system failure.
The recall fix installed a little offset tube that hooked onto the return line of the transmission fluid to re-direct it over the spot that was getting running dry and overheating.
Who those 83% Odyssey owners are that have had no a/t issues, I don't know, as all those transmissions manufactured for/by Honda had the same lubrication problem....the same tranny was also used in other Honda vehicles for those same years..guess what, same problem.
I considered takeing it in for the designated a/t fluid change under the service shedule, but when the service writer told me that "we take the pan down, change the filter and put new fluid in it" I decided to do it myself, as I knew there is no "Pan" on that Honda trasnmission, and to "Change the filter" you would have to take the a/t out of the vehicle and totally dismantle it.
I am still running my 1992 Dodge Grand Caravan ES AWD and they will get it when they pry the keys from my cold dead hand.
(Yes, I admit I own 2 mini vans..the Odyssey is fine but has no soul)
The OBV (old blue Van) did eat the OEM transmission early on in it's life, but the rebuilt used better 'jobber' parts in problem areas. I suck out the a/t fluid regularly with a 'fluid evacuator' and always replace it with AFT 3.
Been running great for years, the 3.3 motor starts and runs like a little clock.
It loves Valvoline Max Life 10-30 oil, used to have 'lifter clatter' on start up, but with the Max Life it's a quiet as new. :shades:
I suck out the a/t fluid regularly with a 'fluid evacuator' and always replace it with AFT 3.
Actually, that ATF-3 (also called 7176 I think) was one of the reasons for Chrysler's transmission problems. At some point in the later 1990's, they changed the requirement to ATF-4/Type 9196...only problem is, someone forgot to tell whomever put the owner's manuals together! So for a few years, you had people putting in the wrong fluid because the owner's manual told them to!
Another problem that I've heard is somewhat common is that a transmission will get rebuilt, but the shop forgets to flush out the whole system...the cooling lines that run to the base of the radiator (or a separate cooler nowadays I guess), etc. So they get a new transmission, new fluid, but once it starts running, the debris that had been in the cooler and the lines gets back into the system and shortens the life of the rebuild.
And often, those quickie lube places, when they do a transmission service, won't actually clean the filter/screen or whatever. They'll just loosen the pan and let the old fluid drain out, and then tighten it back up. At least, one guy I knew who used to work for one of those places told me that.
I did have a "Transmission Specialist" do a tranny fluid change on the 1992 Dodge minivan once..(and last time ever) after trying unsuccessfully to find any cuttings in the pan (even taking the filter apart with a razor blade) they then proceeded to refill with Dexron!
I was adamant about them using the Chrysler ATF3 for the refill when I brought it in, but when I found the a/t was slipping on the drive home, I took it back and asked what they had put in it. They only have bulk a/t fluid in the shop and had no ATF 3 so put in the wrong stuff anyway, telling me "It doesn't really matter"
I said suck it all out and do it right, so they pulled out a small bottle of 'Lubegaurd' and added it, saying that would put the Dexron up to ATF3 specs...B#*! POOP!
Since then I buy the ATF 3 at Wallmart and do it myself.................
It's true the newer Dodge a/t's use ATF 4 but the 1992 system is fine with the ATF 3, however..ATF 4 uses an even better more expensive base oil with the same Lubrizol addative package and a longer change interval. (check the back of any 'aftermarket' container of ATF 3 or 4, to make sure it is licensed for manufature by Chrysler, that gaurantees it has the proper lubrisity addatives, if so, it's fine)
Honda has their own a/t fluid $10,00 a quart, only at the Dealer parts counter..you know the place, the guy behind the desk is wearing a Bandit mask)
Just don't ever use Dexron or Brand X without the Chrysler license for production, in a Dodge a/t. no matter who tells you otherwise.
Well, we can look at the model years, what was it again, 99-2003?
Yeah, the older ones would get a pass, but the 2003 model is still rated poorly and it's only been on the road for 6 years.
Not to mentoin - the complaints I heard were a while ago, they've actually quieted down now. That implies the failure occured and was fixed, and newer ones have addressed the issue.
longo2: perhaps that recall (was it a recall, or TSB?) got to the other 83% before the failure occurred?
Honda's tow package includes a trans cooler, I guess if someone puts a UHaul hitch on there and pushes the towing limits, they're definitely to blame.
No perfect van, true, though if you think about it they have lots more features to break than regular cars do plus they're hauling large amount of kids that have food fights inside on a daily basis.
03 and prior Sienna 3.0l V6 (1MZ engine code) had sludge, but the 3MZ (3.3l, 2004-2006) was fine, and the new 2GR is also fine (2007+).
Siennas did have a door problem for the 04-06 models and a TSB came out for those.
I have an 07 and (knock on wood) there haven't been any common problems that have crept up.
In CR Sienna rates "Better than Average" consistently, for every year, even the sludge-affected 03s. So it couldn't have occurred to lots of them. Then again it's catastrophic if it does.
Toyota got smart - they put a service reminder idiot light. No excuse for forgetting to change your oil.
In CR Sienna rates "Better than Average" consistently, for every year, even the sludge-affected 03s. So it couldn't have occurred to lots of them. Then again it's catastrophic if it does.
Was that one of the models that CR automatically rated as better then average?
How can they possibly say that 14% of a certain brand car transmissions had troubles? Dealers don'r report to them nor do independant shops!
And, again, what is a "failure"? If a transmission go's bad at 135,00 miles, is that a "failure"? Not in my book it isn't. Everything breaks given enough time.
CR's version of statistics is I think a little bit suspect.
The Range Rover Sports for 2006 and 2007 had the last time I looked mostly very good or good dots for all systems with only a couple fair or poor dots. There was maybe one excellent dot.
The overall score that CR gives for those cars is a solid black dot for much worse then average predicted reliability. If you assign a number 1-5 to those dots and just average them out you get an average that is around 4 so a good score not a below 2 score that would be poor. I don't know if they weigh certain areas more severely then others but most of the poor dots were minor things like audio problems so I would expect them to be weighted less.
One year they gave Honda Accords a black dot for brakes. The year before and theyear after that had solid red dots
Actually, I could see some rationale in that. Maybe that year just happened to be the year that the "Average" Accord driver ended up needing new brake pads or something? And even though brake pads are really a maintenance thing and not a breakdown/repair, I'm sure most people consider getting new brake pads to be a "problem".
maintenance is when the manual says change this or replace this x miles.
Would Consumer Reports be able to weed that out, though? For instance, say I had a 1999 Honda Accord, and rode the brakes to the rivets, so I needed not only new pads but rotors as well. Well, that's a maintenance issue that got exacerbated to a repair due to neglect. But if I had a CR survey and reported that I had to spend money on "brake repair", do they ask for clarification as to what exactly I needed?
at this point, i think CR is an anti selection situation. risk averse people look to CR then buy what they recommend. they treat it well, it treats them well, and gets a good survey. the guy across the street from me won't get out of bed unless CR recommends it.
2024 Ford F-150 STX, 2023 Ford Explorer ST, 91 Mustang GT vert
>I would like to know where CR gets their numbers.
The numbers are not statistically meaningful surveys as they would like to present. They got caught with their favoring of that certain brand a couple years back.
The selection of whom receives the surveys, the people of those who decide they wish to complete it and send it back, then the mysterious meaning of what a black dot is and a half black dot is..., that the idea that meaning has changed through the years as cars all got better (yippee!) so a black dot for brake pads at 25K now isn't as meaning for as a black dot for brakes was 8 years ago??? Gimmee a break.
CR is a business. They make their money selling the magazine. Therefore they print what won't offend their determination of their demographic subscribers and their off-the-rack readers. Only the subscribers (allegedly) get a survey to fill out.
This deficiency doesn't mean that if something is a problem to some reportees and chosen to be indiciated by a half or full dot at CR that it isn't something to consider. But it certainly wouldn't be a sale-stopper if I wanted the vehicle as my best purchase choice, whether it be brakes that wear quickly or expensive to replace or a sludge potential engine or upper intake manifolds that seep coolant for a fraction of the motors needing replacement. All cars have problems and you fix them as part of cost of ownership.
>at this point, i think CR is an anti selection situation. risk averse people look to CR then buy what they recommend. they treat it well, it treats them well, and gets a good survey.
That's right and it's a good plan to take. If you know something has any weak points, then be prophylactic in your treatment of them. But it doesn't mean the failure points aren't there.
The 2003 Honda Odyssey shared the wonky a/t with other models, even up into the Acura line.
The recall that I got had 2 options, Honda (Canada) had a special camera developed that could snake down into the transmission and take a picture of the problem area. If the shaft that was running dry had already turned blue, then a major r&r ws called for. If the tranny had less than (can't remember exactly) 5 to 10,000 miles on it, then no tranoscopy, just the off set oil diverter from the a/t fluid return was installed.
The Honda Odyssey has a magnetic drain plug on the a/t and when I did the fluid change for the first go round..it came out looking like a big fur ball, covered in cuttings and debris, after the 2nd and third flush and fill it was clean.
The Honda a/t fluid change has to be done in 3 stages (no oil pan) and you never really get tottaly clean fluid in it, as it's a, drain and mix in new fluid, drive it around the block, drain, drive and do it again, then drain, drive and do it for the third time.
After the recall patch/fix, I drove the Van home and found a big pool of transmission oil on the garage floor the next morning. Back to the shop for another session, "we changed all the O-rings on the fittings" was the fix.
Time and miles will tell if my Oddy will still be around as long as my beloved old 1992 Dodge Grand Caravan ES AWD. (I guess it will considering I'm now paranoid about driving it and it sits in the Barn)
I quit believing CR when my personal experience was nothing like what they reported. 1975 Olds Starfire? They said junk, I put 75K miles on it in less than four years and had only a few very minor issues. 1979 Olds Cutlass Calais (RWD) they were very down on, yet one of the most trouble free cars I have ever owned.
1982 Datsun/Nissan King Cab, they loved it. Greatest thing since sliced bread. My experience with a brand new one was that it was the most dangerous POS I have ever driven in my life. Lost count on how many times the brakes failed in the first year, head gasket leaked, converter failed, electrical problems, and the NAPZ4 emissions system had to have been designed by a bunch of alcoholic monkeys on a three day bender. You could not keep that thing in tune for more than 60 days or 1500 miles. After 18K miles, I gave up. That junker was in the shop more than it was on the road, and I just got fed up with it. :lemon:
I quit believing CR when my personal experience was nothing like what they reported. 1975 Olds Starfire? They said junk, I put 75K miles on it in less than four years and had only a few very minor issues. 1979 Olds Cutlass Calais (RWD) they were very down on, yet one of the most trouble free cars I have ever owned.
This might sound a bit vindictive and smug, but I have to admit I got a chuckle out of it when my Mom & stepdad bought a 1991 Nissan Stanza, essentially because Consumer Reports "told" them to. And it ended up being a piece of junk! Although in its defense I guess, it didn't really start to crap out until around 90,000 miles. They bought a 1999 Altima, again because CR "told" them to, and I think my Mom & stepdad got selective memory loss about the issues with the '91. And this one dumped its tranny at 35,000 miles! To be fair though, Nissan replaced that one without any fuss, and the car now has around 300,000 miles on it, so it's redeemed itself I guess. :P
In contrast, I remember CR rating the 1986 Monte Carlo 305 "much worse than average". Yet the one my Mom bought was a good car. She got 179,000 miles out of it and then gave it to me, and in 3 months of delivering pizzas I got it up to around 192,000 miles, when I got t-boned.
GM cars back then, though, tended to be like a fine wine, where they'd get better with age. They'd often show up with lots of little black dots when they were 1-2 years old, but would improve with time, and by the time they were 5-6 years old, would often be recommended buys! I have a 1984 Consumer Guide auto issue packed away somewhere, which covered used cars from 1978-83. I remember for the most part, GM's RWD mid- and full-sized cars were rated average to better in 1978-79, seemed to take a slight dip in 1980, and a big dip in 1981-82. 1983 seemed to be better, though, but then the cars were only 1 year old at that point. I also remember the 1982-83 Olds 98 and Buick Electra remained very highly rated even through those dark years, and I seem to remember the Delta and LeSabre doing pretty well too. The Chevies and Pontiacs seemed to take a sharper dive, as did the midsized cars across all the brands.
What I remember most about that stupid truck was that after it's third trip to the dealer for brake failure (and a doozy of a failure, too. In a hard stop, such as a light changing on the highway, the rear brakes would lock up. And they wouldn't unlock, even after you were stopped and kicking the brake pedal! I had to put the truck in reverse and force it to move backward to release the brakes) I bought the factory manuals for the truck and decided to just figure it out myself. Which wouldn't have been too difficult had the rear axle on the truck matched what the manual said was supposed to be there! Apparently, Nissan did a mid-production run change of the rear axle assembly, and the brakes were not fully compatible with the master cylinder. That's when I gave up. :sick:
They got caught with their favoring of that certain brand a couple years back.
Not quite - they stopped projecting above average reliability for Toyotas when they started hearing complaints. They used to go ahead and forecast good reliability if a model had been consistently reliable in the past. That seems reasonable to me.
Also, they were not "caught", they themselves changed the forecasts, nobody told them they had to.
Nowadays they will say "New" if they don't have enough data.
As for the reliability verdict, i.e. the summary score, you can't just average all the other scores. The average new car is quite good, so if you have a vehicle that has one or two problems, it's well below average, even though it can score well in all other areas.
This whole "I had one reliable car" talk is insignificant. You have to look at a sample of 1000+ for it to have any meaning. Some argue even CR's sample sizes are not big enough.
You go to Vegas, you will get snake eyes 1 out of every 36 rolls of the dice. It may not be likely, but it will happen. That's randomness, and the same applies to cars and reliability, to a certain extent.
I read CR just FWIW, but I think the biggest critics do not actually read CR (naturally), so a lot of the criticisms are way off base.
That's randomness, and the same applies to cars and reliability, to a certain extent
Shouldn't newer techniques like TQM and Six Sigma be removing a lot of this randomness from vehicles? Seems to me that when you go that far out on to the edges of the distribution curve, you should end up a lot better than at a Vegas craps table.
The experience of a single car will always be random, though you may improve (or hurt) your odds by picking certain ones. That's what CR tried to help people do - improve your odds, not pick a guaranteed reliable car (not possible).
Think of it from the opposite perspective.
Let's say you looked at an unreliable car. If problems were not random, then every single transmission would fail at exactly the same mileage.
What you actually see is that 10% or so of them fail at fairly random intervals, and 90% of them don't fail at all.
With a bigger sample, we get a better idea of what the "average" model will do, but you'll still see plenty of variance among owners of the same model.
Let's see if I can recall my post-grad Statistics course...
Basically you can establish a confidence interval if you get a large enough sample. So you could say, with, for instance, 95% confidence (scientifically), that a certain model will not have transmission failure by a certain number of miles. You'd need a large, random sample of car without that problem to make that claim, though.
As owners we tend to overestimate the importance of our own experience. You buy a car from Brand X and have a bad experience, and you might assume they all do that and avoid that brand for the rest of your life.
OTOH, you have a good experience, and you swear by that brand and buy another just like it.
Ask the guy who has two of the same car, if they're exactly the same. They never are. Usually one is better than other.
I understand what you are saying, sort of like a coin toss. However, I think in today's production world you should be able to get a feel as to whether there is a weak point in a vehicle line or component much earlier on. The lemon prone products should surface out earlier don't you think?
Asking people is a crap shot in itself because the cars are maintained and driven differently, and then there is the research achilles heel, the BS factor some throw in when responding.
But think about it - Lexus brags about having something like 85 defects per 100 vehicles, that's still a bunch of problems, and that's just in the first 90 days.
You can't guarantee a perfect car, no matter how much you spend. Fact is, even with the best odds, you'll still have about 1 thing break in the first 3 months. 85 cars will be in the service bay getting something fixed, and roughly 15 will be trouble-free, and that's for the BEST brand.
My math is actually wrong, because some people will experience more than one problem per vehicle, so more likely 20 or so people will be trouble-free, 79 have one problem, and one unlucky guy got the lemon with the other 6 problems.
That's what I mean, though, you're still rollling the dice, even with the best.
My wife's grandson was here for the weekend. They have a 2003 Honda Odyssey. I asked if they ever had transmission problems. They had just spent $3600 on a new transmission. I asked if they had ever gotten anything from Honda indicating it may cause trouble and they said no. It has always been serviced at the dealership they bought it from. They had no idea that others have had transmission problems. They were not aware that Honda fixed many transmissions after the warranty was up. They plan to question the dealer when they get home to Simi Valley. The vehicle just past 100k miles this summer. They do like the vehicle a lot.
>That's what CR tried to help people do - improve your odds, not pick a guaranteed reliable car
That's not how CR presented their "help" in their advertising in the past.
>Let's see if I can recall my post-grad Statistics course...
You missed one very important aspect until late in your comment: random sample. There's nothing random about CR's sample. In fact it's biased just by their demographics of their readers who subscribe. They think pretty much of like mind to the folks running the opinions at CR.
CR hated GM when Ralph Nader was there and it continued through the decades.
There's nothing random about CR's sample. In fact it's biased just by their demographics of their readers who subscribe. They think pretty much of like mind to the folks running the opinions at CR.
While I agree the sample base may not be well stratified, CR doesn't seem to vary that much from others like JD Powers, so I'm not sure its data is totally invalid.
CR hated GM when Ralph Nader was there and it continued through the decades.
Well, if it's any consolation, they did rate the 1986 Bonneville with the 305 as a recommended used car buy, once it was 4-5 years old. :P And when they tested some of the downsized GM full-sizers in 1977, they had a ton of stuff to list under "advantages", while under "disadvantages" they simply said "none significant enough to mention." C'mon now, when's the last time someone's had THAT to say about a GM car? :surprise:
So if a given model has a failure rate of, say, 5% every year, then over the course of 6 years, 30% of them have failed (probably less since some might have failed more than once).
LOL Andre! No, if 5% fail every year, then after 6 years 5% of the total production run have failed. You don't add together all the fives. :-)
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
I did not say it was totally invalid. It's not a true random sampling.
If they sent questionnaires to owners of automobiles chosen by random out of all autos and then reported the number of returns of each model of auto..., then we'd have something. I'll end carrying my torch about CR's methodology and piety about their results... since it's not really the topic, but is somewhat related to sweeping stuff under the rug since CR helped.
26.5% would have failed. 95% survive first year. Of those 95%, 95% survive the second year (90.25%), 95% x 90.25% survive thrid year... etc. At end of 6th year, 73.5% survive.
Except for VW and the Audi unexpected acceleration thing, we really haven't seen enough German brand bashing in here! :-P
For instance, I have heard that the last truly reliable 3-series was the generation that ended in the early 00s, and the more recent ones have been problematic and expensive for their owners.
And certainly we have all heard that the C-class hatchbacks, while they were still around, were no great shakes either. But I know little of the specifics of either....
...not to mention, Kia and Land Rover are pretty much at the bottom of every single reliability survey year after year, yet I know of no specific issues with either brand, which makes it seem like they have also swept some things quietly under the rug....
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
LOL Andre! No, if 5% fail every year, then after 6 years 5% of the total production run have failed. You don't add together all the fives.
No, I'm talking for any given model year, over the course of time. So for, say, a 2003 Odyssey, maybe 5% of them failed after 1 year another 5% after two years, etc. So after 6 years, you could very well have about 30% of them failed. Only 5% in any given year, but over a 6 year lifespan, 30% total.
Spotted an early 00s S430 in a visitor spot as I was leaving for work this morning. It was parked kind of awkwardly - but was definitely sitting lower on the passenger side, especially at the rear. Looks like it is suffering an Airmatic failure. Of course, this could be a MY 2000 car with 175K on the clock etc, but the air suspension especially on 2000-2002 S-class has been an issue I am not sure MB has really ever admitted. I think most of those bugs were fixed in later examples.
I don't know about the Airmatic stuff Fintail is referring to, but don't forget that the '98 ML-320 was so bad they took it off the market and I think they repurchased most of them.
The cars are random samples of any given model, it's the owners filling out the surveys that aren't random.
You may see a higher proportion of Accords than, say, some less reliable models, but within Accord production they'll get a random sample of Accords.
The survey seems to be about 700 pages long so it's pretty detailed, I'm not sure they leave a lot of room for error due to bias vs. reporting specific problems.
Full disclosure - I do subscribe, mostly just FWIW, but I do not fill out the lengthy surveys, and I doubt I'm the typical reader.
I had an arrogant co-worker, (think of the Andy Bernard character from "The Office) who bought one of the early MLs. It was a turd. Where does the R-Class fall on the M-B badness scale?
Motor Trend has a history of picking losers from time to time. I would not mind having a ML320 CDI if I could get past the looks. I prefer the square box look in my SUVs. waiting to hear which models of the R family to avoid.
Comments
Seems there is a gear and shaft that is running dry in the system, overheats, and eventually creates a full system failure.
The recall fix installed a little offset tube that hooked onto the return line of the transmission fluid to re-direct it over the spot that was getting running dry and overheating.
Who those 83% Odyssey owners are that have had no a/t issues, I don't know, as all those transmissions manufactured for/by Honda had the same lubrication problem....the same tranny was also used in other Honda vehicles for those same years..guess what, same problem.
I considered takeing it in for the designated a/t fluid change under the service shedule, but when the service writer told me that "we take the pan down, change the filter and put new fluid in it" I decided to do it myself, as I knew there is no "Pan" on that Honda trasnmission, and to "Change the filter" you would have to take the a/t out of the vehicle and totally dismantle it.
File this under Honda Stupid Engineer Tricks"
I am still running my 1992 Dodge Grand Caravan ES AWD and they will get it when they pry the keys from my cold dead hand.
(Yes, I admit I own 2 mini vans..the Odyssey is fine but has no soul)
The OBV (old blue Van) did eat the OEM transmission early on in it's life, but the rebuilt used better 'jobber' parts in problem areas.
I suck out the a/t fluid regularly with a 'fluid evacuator' and always replace it with AFT 3.
Been running great for years, the 3.3 motor starts and runs like a little clock.
It loves Valvoline Max Life 10-30 oil, used to have 'lifter clatter' on start up, but with the Max Life it's a quiet as new. :shades:
Actually, that ATF-3 (also called 7176 I think) was one of the reasons for Chrysler's transmission problems. At some point in the later 1990's, they changed the requirement to ATF-4/Type 9196...only problem is, someone forgot to tell whomever put the owner's manuals together! So for a few years, you had people putting in the wrong fluid because the owner's manual told them to!
Another problem that I've heard is somewhat common is that a transmission will get rebuilt, but the shop forgets to flush out the whole system...the cooling lines that run to the base of the radiator (or a separate cooler nowadays I guess), etc. So they get a new transmission, new fluid, but once it starts running, the debris that had been in the cooler and the lines gets back into the system and shortens the life of the rebuild.
And often, those quickie lube places, when they do a transmission service, won't actually clean the filter/screen or whatever. They'll just loosen the pan and let the old fluid drain out, and then tighten it back up. At least, one guy I knew who used to work for one of those places told me that.
I was adamant about them using the Chrysler ATF3 for the refill when I brought it in, but when I found the a/t was slipping on the drive home, I took it back and asked what they had put in it.
They only have bulk a/t fluid in the shop and had no ATF 3 so put in the wrong stuff anyway, telling me "It doesn't really matter"
I said suck it all out and do it right, so they pulled out a small bottle of 'Lubegaurd' and added it, saying that would put the Dexron up to ATF3 specs...B#*! POOP!
Since then I buy the ATF 3 at Wallmart and do it myself.................
It's true the newer Dodge a/t's use ATF 4 but the 1992 system is fine with the ATF 3, however..ATF 4 uses an even better more expensive base oil with the same Lubrizol addative package and a longer change interval.
(check the back of any 'aftermarket' container of ATF 3 or 4, to make sure it is licensed for manufature by Chrysler, that gaurantees it has the proper lubrisity addatives, if so, it's fine)
Honda has their own a/t fluid $10,00 a quart, only at the Dealer parts counter..you know the place, the guy behind the desk is wearing a Bandit mask)
Just don't ever use Dexron or Brand X without the Chrysler license for production, in a Dodge a/t. no matter who tells you otherwise.
Yeah, the older ones would get a pass, but the 2003 model is still rated poorly and it's only been on the road for 6 years.
Not to mentoin - the complaints I heard were a while ago, they've actually quieted down now. That implies the failure occured and was fixed, and newer ones have addressed the issue.
longo2: perhaps that recall (was it a recall, or TSB?) got to the other 83% before the failure occurred?
Honda's tow package includes a trans cooler, I guess if someone puts a UHaul hitch on there and pushes the towing limits, they're definitely to blame.
03 and prior Sienna 3.0l V6 (1MZ engine code) had sludge, but the 3MZ (3.3l, 2004-2006) was fine, and the new 2GR is also fine (2007+).
Siennas did have a door problem for the 04-06 models and a TSB came out for those.
I have an 07 and (knock on wood) there haven't been any common problems that have crept up.
In CR Sienna rates "Better than Average" consistently, for every year, even the sludge-affected 03s. So it couldn't have occurred to lots of them. Then again it's catastrophic if it does.
Toyota got smart - they put a service reminder idiot light. No excuse for forgetting to change your oil.
Was that one of the models that CR automatically rated as better then average?
i have a olds achieva 97, no problems, tranny only slipped once and that was after 20min at 100+ getting on base in time for a meeting...
its a tank, plastic bumpers but a tank non the less..
why GM ever stopped the olds brand i don't know, but I think it has to do with that they were one of the few brands without major mechanical problems.
What we're talking about here is actual reliability as reported by the annual survey of owners.
With regard to sludge, it makes sense, because I've never seen anything indicating it was widely experienced.
How can they possibly say that 14% of a certain brand car transmissions had troubles? Dealers don'r report to them nor do independant shops!
And, again, what is a "failure"? If a transmission go's bad at 135,00 miles, is that a "failure"? Not in my book it isn't. Everything breaks given enough time.
The Range Rover Sports for 2006 and 2007 had the last time I looked mostly very good or good dots for all systems with only a couple fair or poor dots. There was maybe one excellent dot.
The overall score that CR gives for those cars is a solid black dot for much worse then average predicted reliability. If you assign a number 1-5 to those dots and just average them out you get an average that is around 4 so a good score not a below 2 score that would be poor. I don't know if they weigh certain areas more severely then others but most of the poor dots were minor things like audio problems so I would expect them to be weighted less.
Nothing was changed in the brake system between those three years!
After that, I didn't pay much attention because I knew theratings were suspect.
Oh, but customers come in and say..." Don't sell me a 1999 Accord! Thay have bad brakes, don't you know?
***sigh***
Actually, I could see some rationale in that. Maybe that year just happened to be the year that the "Average" Accord driver ended up needing new brake pads or something? And even though brake pads are really a maintenance thing and not a breakdown/repair, I'm sure most people consider getting new brake pads to be a "problem".
failure is a non maintenance item needing to be replaced.
Would Consumer Reports be able to weed that out, though? For instance, say I had a 1999 Honda Accord, and rode the brakes to the rivets, so I needed not only new pads but rotors as well. Well, that's a maintenance issue that got exacerbated to a repair due to neglect. But if I had a CR survey and reported that I had to spend money on "brake repair", do they ask for clarification as to what exactly I needed?
risk averse people look to CR then buy what they recommend.
they treat it well, it treats them well, and gets a good survey.
the guy across the street from me won't get out of bed unless CR recommends it.
The numbers are not statistically meaningful surveys as they would like to present. They got caught with their favoring of that certain brand a couple years back.
The selection of whom receives the surveys, the people of those who decide they wish to complete it and send it back, then the mysterious meaning of what a black dot is and a half black dot is..., that the idea that meaning has changed through the years as cars all got better (yippee!) so a black dot for brake pads at 25K now isn't as meaning for as a black dot for brakes was 8 years ago??? Gimmee a break.
CR is a business. They make their money selling the magazine. Therefore they print what won't offend their determination of their demographic subscribers and their off-the-rack readers. Only the subscribers (allegedly) get a survey to fill out.
This deficiency doesn't mean that if something is a problem to some reportees and chosen to be indiciated by a half or full dot at CR that it isn't something to consider. But it certainly wouldn't be a sale-stopper if I wanted the vehicle as my best purchase choice, whether it be brakes that wear quickly or expensive to replace or a sludge potential engine or upper intake manifolds that seep coolant for a fraction of the motors needing replacement. All cars have problems and you fix them as part of cost of ownership.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
risk averse people look to CR then buy what they recommend.
they treat it well, it treats them well, and gets a good survey.
That's right and it's a good plan to take. If you know something has any weak points, then be prophylactic in your treatment of them. But it doesn't mean the failure points aren't there.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
The recall that I got had 2 options, Honda (Canada) had a special camera developed that could snake down into the transmission and take a picture of the problem area. If the shaft that was running dry had already turned blue, then a major r&r ws called for.
If the tranny had less than (can't remember exactly) 5 to 10,000 miles on it, then no tranoscopy, just the off set oil diverter from the a/t fluid return was installed.
The Honda Odyssey has a magnetic drain plug on the a/t and when I did the fluid change for the first go round..it came out looking like a big fur ball, covered in cuttings and debris, after the 2nd and third flush and fill it was clean.
The Honda a/t fluid change has to be done in 3 stages (no oil pan) and you never really get tottaly clean fluid in it, as it's a, drain and mix in new fluid, drive it around the block, drain, drive and do it again, then drain, drive and do it for the third time.
After the recall patch/fix, I drove the Van home and found a big pool of transmission oil on the garage floor the next morning.
Back to the shop for another session, "we changed all the O-rings on the fittings" was the fix.
Time and miles will tell if my Oddy will still be around as long as my beloved old 1992 Dodge Grand Caravan ES AWD.
(I guess it will considering I'm now paranoid about driving it and it sits in the Barn)
1982 Datsun/Nissan King Cab, they loved it. Greatest thing since sliced bread. My experience with a brand new one was that it was the most dangerous POS I have ever driven in my life. Lost count on how many times the brakes failed in the first year, head gasket leaked, converter failed, electrical problems, and the NAPZ4 emissions system had to have been designed by a bunch of alcoholic monkeys on a three day bender. You could not keep that thing in tune for more than 60 days or 1500 miles. After 18K miles, I gave up. That junker was in the shop more than it was on the road, and I just got fed up with it. :lemon:
This might sound a bit vindictive and smug, but I have to admit I got a chuckle out of it when my Mom & stepdad bought a 1991 Nissan Stanza, essentially because Consumer Reports "told" them to. And it ended up being a piece of junk! Although in its defense I guess, it didn't really start to crap out until around 90,000 miles. They bought a 1999 Altima, again because CR "told" them to, and I think my Mom & stepdad got selective memory loss about the issues with the '91. And this one dumped its tranny at 35,000 miles! To be fair though, Nissan replaced that one without any fuss, and the car now has around 300,000 miles on it, so it's redeemed itself I guess. :P
In contrast, I remember CR rating the 1986 Monte Carlo 305 "much worse than average". Yet the one my Mom bought was a good car. She got 179,000 miles out of it and then gave it to me, and in 3 months of delivering pizzas I got it up to around 192,000 miles, when I got t-boned.
GM cars back then, though, tended to be like a fine wine, where they'd get better with age. They'd often show up with lots of little black dots when they were 1-2 years old, but would improve with time, and by the time they were 5-6 years old, would often be recommended buys! I have a 1984 Consumer Guide auto issue packed away somewhere, which covered used cars from 1978-83. I remember for the most part, GM's RWD mid- and full-sized cars were rated average to better in 1978-79, seemed to take a slight dip in 1980, and a big dip in 1981-82. 1983 seemed to be better, though, but then the cars were only 1 year old at that point. I also remember the 1982-83 Olds 98 and Buick Electra remained very highly rated even through those dark years, and I seem to remember the Delta and LeSabre doing pretty well too. The Chevies and Pontiacs seemed to take a sharper dive, as did the midsized cars across all the brands.
Not quite - they stopped projecting above average reliability for Toyotas when they started hearing complaints. They used to go ahead and forecast good reliability if a model had been consistently reliable in the past. That seems reasonable to me.
Also, they were not "caught", they themselves changed the forecasts, nobody told them they had to.
Nowadays they will say "New" if they don't have enough data.
As for the reliability verdict, i.e. the summary score, you can't just average all the other scores. The average new car is quite good, so if you have a vehicle that has one or two problems, it's well below average, even though it can score well in all other areas.
This whole "I had one reliable car" talk is insignificant. You have to look at a sample of 1000+ for it to have any meaning. Some argue even CR's sample sizes are not big enough.
You go to Vegas, you will get snake eyes 1 out of every 36 rolls of the dice. It may not be likely, but it will happen. That's randomness, and the same applies to cars and reliability, to a certain extent.
I read CR just FWIW, but I think the biggest critics do not actually read CR (naturally), so a lot of the criticisms are way off base.
Shouldn't newer techniques like TQM and Six Sigma be removing a lot of this randomness from vehicles? Seems to me that when you go that far out on to the edges of the distribution curve, you should end up a lot better than at a Vegas craps table.
Think of it from the opposite perspective.
Let's say you looked at an unreliable car. If problems were not random, then every single transmission would fail at exactly the same mileage.
What you actually see is that 10% or so of them fail at fairly random intervals, and 90% of them don't fail at all.
With a bigger sample, we get a better idea of what the "average" model will do, but you'll still see plenty of variance among owners of the same model.
Let's see if I can recall my post-grad Statistics course...
Basically you can establish a confidence interval if you get a large enough sample. So you could say, with, for instance, 95% confidence (scientifically), that a certain model will not have transmission failure by a certain number of miles. You'd need a large, random sample of car without that problem to make that claim, though.
As owners we tend to overestimate the importance of our own experience. You buy a car from Brand X and have a bad experience, and you might assume they all do that and avoid that brand for the rest of your life.
OTOH, you have a good experience, and you swear by that brand and buy another just like it.
Ask the guy who has two of the same car, if they're exactly the same. They never are. Usually one is better than other.
Asking people is a crap shot in itself because the cars are maintained and driven differently, and then there is the research achilles heel, the BS factor some throw in when responding.
But think about it - Lexus brags about having something like 85 defects per 100 vehicles, that's still a bunch of problems, and that's just in the first 90 days.
You can't guarantee a perfect car, no matter how much you spend. Fact is, even with the best odds, you'll still have about 1 thing break in the first 3 months. 85 cars will be in the service bay getting something fixed, and roughly 15 will be trouble-free, and that's for the BEST brand.
My math is actually wrong, because some people will experience more than one problem per vehicle, so more likely 20 or so people will be trouble-free, 79 have one problem, and one unlucky guy got the lemon with the other 6 problems.
That's what I mean, though, you're still rollling the dice, even with the best.
That's not how CR presented their "help" in their advertising in the past.
>Let's see if I can recall my post-grad Statistics course...
You missed one very important aspect until late in your comment: random sample. There's nothing random about CR's sample. In fact it's biased just by their demographics of their readers who subscribe. They think pretty much of like mind to the folks running the opinions at CR.
CR hated GM when Ralph Nader was there and it continued through the decades.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
While I agree the sample base may not be well stratified, CR doesn't seem to vary that much from others like JD Powers, so I'm not sure its data is totally invalid.
Well, if it's any consolation, they did rate the 1986 Bonneville with the 305 as a recommended used car buy, once it was 4-5 years old. :P And when they tested some of the downsized GM full-sizers in 1977, they had a ton of stuff to list under "advantages", while under "disadvantages" they simply said "none significant enough to mention." C'mon now, when's the last time someone's had THAT to say about a GM car? :surprise:
LOL Andre! No, if 5% fail every year, then after 6 years 5% of the total production run have failed. You don't add together all the fives. :-)
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
I did not say it was totally invalid. It's not a true random sampling.
If they sent questionnaires to owners of automobiles chosen by random out of all autos and then reported the number of returns of each model of auto..., then we'd have something. I'll end carrying my torch about CR's methodology and piety about their results... since it's not really the topic, but is somewhat related to sweeping stuff under the rug since CR helped.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
95% survive first year. Of those 95%, 95% survive the second year (90.25%), 95% x 90.25% survive thrid year... etc. At end of 6th year, 73.5% survive.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
But maybe he was referring only to a single year's production, and how it fared over six years? Now I'm confused. :confuse:
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
I think that's how JD Power does it.
Time to plug this older discussion and get back to brand bashing in here.
Comments: Consumer Reports/JD Power Rankings
For instance, I have heard that the last truly reliable 3-series was the generation that ended in the early 00s, and the more recent ones have been problematic and expensive for their owners.
And certainly we have all heard that the C-class hatchbacks, while they were still around, were no great shakes either. But I know little of the specifics of either....
...not to mention, Kia and Land Rover are pretty much at the bottom of every single reliability survey year after year, yet I know of no specific issues with either brand, which makes it seem like they have also swept some things quietly under the rug....
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
No, I'm talking for any given model year, over the course of time. So for, say, a 2003 Odyssey, maybe 5% of them failed after 1 year another 5% after two years, etc. So after 6 years, you could very well have about 30% of them failed. Only 5% in any given year, but over a 6 year lifespan, 30% total.
I don't know about the Airmatic stuff Fintail is referring to, but don't forget that the '98 ML-320 was so bad they took it off the market and I think they repurchased most of them.
You may see a higher proportion of Accords than, say, some less reliable models, but within Accord production they'll get a random sample of Accords.
The survey seems to be about 700 pages long so it's pretty detailed, I'm not sure they leave a lot of room for error due to bias vs. reporting specific problems.
Full disclosure - I do subscribe, mostly just FWIW, but I do not fill out the lengthy surveys, and I doubt I'm the typical reader.
My neighbor's Grand Caravan would have been on its 3rd, perhaps, by then.
I will do some land rover specific posts later on. Maybe tonight if I have time.