HONDA EARTH DREAMS ENGINE LAWSUIT FILED FOR CR-VS AND CIVICS

Micah

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Dano63

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With less than 350 miles on my new 2018 Sport Hatch, I checked the oil level, and it is within the range marked on the dipstick. But it deos have a distinct gasoline smell. For comparison, I checked the smell of the 0W20 synthetic oil in my 2011 Honda Accord V6 with 50% oil life on the Maintenance Minder. No gas smell, just smells like engine oil.
Anyone know if the factory filled oil is a special "break-in" oil?
 

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We are smelling gasoline due to these new motors being direct injected, the same is true on any direct injected cars, ask Mazda owners, lol. You old accord is not direct injected.
 

Design

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It has high moly content and will appear noticeably darker as a result. A few of us have been able to track down that there's really no other differences, other than Honda continues to recommend leaving in the FF for the duration of the MM. Swapping out prematurely with fresh oil reportedly extends the break-in process, which is why dealers have been reported to turn away customers on their first oil change prior to 15%.
 

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We are smelling gasoline due to these new motors being direct injected, the same is true on any direct injected cars, ask Mazda owners, lol. You old accord is not direct injected.
My wife has a Hyundai Santa Fe with the 2.0T GDI engine. It's in the shop now, but I'll check the oil smell on it this weekend. I've change its oil, and did not notice a gas smell. But maybe I wasn't paying attention to the smell.
 


IDriveACivic

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If only Honda North America could be more communicative:

"No problems in North America. Honda China messed up."

or

"We are investigating the issue. Recalls/TSB will be issued promptly." [On a nation-wide level; not just select dealerships]

or

Instead, we have:

- Third-party experts trying to make their best educated guesses on the issues
- Class action lawsuit
- Owners sniffing oil under the hood
- Misinformation/panic!
 

Negan

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There are 3 possibilities here:

1. Oil dilution is not an issue. If this was true, Honda would have come out a long time ago and said as such and put people's fears to rest. Considering that reliability is one of Honda's key selling points, reassuring the owners of perceived issues would be paramount. Alas, no such thing has occurred.

2. Oil dilution is an issue but there's a simple/inexpensive fix. If this was true, there would already be a recall/TSB. There was one in China, and the first one was rejected by Chinese authorities as not addressing the problem, indicating Honda either cannot easily deal with the issue, or did not want to bother coming up with a real fix until forced to do so.

3. Oil dilution is an issue but there is no simple/inexpensive fix. If this was true, Honda would stay quiet as long as possible. The idea here would be to deal with the really bad cases on an individual basis, and ignore the overall problem. If it only seriously manifests itself years from now, there will be a new generation of engines by then, or even a redesigned 1.5T, and the damage to the brand might be lessened as only the "old" cars will be affected. This would also allow them to keep selling the current generation and not have the problem affect sales on a large scale. Once the cars are of a previous generation and not for sale anymore, the problem will have a lesser impact on new sales.

I am guessing #3.
 
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or #4. Oil dilution is an issue but it hasn't been shown to cause any increased metal wear or premature engine failures in Civic models.
 

gtman

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Good video on oil dilution if anyone is interested.

 

Micah

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Good video on oil dilution if anyone is interested.

This guy is an opinionated jackass. Some of his stuff is far more opinion based.



Modding as an early adopter carries inherent risk. Investigate, learn, decide, apply. I have modded more than half of the 15 cars I have owned. The results have been positive overall.
 


Negan

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or #4. Oil dilution is an issue but it hasn't been shown to cause any increased metal wear or premature engine failures in Civic models.
That's #1. How can it be an issue yet not cause any problem? If it does not cause any problems, it is by definition not an issue. And if this would be the case, Honda would say so.
 
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Negan

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That's called CYA - cover your ass. It doesn't affect anything yet they recalled 350,000 vehicles, and are getting sued?
I never said these 1.5T are problem free. Like the CR-V mentioned in the lawsuit, due to the oil dilution issue, a few number of people reportedly experienced their vehicles going into limp mode or CEL lighting up. The vehicle is up and running again after putting in a new oil and filter.

But do you have any evidence that the 1.5T engines in the Civic have had premature engine failures? In this forum alone, there is one Civic EX-T with 178,000km and ticking.

What we KNOW so far is that actual drivability problems only occurred in a small fraction of these engines across all CR-V, Civics and Accords sold worldwide.

All you're doing is speculating, which doesn't really help.
 

Negan

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I never said these 1.5T are problem free. Like the CR-V mentioned in the lawsuit, due to the oil dilution issue, a few number of people reportedly experienced their vehicles going into limp mode or CEL lighting up. The vehicle is up and running again after putting in a new oil and filter.

But do you have any evidence that the 1.5T engines in the Civic have had premature engine failures? In this forum alone, there is one Civic EX-T with 178,000km and ticking.

What we KNOW so far is that actual drivability problems only occurred in a small fraction of these engines across all CR-V, Civics and Accords sold worldwide.

All you're doing is speculating, which doesn't really help.
I've expressed my opinion on the problem as I see it from Honda's point of view. You're trying to tell me... What exactly? I'm not sure what your point is.
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