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Comments
You will definitely find that it is much easier to adjust the fan speed on a Navigation-equipped Accord by pressing the voice command button on the steering wheel and saying "FAN SPEED TWO", "FAN SPEED THREE", etc. It couldn't be easier.
As for voice command... it is frequently inaccurate and does not work well with high levels of ambient noise (windows or sunroof open). You also have to interrupt the music or talk that you are listening to on the radio/satellite to use it. Not to mention having to interrupt a conversation if there is someone else in the car. And forget about it if there are several people or any children in the car.
You also cannot use the voice command on certain nav screens and if the screen is off.
As much as I love the Honda nav system it does have its short commings.
1. It should let you sort name searches by distance to travel. It is tiring to have to search through twelve different "categories" of results to find a restaurant with a common name. In other words, it gives me Tony's Pizza in California and Texas even though I am in North Carolina.
2. Too many screens/buttons needed to perform simple functions. Give me an fan speed/AC knob so that if the screen is off I can still change these settings. Having to look at the screen is distracting and sometimes dangerous. There are no tactile feedback which forces you to take your eyes off the road.
3. The unit is mounted in the center of the trunk limiting cargo volume.
There are others that I can't think of right now. Don't get me wrong, overall it is a fantastic system. Just that it could be a little better.
Why use the a/c with the windows open? Turn it off before you open them and back on after they are closed. It's pretty simple really.
gee35coupe:
They should put a knob for fan speed so that I don't have to access the nav screen. It would be faster and safer. A knob can be found and adjusted without taking your eyes off the road - impossible with the nav system. Many other cars have this type of redundancy. Why have a volume knob for the radio AND the steering wheel control? It makes life easier.
For the reasons I stated in my last post, voice command just doesn't cut it. Nice concept but in my opinion fails in real world application. I only use it to find restaurants, gas stations, etc. Not useful for basic climate control and radio functions. It is irritating and time consuming to have to raise the windows every time I want to use it. I live in a hot/humid climate and on hot days I like to keep the a/c on even when I have the windows open.
twizard7:
When it is warm out (i.e. not blazing hot) I like to keep the fan on with the a/c off (and the windows open). Why use the a/c if it is nice outside? If the car temp is set to lower than the ambient temp and the a/c is off, changing the temp will not alter the fan speed.
It's like the 6 disk changer. It could be considered a PITA to have to wait so long to change the CD's. What if you wanted change them out while driving. It would take a lot of concentration to push the disk you want to remove, wait for it to cycle around so it can eject, remove the disc, then push load for wach CD you want to replace. Very complicated for someome driving. But Honda, and most other makes, figured that you have a 6 disc changer so you shouldn't want to change the discs that often.
kudos to Honda for that!
Check on the various honda message boards/forums that are true enthusiast boards. Town Hall talk isn't the same.
Problems have a tendency to get amplified way beyond reality in these forums.
I mean come on...There are around 2,000,000 of the 98-2002's and 800,000 or so 2003/4's. If they were as bad as some people say, the landscape would be littered with Accords. Especially since they don't include roadside.(another complaint some have had)
By the way, we have personally owned 5 new Accords since 1999 and no transmission problems. We didn't like the general operation of them, but they ran just fine. My sister owns a 2000 V6 with 100,000. Tranny is fine. EGR valve went out though. Maybe your family is unlucky or abusive.
Even if 1% of Accords have an issue with the tranny, that's 20,000 Accords from the prev generation. I wonder what is the defect rate for 2-5 year old human beings?
What are you talking about? I think you're venturing into some odd comparison territory.
September 23, 2002
BY JEFF GREEN
BLOOMBERG NEWS
TORRANCE, Calif. -- Honda Motor Co.'s U.S. unit extended warranties on automatic transmissions on about 1.2 million cars and minivans because the components may fail or wear out early.
The move includes 2000 and 2001 Accord and Prelude cars and Odyssey minivans; 2000 to 2002 models of the Acura 3.2 TL car; 2001 and 2002 Acura 3.2 CL cars; and some 2003 models of both Acura models, spokesman Kurt Antonius said. About 2 percent of those vehicles have experienced the transmission problems, which include slow or erratic shifting, Honda said.
The transmissions will be covered for seven years or 100,000 miles. The standard full warranty is three years or 36,000 miles for the Honda vehicles and four years or 50,000 miles for the Acura cars. Honda doesn't plan a recall, Antonius said.
"If this is the only instance, it's not a big issue because it's unusual for Honda," said Alan Baum, an analyst at automotive forecaster Planning Edge in Farmington Hills, Michigan. "If it became a pattern, then it might hurt them."
Honda finished second to Toyota Motor Corp. in the most recent J.D. Power & Associates study of initial quality, an auto industry benchmark. Between 1990 and 2000, the most recent year for which full statistics are available, Honda had 32 safety recalls, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. General Motors Corp., the largest automaker, had 334 in that period, the agency said.
Owners will be sent letters informing them of the warranty extension, and consumers who already had a repair done after their warranty expired will be reimbursed, Antonius said. Vehicles that have transmission problems will have the transmission replaced, he said.
INFLATED <overblown claims> <overblown rhetoric>; also : PRETENTIOUS
Then let's just see where "pretentious" gets us.
: characterized by pretension : as a : making usually unjustified or excessive claims (as of value or standing) <the pretentious fraud who assumes a love of culture that is alien to him -- Richard Watts> b : expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature <pretentious language> <pretentious houses>
That's what is a shame. When someone has a problem with an Accord and they come in with doom and gloom like Honda has had some great decline in quality. There is no evidence to support that. Even the last link showed where Accord quality actually increased from year to year. From your pastie...
Honda finished second to Toyota Motor Corp. in the most recent J.D. Power & Associates study of initial quality, an auto industry benchmark. Between 1990 and 2000, the most recent year for which full statistics are available, Honda had 32 safety recalls, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Second best ain't bad. Especially to Toyota. And they say 2 percent of the transmissions have had problems....That could be a modest number when you look at total production. Why not find out how many other makes will extend the warranty on a major component if they find that 2 percent of them have a problem.
For one family to have had three bad transmissions out of 6 seems out of the ordinary. I have personally owned half as many Accords and have had no issues whatsoever. Does that make my anecdotal evidence any more important than yours? Nope. That's why we have companies like Consumer Reports and and others that compile data to show true reliablity.
Like I said, I don't know how your family maintains/treats the cars they own, but 6 is far off the number of that were produced. Additionally every one of the cars listed above are V6's. I guess you are gonna say next that all the transmissions that failed were V6's.
In that case you are doubly unlucky. V6's only make up a modest amount of Accord sales. And if all the V6's in your family had tranny failures...I wouldn't go out in any thunderstorms. But I might run out and buy a lottery ticket.
"It is a shame that when you come on a site like this that is set up to discuss quality control that a few individuals jump in and attempt to belittle your observations and disparage the driving skills of you or your family as an excuse for poor quality."
get used to it
in this "town", you better believe that there can't be anything wrong with your Honda. how dare you even type the words "Honda" and "problem" in the same sentence! if something is wrong, it is clearly because you don't know how to drive, or you must have broken your car somehow. KIDDING!
you have to understand how things work. if you complain, it starts to make other people question their own decisions. and it seems that a lot of people aren't mentally equipped to handle that without immediately being rude and dismissive. you have to take the good with the bad here.
you will eventually get some helpful feedback on Edmunds, just takes time sometimes. don't give up!
"It seems that MSN Auto has indicated that the transmissions in Honda Accords are problematic."
Post by Tlauro:
"Broad but true for the Automatic Tranny's in Accords of the 6th gen and now evidently 7th gen form.
Check on the various honda message boards/forums that are true enthusiast boards. Town Hall talk isn't the same.
Those were the posts that started this and the post from Jcowan added his personal experience as if to justify them. There were no complaints made, just the statement that "Honda Accord transmissions are problematic".
If someone were to come in here and say, "my transmission is giving me problems" we would all say there have been issues so take it to your dealer and have them look at it. There are several instances of that.
But when someone says "all Honda Accord brakes are crap" (sound familiar?) of course you will have a few people question that statement as we have here about the trannys.
"problems" boards.
The gloom and doom stories here are NOTHING compared to the other boards I lurked in.
Try the Audi A6 problems forum as an example!
haha.
i don't understand why it isn't fair to say all 2003 V6 Accords have tranmission problems. the government and Honda realized it - are in the process of a huge safety recall. they wouldn't recall the cars if their wasn't a problem, would they? that would be silly.
But if you read the summary of the recall, it states the cause of the problem and the remedy. All of the transmissions will not need replacement but as a precaution, they will install a oil coolant kit to those that show little to no wear. Doesn't sound like all to me.
NHTSA has the recall listed under 03 Accord.
http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/problems/recalls/recallsearch.c- fm
there is a recall. per Honda. regulated by the Federal Govt. on ALL 2003 V6 Accords, and some 2004. is that what you are asking?
if ALL 2003's weren't effected, they ALL wouldn't be recalled. simple as that. Honda isn't in business to service cars if they don't have to. thats for SURE!
The are affected by the recall, but they won't necessarily have a problem from the issue.
To date, our shop has inspected a lot of these affected cars and made the retro fit.
They have found, so far ***ONE*** high mileage Odyssey that was questionable when they inspected it. We replaced the transmission at no charge to the customer.
Thanks for all the help. Because of individuals like you that take the time to put out the facts I was well prepared to talk with the Honda Rep in CA. After discussing my particular problems and service records which were all documented in the Honda data base files Honda agreed today to pay the full replacement cost of this my third tranny in my 99 Accord V-6 at 96,000 miles. Thanks to the information you and others like you provided I had the extra source data to make a valid argument. There was a problem in my first 99 tranny with a loud clunk when in reverse, yes it is true just like many others had reported on this site in 2001. Honda replaced it under warranty at 32,000 in 2001. And yes the new tranny began slipping at around 50,000 and then failed completely with the corresponding engine warning light and code at 64,000. My car had been driven in a normal manner and serviced by Honda dealers. Neither of my two Toyotas or my other Honda (civic manual) have had any problems with brakes, tranny, or fuel gauges. Yes the rest of my family in NJ and NY both own V-6 Accords and yes Honda has paid the full replacement cost for their repairs as well. Maybe because there was/is a problem. Once again if not for intelligent discussion of these legitimate problems I would have been out $3,800 as I would have never thought to ask if it could be other then just me. My fuel gauge has been off for years as well and I have never bothered to complain about that and still live with it. I did not know there was a problem with those either. I had never thought or known there was a major tranny problem either until it happened to me the second time. To those of you that do notice problems please continue to take the time to properly report, comment and read sites like this. This saved me a bunch of money personally and because of the way Honda is now handling the concern their reputation as well. Justin you were 100% right, thank you.
I have cut them and added them below to show the striking impact of your comments three years running. By the way this was when I was having the second of my three transmissions installed after it made a loud clunking noise.
This site is about Identifying and fixing problems no matter how some individuals wish to cloud the issues.
Once again my thanks to people like Justin who understand what quality and safety and customer satisfaction and this site are all about.
I have spent 27 years in aviation maintenance and it is people who fail to be open minded and listen to legitimate problems that get people killed.
Just so you do not have to go back to page one.
Much ado about nothing. by isellhondas May 22, 2001 (11:44 am)
Forget the fact (if you can) that I sell Hondas.
The "problems" mentioned here have been greatly overblown.
Any car can and will have an occasional problem. Since Hondas are so reliable, when something DOES happen it gets front page news.
They are better than ever!
First I ever heard of this was right here, in Town Hall. I'll repeat, this was very much overblown.
A supplier, unbeknownst to Honda decided to change specs on some part in the V-6 transmissions. This would cause a loud "clunk" while backing up. It did not cause total failure.
Honda was blindslided by this.And, few cars were affected.
To this day, I have NEVER heard this clunk and I've backed up literally hundreds of them. The problem cars were fixed under warranty, case closed.
If anselmo wants to think Hondas aren't as good as before, I'll respect his opinion even though I totally disagree.
As you can see, I've owned three Accords. NONE of my Hondas have experienced quality control issues even worth mentioning. That is a much better record than the vast majority of brands that have EVER been on the market.
Surely, you will find problems with anything mechanical. However, you probably won't find too many automobile brands more satisfying to their owners than Honda has been. That is well illustrated by the reliability statistics reported by ACTUAL OWNERS of about 600,000 cars a year in Consumer Reports.
As I said 29 years in aviation why do you think I only own Honda cars and Toyota trucks!
I understand what these companies have stood for all these years and support them and forums like this that help us all understand them better.
As you said four very busy days researching a $3,800 personal problem and many thanks to all of you that have taken the time over the past several years to track these issues to allow a novice like me to benefit from your knowledge and experience.
Honestly thank you to everyone for all the help.
When they see "one' problem, their first question is:
"Find out how many of the cars sold have this problem"
He doesn't worry about the "how" part of it.
Unless he has a very efficient team of Design & Production manager who can thump their chest and say that the possibility of having a defect using these design in conjunction with the mfg techniques is such and such.
The term "anecdotal" doesn't mean "wrong" or "invalid".
What anecdotal means is that it is evidence that has not been subjected to scientific method.
So really when people bicker about anecdotal evidence what they are stumbling over is the lack of any study to quantify what has been observed.
Once somebody finally figures out how many Hondas per 100 actually reported a certain problem, this tends to settle everyone down.
In addition to the "anecdotal" problem, there is the problem of the "theory of big numbers". A problem seems bigger when the number of cases which it is spread upon is small. So in these forums, you have maybe 20 people, of which 5 say they have the problem and 15 say they don't. So it seems like a lot of problems. But spread that out over one million cars and the averages plummet and the problem seems a lot smaller.
Anyway, without a scientific approach to the problem, it's hard to know what's happening.
EXAMPLE: Wall Street Journal just ran an article on Toyota's quality control problems, and they had some good facts and figures to show pros and cons of the company's strengths and weaknesses. In other words, not only were there statistics, but there were parts of Toyota doing great and parts doing less than great. So again, sweeping statements would be hard to justify.
I'm writing all this so as to encourage all of you to not be so personal in your comments. These forums are about cars not people.
thanks,
MrShiftright
Host
I can't provide a number for you, but the 1998's through the 2002's had a different transmission than the 2003's.
I was a jerk, I paid cash ($25K) for a over hyped product. Never again buddy, from now I lease and let the headaches be someone elses. My current value is about $14K, so I have experienced $11K depreciation in 4 years?
I spoke to the dealer this week about SRS, I was blown off, never again, never again.
She didn't think about it until I mentioned it to her. You see, I am 950 miles away at a jobsite and can't get home to see the car, so all I can do is go by her description.
Car was brought to a repair facility that Honda recommended since we recently moved into the area and have no idea as to good/bad body shops. The local dealer has no body shop but uses this shop for all its work.
Anyway, when the folks at the shop saw the damage, they told my wife that we have a problem and when pressed as to what the problem was, they commented that we need to talk to Honda to find out why the airbags did not deploy. In their opinion, the bags should have went off.
Now, one reason we bought the V6 was becasue of the added bags i.e. for protection since my wife drives this car 90 percent of the time.
I need some advise here on what if any avenues we can proceed on. Issues that I can't find out are at what impact speeds do the airbags deploy? Are there specific target zones i.e. strictly head on, side on, rear, or shouldn't they deploy on angled hits on the front?
Lastly, we are not feeling very safe even with having 6 airbags. Really what good are they if they don't deploy? Again, the estimated speed of impact was 25-35 from the hitting vehicle on my Accord at approx. the same speed. This calculates to around 50mph as far as I can tell and yet no airbag deployment?
I would appreciate if anyone has any advice on this airbag issue along with a idea as to how Honda intends to fix this problem if indeed it is an actual failure of the airbag system.
thanks,
john
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,