Fuel Pump Recall - Long Wait for New Parts

Accelerating, cornering, and braking harder than you usually would, enjoying the cars performance. Ever since my clarity started having problems, I've started almost exclusively driving the car in a more "sporty" way. Helps mask the horrendous clunking, and take my mind away from the awful drivetrain transitions and other problems. I'm also at this point hoping it makes the transmission blow up sooner so I can get my car in a state where a busted up 2006 civic with bad engine mounts doesn't seem like a Mercedes in terms of drivetrain refinement in comparison to my clarity.

 

I'm sure you are aware that intentionally driving a car even more aggressively when it exhibits "horrendous clunking, awful drivetrain transitions and other problems" could be a recipe for disaster. In my experience when something gets as bad as you describe, it is usually 'easy' to isolate the problem(s), and almost always better to repair them than to wait for something to 'blow up'.

 

This is clearly an abusive relationship. She’s failing to meet your expectations with her creaky suspension, clunky transmission, sloppy steering components and an engine that’s destined to fail prematurely. You have more faith in her fuel pump, which is under recall, than her other parts that aren’t under recall.
Now you’re treating her roughly in an attempt to break her down. Is that any way to treat an object that you claim to love? Will replacing parts that haven’t been diagnosed as malfunctioning make her the gal of your dreams? Is this relationship destined for failure?
We know that you want to make it work. But are you being fair to her?

 

For the moment I'm not really concerned about the engine, it's just fine. But since the transmission (or some other component is in a really bizzare failure mode) is getting worse by the day, diagnosis leads nowhere, and the dealership does nothing, I have basically come to the conclusion that expediting the failure IS the solution.

 

Sounds reasonable. I look forward to the results.

 

Honestly only reasonable in context of I've tired every else lol. If I had to guess this is where the failure is (final drive to final driven) (this picture is actually from the transaxle of a Honda fit hybrid, but it mechanically is almost identical to that of the clarities tansaxle. I might get a horoscope and see if anything is visibly wrong without taking the thing apart.

 

What if you drained / filled the transmission and carefully looked for metal debris in the old fluid?
I might also expect that the drain plug is magnetic to aid in capturing metal particles, but I have no confirmation of that...

 

Which dealership/service department has attempted to diagnose your Clarity? Are they “Clarity Certified”? Did the car perform as you’ve described when they took it for a test drive?

Most service departments are happy to charge a diagnostic fee and then recommend any number of costly repairs. I’m somewhat surprised that they didn’t welcome your problem child to the service bay as a new source of revenue.

 

Hate to break it to you, but I'm like 800 miles away from a clarity authorised dealership, and the number of them isn't growing.

 

Ok. That answers one of the 3 questions.

 

In a "Clarity Uncertified" Honda dealer in Vegas (Autonation) at least they were able to fix my broken AC last year, and so far it's working good. Luckily, with more than 40K miles I haven't had any sort of mechanical breakdowns so far (fingers crossed/knock on wood). Let's see how does it go on Phoenix with the next maintenance...

 

Help me out. I’ve skimmed over the Steering Clunking and Long Wait for Fuel Pump threads, not sure how many other threads are cluttered with all the problems that car seems to be having. I didn’t see a reference on either of those threads about the car being to a Honda dealership other than, the dealer does nothing, or something to that effect.

Is it possible that the dealer won’t do anything because they aren’t authorized to work on the car? Perhaps they aren’t authorized to diagnose a problem either. That’s why I asked a few questions.

The owner has a new diagnosis on nearly every post, yet hasn’t reported that any of that speculation has remedied any of the issues. Like a blind squirrel, he may eventually find a nut. There are only so many parts on the car after all.

On edit: there is a reference to taking it to a dealer twice on the First Transmission Failure thread. No reference on the Engine Drive thread. Although some of those posts reminded me that the owner may have modified software.

Is twice “many” times, or are we now back to that challenging subject of semantics?

 

Well this took a turn.

Back on the ranch, assuming nobody has the fix yet? Just called our dealer and we’re told nothing yet.

 

Thanks to the moderators for editing this thread.

 

Just got a letter from Honda that parts are now available for the recall. Scheduled an appt. with the dealer next week. Estimated work time - 4 hours.

 

Finally. Thanks for posting this. I’m going to see if I can get an appointment.

 

I got my letter about two weeks ago, and had the fix done a week ago today, so parts are out there now. I'm in Ottawa, Canada.

 

I can confirm that the drain plug is not magnetic, at least on my 2018.

 

Good to know, I never bothered checking on mine. I was worried the drain plug might pick up some debris and stop them from trashing the rest of the transmission over time. Hopefully the transmission strainer isn't too fine.

 

I got my letter yesterday. Called my nearest dealer today to schedule and they said they had to order the part and will call me once they have it. We'll see....