New Engine Block

cameo wrote in news:ku112k$707$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

I don't think anything's changed at all over the years.

I see

- one mention of oil leaks due to casting porosity from 1991,

- one mention of the same thing from 2001.

- one mention of cracks in the casting from ~2010 (the date of the TSB).

one tsb can cover 10 instances or it can cover a million - not an accurate measure of the extent of the problem.

not true. lots of complex forms like jet engine components are cast, and their porosity rate is zero. that's high end. cast iron frying pan porosity rate, which are as cheap as it gets, is zero.

casting porosity is the result of solidification voids. these are either due to:

1. gas coming out of the liquid as it cools, just like the air bubbles you see in ice that make it not clear.
2. shrinkage between the metal crystals that grow on solidification.

both mechanisms are very well researched and very well understood. they are easily avoidable with any competent producer that's not cutting corners on the alloy, its preparation, and the casting process.

not porosity - that's there day one. you can "fudge" its presence with the old fashioned "stop leak" preparations like crushed walnut shells, but they don't last forever. once they've softened, passed through, then the leaking starts again.

no, they're what the manufacturer considers to be "economically acceptable", i.e. the cost of repairing failures is less than the cost of the q.c. necessary to eliminate the failures in the first place.

yup, that's what i'm doing. that crv has great suspension too compared to the newer ones.

i also add a little red line break-in oil to my engine - it brings the zddp additive level back up to where it used to be before the current generation of low zinc oils came out. it reduces cam wear.

based on what i've seen, yes.

i recently had to disassemble and clean the contacts on my light switch. the grease had dried out and i was getting contact failure. that's happened to me a number of times no on my gen of civic - your crv uses the same type of switch. just remove the steering wheel, pull off the column cover, and remove the switch assembly by taking out two screws. can be disassembled and cleaned from there.

And did Honda issue service bulletins for all those model years?

All I can say is that had this coolant leaking happened after the expiration of the warranty, I would have been saddled with thousands of dollars in repairs!

I realize that no car manufacturer can build the perfect automobile but having an engine block leak coolant is pretty bad. It does not speak well for Honda's QC people.

cameo wrote in news:ku26cu$2o2$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Yes. What I posted above was all the TSBs for defects in castings: about one per decade.

In other words, there's been no change in the historical incidence of defects in castings over 20 years.

tb wrote in news:ku2if4$t7c$ snipped-for-privacy@news.albasani.net:

Which is exactly why Honda extended the warranty. And even after the warranty is up, Honda tends to be fairly generous with their "goodwill" out-of-warranty repairs.

Honda has produced tens of millions of engines over the last 20 years or so. Only a vanishingly small percentage have had defects.

I had to rent a car for a whole week while my car was at the Honda dealer. The rented car costed me $300.00 and the dealer told me that Honda refuses to reimburse me for that! Some generosity...

PS: The Honda dealer also refused to give me a loaner car!

again, a tsb is no indication of the number of vehicles affected.

it's pretty much meaningless. if a quality defect is present, it's unlikely to be present for all the factories that manufacture the same part - it's usually restricted to just one source. honda engine blocks are produced in ontario, suzuka and ohio to my knowledge - so which one is it?

if one is present in the product of all three plants, then there's a fundamental design/spec issue, not a production quality issue..

This is one thing that bugs me about Honda dealers: they don't have a car loaner program as Toyota and other dealers have. OK, one might say that Toyota dealers' loaner cars are also not free because the dealers include their cost in the repair bills, but I'm not sure it's as expensive as renting a car at the Honda dealers. But I may be wrong.

I always thought that type of thing was region and dealer-owner specific, not brand specific.

GW

Depends on the dealer. My local Honda shop, if you bought the car there, has free loaners.

I think that is a logical statement. I recall that GM had some problems in Corvairs with the cast alum. engines

One of my local Honda dealers has free loaners regardless of whether you bought your car there or not, but you have to reserve them in advance in order to guarantee availability. Unfonrtunately, that particular dealer is quite a distance from where I live, otherwise I'd probably take advantage of their loaner car program once in a while. My dad bought his '03 Accord there and has gotten a loaner car from them on several occasions.

Also I think if you bought Hondacare - but that's not exactly free.

J.

I ended up writing a complaint letter to American Honda Motor in Torrance, Cal. They refunded me approx. 70% of the $300.00 expense for the rental car. No explanation as to how they came to the 70% figure was enclosed with the check...