Honda SUC's Fires Continue
 

Honda SUV Fires Continue
Warning to Dealers Hasn't Stopped Oil-Change Errors

By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 7, 2004; Page E01

Owners of new Honda CR-V sport-utility vehicles continue to report vehicle fires shortly after initial oil changes, and a federal agency is keeping an eye on the problem two months after closing an investigation.

By the end of last week, 20 people had reported fires on 2004-model CR-Vs to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and another five people had reported oil leaks and smoke. That's up from five reports in late June, shortly before the federal agency closed its investigation.

Honda Motor Co. identified another 22 such fires in 2003-model CR-Vs during the government's inquiry. No injuries have been linked to the fires, but several of the reports detailed narrow escapes from vehicles that often were destroyed by flames.

NHTSA investigators are "aware of the new complaints that have come in, they've been in communication with Honda, and they are going to continue to monitor to see if Honda's efforts to communicate with the service departments has had the desired effect," agency spokesman Rae Tyson said.

The company said the problem seems to stem from technicians, usually at dealerships, improperly replacing oil filters during the first oil change. The rubber gasket inside the rim of the car's factory-installed oil filter sometimes sticks to the engine block, and when a new filter is installed over it, the stacked gaskets fail to seal properly. Oil leaks out and sprays onto the car's hot manifold, catching fire.

What Honda hasn't been able to explain is why the 2003 and 2004 model CRVs would be especially prone to the problem.

In mid-July, Honda sent letters to its dealerships pointing out the potential problem and urging them to take care in changing oil filters, Honda spokesman Andy Boyd said. The company also sent out notices on an internal e-mail system and posted the topic on a Web site for Honda owners.

Honda was unable to include a notice in a quarterly publication sent to independent service companies such as Pep Boys, Boyd said, because the publication went to press before the decision was made to address the problem. The next edition, out in October, will carry the notice.

Boyd said the company believes the information campaign is making a difference. Since the notices went out to dealers July 14, he said, Honda counted nine new incidents, none in the past 20 days, he said.

Those numbers do not match complaints on file at NHTSA, which show two new incidents in the past two weeks and eight since July 14. But NHTSA does not provide enough information to correlate its complaints with those received at Honda, Boyd said, so there's no way to know if they're tracking the same ones.

source HERE

***** Unintentional typo on title of thread, mods please change to SUV :D *****

Re: Honda SUC's Fires Continue
 

:thumbdn: This sounds to me like a line of BS. Those Honda technicians do this for a living. They can change oil in their SLEEP. Heck...I'm not even a technician, and I can do it in MY sleep. I'll bet that most of the CL forum members here can do it in THEIR sleep, too. Even a brand-new first-day employee at Jiffy Lube has enough sense to check the mounting plate for a stuck-on gasket.
More likely is that Honda is using contractor-supplied filters that simply cannot take the oil pressure from a cold engine that is warming up. This happened at Mitsubishi a number of years ago...the "factory" filters (which were actually aftermarket -suppied ones with the factory name on them) would fail as the engine warmed up and cause fires......the oil would still be cold enough for the pressure to be elevated somewhat above normal, but the exhaust pipes and manifold were just hot enough to set the oil off when the oil pressure ruptured the filters and the oil sprayed out on the pipes. This problem was solved, of course, by more durable, redesigned filters.

As to why this happens only on certain Honda products....hard to tell. Maybe certain filters are used on certain vehicles, and some are more prone than others.

THis is a really weird problem. Not typical Honda and I am sure they are working hard to figure out what is really going on.

Investigation into Honda SUV fires reopened

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

By Greg Schneider / Washington Post


The federal government has reopened and expanded an investigation into Honda Motor Co.'s CR-V sport-utility vehicle, trying to determine why 2003 and 2004 models sometimes catch fire shortly after their initial oil change.

The problem has persisted more than two months after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration closed a preliminary investigation into the fires and related oil leaks in July. At that time the agency agreed with Honda that the incidents were mostly likely caused by faulty work by service technicians.

The new inquiry puts the focus back on the manufacturer. Called an "engineering analysis," the probe is the most serious level of inquiry conducted by NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation. Such investigations lead to vehicle recalls roughly 60 to 80 percent of the time, an agency spokeswoman said.

Honda has been working to notify its dealers and service technicians about ways to avoid the problem since mid-July, but continuing reports of new incidents draw "into question the effectiveness of the service communication," NHTSA said in the official notice of investigation.

The agency declined to comment further, saying it is against policy to talk about ongoing investigations.

A Honda spokesman said the company would cooperate with NHTSA and is continuing to conduct its own probe. "We continue to turn over every stone to ensure there isn't something else that's a contributing factor, in terms of the materials or workmanship," Honda spokesman Andy Boyd said. "To this point we've not been able to identify any defect or other factor, other than the issue at the dealer level."

The company said the problem seems to be caused by technicians, usually at dealerships, improperly changing the oil filter during a CR-V's initial oil change, usually at 5,000 miles or less. The rubber gasket from the factory-installed filter often sticks to the engine block, and when the new filter is installed over it, the new filter fails to seal well, and oil leaks out. The oil sprays onto the CR-V's hot manifold and ignites.

Honda says it does not know why the old gasket is so likely to stick to the engine block or why the 2003 and 2004 model CR-Vs are more prone to this than other model years or other vehicles. Honda said the company has found no design changes from earlier model years that would explain why the fires have occurred in the more recent models.

NHTSA and Honda have identified 71 related incidents involving both model years, 44 of which resulted in fires. There have been no injuries reported, but a significant number of the fires consumed the whole vehicle. While the number of complaints is a small portion of the total estimated 280,000 such vehicles on the road, experts say the probl***s severity and mysterious origins make it especially troubling.

Honda does not believe news of the fires has scared away potential CR-V buyers, Boyd said, but sales of the small SUV were down slightly in both July and August compared with the same months last year, according to Ward's AutoInfoBank.

Several Honda dealers say they dislike being blamed by the manufacturer, pointing out that an occasional lapse in an oil change doesn't lead to such potentially catastrophic results in other vehicles. Michael Shockley, general manager of Shockley Honda in Frederick, said his dealership has had two CR-V fires, one last year and one last month, involving different mechanics.

"The whole shop goes on red alert and -- BAM! -- it happens again," Shockley said. "When you burn two cars you must apologize to the owners of those cars; it's kind of a horrible thing to do, right? But in both cases the customers looked at me and said, 'Please don't fire that mechanic, I don't think it was his fault.' The customers felt it was the fault of Honda."

The problem, which has lit up online Honda chat groups, aims at the heart of Honda's reputation as one of the safest and most consumer-friendly of car companies, said Bob Kurilko, an auto marketing expert at Edmunds.com. "The publicity of a [possible] forced recall is not good, especially for Honda, because they have a pristine reputation and want to manage that and protect it," he said. "Honda acting quickly could jump in front of this thing and just initiate a voluntary recall, and I think they're going to want to do that before NHTSA forces them."

But Boyd, the Honda spokesman, said the company believes a recall would be counterproductive based on current understanding of the problem.

Recalling the vehicles to replace oil filters "wouldn't accomplish anything," he said. "You'd still have a certain percentage having an oil leak or fire. It's not that different than the issue running its course."


source HERE

Re: Re: Honda SUC's Fires Continue
 

You really do have too much faith in these people. It's impossible to do a thorough oil and filter change in 20 minutes, or less, depending on the location and vehicle. It took me well over 30 minutes to change the oil in my Subaru this weekend, but I know I did an excellent and thorough job. No way I would ever let anyone change the oil in my car.

I don't doubt for a second that this is the combined result of poor engineering and design, which is only exacerabated by sloppy technicians.

Re: Re: Re: Honda SUC's Fires Continue
 

you are wasting way too much time on changing oil :D

jk but they have like 10 minutes express oil change here.

Re: Re: Re: Honda SUC's Fires Continue
 

I disagree that these technicians are that sloppy. If they screw up and forget to tighten a drain plug, put in the wrong oil, don't check the rubber gaskets, etc....... and they F*** up somebody's engine.....especially on an expensive new vehicle, then it is THEIR a** that is at stake. They could get anything from a reprimand to a job firing to a lawsuit for a new engine out of their own pocket.

I think the oil filter needs to be checked out too, since Honda also uses Fram filters alongside their OEMs of Toyo Roki and Filtech.

I work as a service manager at a Honda dealer and let me try to explain this a little. When you change the oilf for the first time on these cars, the oil filter gasket tends to stick to the engine block. If you dont remove the old gasket before installing the new filter, you have a double gasketed oil filter. At this point, the oil sprays out with the engine running. The reason it has been such a problem on these vehicles is that the catalytic convertor is located almost directly below where the oil filter mounts. When the oil lands on the catalytic convertor (the hottest part of the exhaust) it can catch fire. We have had 2 instances like that but no fires yet.

I spoke with the NHTSA investigator about this.

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...hreadid=133937

You're off the christmas card list now. :p

Noticed how Honda just ignored my e-mail to them? No reply back from them saying, "thanks for your time or suggestion on the filters. We'll take a look into that."

I'm surprised I got an investigator from NHTSA the very next day!