Wednesday, April 11, 2007

No Recall, No Problem (Automotive)

I was recently reading a Long Term Review Conclusion of the Honda Civic Si coupe. The testing was done by edmunds.com. (You can find the article here-Civic Si Article) Something in particular in the write up caught my attention. At around the 10,000 mile mark, the edmunds staff reported the Si having difficulty changing from 2nd to 3rd gear, especially when cold. I thought this might prove as a good test.

Automotive journalist long term reviews have a tendency to be a little biased. Not because of bad testing, but more due to the nature of the beast. If it is ever known the vehicle is associated with an auto review, the dealership will go above and beyond normal protocol to get a great review. In other instances the vehicle is purchased far below what the normal consumer can purchase the vehicle at. (Magazines and online publication have gotten much better about this, purchasing the car like any consumer would) In my experience dealership are the least helpful when it comes to manual transmission maintenance. Whether it is a resistant gear change or a chattery clutch, it is the easiest problem to blame on the customer. My sister's 2003 Subaru WRX has had it's clutch replaced due to chatter. She is an excellent driver, and does not burn out the clutch doing high rpm starts, etc. Regardless, they were very resistant to fix this problem under warranty. Someone of an older age and different sex later brought the vehicle in, and they agreed to replace the part. (A different issue entirely) I research the forums shortly after and found many other early WRX owners experiencing the same clutch problem. It definitely was not an isolated incident.

This and other instances with dealers and transmission problems led me to believe the Honda dealership would do nothing for the Si's gear change problem. If anything, this would be the most justified case to do nothing. The vehicle had been run on a track to capture initial performance numbers, and driven by numerous different drivers spread across the spectrum of manual driving ability. I'm not saying the dealer should be a full disclosure experience, but it would not be unjustified for the dealer to deny any transmission warranty work. Typically a new pronounced difficulty to shift from one gear to another is caused by missed shifts. Honda manual gear boxes (RSX type s, NSX, s2000) tend to be some of the best, most crisp transmissions around decreasing the likelihood of missed shifts. Either way, the problem was a reality on the edmunds.com's 06 Civic Si.

The Santa Monica Honda dealership reported back with the dreaded "Could not replicate" response which basically means we say it's not a problem, thus it is not. I was glad to see edmunds did not receive special treatment, but disappointed to see that these manual transmission issues were ignored once again. In a similar fashion to my own actions, edmunds' staff checked the Si forums for similar reports of a 2-3 gear shift problem. Sure enough, it seemed to be a somewhat regular occurrence confirming they were not alone. Some minor fixes would listed, but none did the trick. This forced them to just live with the problem as many of us do. Unfortunately, if you drive a performance manual transmission vehicle, you change gears a lot, especially the 2-3 shift on a short geared vehicle like the Si. Transmission problems have a huge effect on the driving experience.

This may be a bit of stretch, but: Could this problem be one cause of the major decline in popularity of vehicles with manual transmissions. I think number one has to be laziness, but this could be second. From an enthusiasts stand point, I know a manual transmission is easier to fix and less complicated than an automatic one, but I also know that automatic transmission failure cannot be pinned on a driver as easily as that of a burn clutch or recalcitrant trans. The problem is a catch 22. Manual transmission are commonly sold on higher performance vehicles. Higher performance vehicles are more typically driven hard. Vehicles driven hard are less likely to get dealer sympathy even if the problem occurs to the same make and model repeatably.

I wish I had some grand scheme fix in mind, but I don't. I'm not sure how to fix this problem. A more unified dealer maintenance database (available to the public) might serve as the first step. If a reported shifting problem from 2nd to 3rd was recorded by dealers, even if they couldn't replicate it, it may serve to show Honda there is a problem with the Si transmission. Eventually the complaints of the same problem from different owners in different locations would stack up in the database illustrating some real problem. That sounds right to me.

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