I'd have the dealer check and clean the throttle body and EGR valve. The electronic throttle can't be cleaned like the old days and the cleaning procedure is lengthy and I wouldn't risk messing it up.

 

Been there done thast. Finding a customer has more advanced knowledge brings out competiveness in 'techs' in all brands. They have to know more than you.
Now down to business.
Have you checked OBD with more than one scanner ?
Have you checked the spark plugs immediately after shutdown during misfire ?
Have you checked the individual plugs firing with an old fashioned timing light ?
Have you checked the injectors to see if one or more don't inject gas until they warm up ?
These are all omissions I have failed to personally perform til well into the cursing part of diagnostics. And ones 'techs' should do automatically if experienced. Honda, like all manufacturers, define 'driveability problems' as ones that occur with all elctrical and mechanical devices working properly. Any driveability problem is always a device failure and they don't always know much beyond the direct fixit mode. The codes may be absent but the device is mnot functioning as designed. The sensor doesn' know anything beyond its clicking, nothings wrong.
The good techs, we have a couple, thank goodness, always check the various devices during diagnostics and its a good methodology to follow before going to the dealer, or having faith the 'techs' there are experienced and knowledgeable.
PS there is a good reason why we put a bottle of non-alcohol injector cleaner once a month in gas tanks and recommend customers do the same. All gasolines have disolved, and undissolved, solids.
A buck a month is cheap insurance.
Good luck.

 

One of the problems with checking this engine is there are so many things you CAN'T do. For example, checking the plugs with an old fashion timing light. I have one of those but..... The Fit engine, as in so many new designs, uses "Coil over plug" ignition. In simple terms each plug has its own coil sitting on top of it. The drive circuit in the computer turns on the coils individually. The only way to check these with a timing light would be to remove the plugs and install a "jumper" wire from the coil pack to the plug to see if it actually works. The other way would be to build a driver circuit that would be able to fire the coils while they are off the vehicle so they could be chilled to duplicate the conditions. This is more complex than a simple on and off circuit if it is to accurately duplicate the drivers in the ECM.

Many people mention the IAC circuit. Well, as with other vehicles with electronically controlled throttles there is no such thing. Its a piece of software inside the ECM. Some say its more difficult or even impossible to clean. Well, again, not true. With the key on just block down the accelerator or have an assistant push it down while you clean the plate and where it seats in the throttle body.

As for the scan tool, good idea. But, my tool goes into Mode 6 and shows the right screens where misfire data SHOULD be, its just that the vehicle seems not to record them when its cold. This is sometimes programed into the software to avoid false codes under certain unusual conditions such as sudden acceleration and other times where the design of the system might be "fooled".

I trained thousands of techs over the years. I know their strength and their limitations. I have the greatest respect for them and professionally they had the same for me as I was able to be one of their mentors. I was lucky to be in the right place and got to worked with two car manufactures during the buildup and launch of OBD2. I spent many hours in Detroit and in California with the engineers who designed these systems and had to contend with the issues involved. I also spent my working career with some of the best technical experts in the field. Perhaps this is a negative when I have to talk to a Honda regional service adviser who has zero technical training or knowledge of the vehicle. When asked any question of depth they just stop and tell you to go see your dealer.

I will solve this problem. Its a machine. Its no different than any of the millions of vehicles on the road. I have fixed literally thousands of vehciles over a long career. There are certain things that happen to make the engine run and its just a matter of systematically working through the systems to make sure each is functioning properly. My basic problem with Honda is they put people on the first line with no knowledge or skills and then wonder why their customers get frustrated with them. Of course the lady I am dealing with probably hates me because I don't accept her ignorance. I will bet she has a college degree in something, but it sure isn't anything technical or automotive.

I will fix the car myself. I have tried to work through Honda but I have learned that they must have gone to the General Motors school of auto repair and customer relations.Tthey are sure reminding me of the folks we had to deal with back at GM before the "Fall". Too bad, Mr. Honda was a technical wizz who expected more from his people and he would be ashamed of how bad things have gotten at the company that bears his name.

 

Fixed it....can't believe how great it runs now. Total cost of repairs: ZERO DOLLARS

Did more research. For many years, due to my work, I have been a member of IATN (International Automotive Technicians Network). Did research there and elsewhere. Decided that I would start with making sure the engine was sound. After all, if the computer system assumes a mechanically perfect (or nearly so) engine. I had two hours this evening before our son, wife and child would be over so I popped the engine open and took a look.

OMG! Every stinking valve on the engine was WAY out of spec. Never seen a car with 100% of the valves that far off.(and in my years of working in import shops I set a ton of valves). Looking back it seems all the intakes were way loose, all the exhausts were way tight. Its like the settings were reversed back at the factory when this thing was built. I set all the valves, stuck it back together and as soon as I hit the key that first time I knew we had it. The engine sounded like it had been replaced with a new one. I didn't realize how bad it had been running until I fixed it. The power had faded over the past year or two. It was so gradual it didn't strike you until you saw the sudden improvement. After the car had sat out in the cold for three or four hours I had the wife try it. She is car numb. If she notices anything, its severe. Again, as soon as she hit the key and put it in reverse she was amazed at the sound and feel. She said it felt like a different car, smoother and more powerful. That's it, she confirmed my feelings.

The give away here was the fuel economy. It had decreased by five or six miles per gallon. That rang a bell with some of the reports I had read. Still, how did these valves get so bad in 50,000 miles? Our Accord has 200,000 miles and the valves have been checked but never needed adjusting.

The real PIA here is that the information in the Honda owner manual is totally misleading. They tell you the valves don't need adjusting until like 109,000 miles (or some odd high number). They throw a note in that you might adjust them sooner "if they are noisy". Well, they were not making noise at all. The exhaust valves had almost zero clearance, and that is BAD. The intakes were all very loose and evenly so. Their clearance was like what the exhausts should have been. Sure seemed like they got them set backwards when the engine was set up.

The procedure to adjust them is pretty standard stuff. BTW, you DON'T have to drain any coolant. I had read that you did in a repair manual. If you just unbolt the upper intake and swing it out of the way you loose no coolant. The whole job, work time, was an hour or so. I fiddled around, took my dog out for her play time/pottie break and still managed to do it all in about two hours taking my time. It looks like more work than it is. If you smart and pay attention you can remove whole assemblies rather than trying to take off each and every little part. Honda put nice markings on the cam sprocket to make it fast and easy to move the engine into the correct position to set each cylinder. Turn the steering to the full locked right turn position and use a socket and extension through the access hole on the passenger side to quickly turn the crank. Piece of cake...

Its a shame Honda mis-informs you about the need for checking the valves. Even worse when you ask them about this and they flat tell you they have never heard of it. I read of many cases of this on newer Honda's, and not just the Fit. I wonder how many more of these cars are out there just wasting fuel and just waiting to start burning exhaust valves that are not seating properly.

If I worked for Honda I would write a Technical Service Bulletin on this and save a lot of people a lot of grief and needless expense. But, I don't work for them, and after being treated so rudely by them I certainly don't plan on sharing anything with them. The district rep, the one who flat told me she didn't know anything about cars, was shocked that I didn't take the car into the dealer for oil changes and tire rotations. She probably feels the dealer techs were the only people qualified to touch a Honda car. She also really spoke badly about people discussing cars on the inter net. "Honda doesn't pay any attention to that stuff" she told me. Well, interesting enough it was on the web and from fellow car guys (some here on this site) that I was able to solve the problem myself without their help and in spite of the totally incorrect information that they published.

Set those valves guys!~ I don't care if you can't hear them or if you don't suspect them. I will bet there are a lot of cars out there that would benefit from a basic service like that.

Thanks for those who listened to my rants and those who posted similar problems with suggestions. Sometimes it takes a village to fix a car.

 

Same car. Same problem. Picking it up from the dealer in the morning (valve lash adjustment). The thing is... I only have forty some thousand miles. My conversation with the dealer:

Dealer: Mr. Karatechop, No codes. No stalls for our tech; but we have had some problems with valve lash causing cold stall without triggering check engine light (and maybe a little slow off idle whatever). The warrantee won't cover the adjustment.
Me: What's the service interval on valve lash?
Dealer: There is none specified.
Me: Well at 40k, don't you think excessive clearance is probably an assembly problem?
Dealer: Personally, I do; but the warrantee won't cover. $300.

I guess if it's fixed I'll forgive and forget soon enough. Warantee is about worthless. Just like corporate health insurance. Promises and fine print.

 

I think the valve lash adjustment is an issue. At least your dealer was aware of it, mine had no clue. From over 40 years of professional experience I can tell you valves should not be that far off on a car with that mileage. The more I think of it the more convinced I am that they were wrong from the factory. But, as your dealer said, to Honda valve adjustment is NOT a warranty issue even if Honda screwed it up to begine with. This problem started on our Fit early on also. At 40k it was doing the cold stall and poor idle and decreased mileage. I changed the spark plugs first and that helped just a little bit.

The thing is our Fit was in the dealership TWICE for other things (recalls) and they drove the car. I told them about the drivablity issue and they didn't notice any problem nor did they suggest any solutions. "No check engine light, no problem with car". The service adviser looked me in the eye and told me there were no issues with Fits. Well, if anyone drove a properly running Fit had driven this one the difference was darn hard to miss. (Pun intended). I don't know how they cold have driven that car across the lot without noticing how poorly it was running.

My local dealer's techs and service advisers, at least the ones I had to deal with, are not what I would call professionals. They know how to milk money from you but don't seem to know or care how to properly service and maintain Honda vehicles when there are problems.

I am happy to have my Fit back in proper running order. This forum and others made the difference when Honda dropped the ball.

 

Well... all is well that ends well. Yeah it was the valve lash. No complaints with Executive in Wallingford, CT.

 

I am glad you have a dealer who knows what they are doing. The only thing my local dealer knows is how to milk money from their customers. Before my wife and I were married she took her Accord in for the 36,000 mile service. They were happy to charge her $350 for changing the oil and replacing the front brake pads (and pads is all they did...no new rotors or even machining them) but during the "service" they totally missed the important one, changing the coolant. Guess that didn't pay enough for them to waste their time on.

$350 for brake pas and an oil change....Our Sick Fit they had no clue.....they would have had to stop and think about that one. No, no love for my local Honda Stealer...er...dealer.

 

I have a 2007 FIT DX auto. 46,000k

Once we had our first big snow storm here (Winnipeg) my CEL light had been coming on when my gas went below halfway. I got it scanned at the dealership, and they said that these codes came up:

P0138 - H02S CIRCUIT HIGH VOLTAGE
P2A00 - A/F SENSOR S1 CIRCUIT RANGE/PERFORMANCE PROBLEM

And then they quoted me a price which I am sure can be better, considering this place effed me over huge once before.

They said that the Primary Air Fuel Sensor needed to be replaced.

1) Does this sound like the correct problem to match the symptoms?
2) What should a repair or replacement like that set me back? (parts/labour)
3) Does anybody know a place in or near Winnipeg that they would trust to do the work?

As a bit of laymen in the car repair world, any help from someone in-the-know would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks people!

 

my gas miles suck so much 140 mile on 1 tank for gas

 

Don't know about your local but at that low mileage the emissions system should be still under warranty. (US)

Whenever you see an O2 sensor problem on a car, especially with the mileage below 50,000 you have to look to make sure something else is not causing the problem. The code does NOT say that sensor is defective, it says the voltage reading on the sensor is higher than predicted. The O2 is the last guy on the list. It only responds to what has been sent down the tailpipe to it. Not only that, you have two different codes here. I would have to look into the defining criteria that would cause these codes to set.

Problem with on-board diagnosis is that computers are amazingly stupid. They assume that everything in the engine is perfect. They only look at the data tables that have been pre-programed into them. For example, Ford had a problem with Mass Air flow sensors. The Vehicles would set a P0171 code, lean fuel mixture. The manual would have you doing twenty different tests. In the end you would find the mass air flow sensor was dirty and its readings were skewed. This in turn would give the computer very bad info. But the computer didn't know the mass airflow sensor was bad, it just accepted its readings and made fuel calculations off of it. But it was the 02 readings the computer didn't like. The 02 sensors were fine, they just read what got sent to them which was incorrect because bad data was given to it.

I am always suspect of any code that deals with fuel mixture out the pipe. One should always remember to go back to basics and make sure the engine is sound and that basic systems and sensors are correct in what they read. I can give you lists of vehicles that had some sort of mixture code but in the end the code had less to so with the mixture sensor and far more to do with basic engine functions gone haywire.

Look around some more before listening to anything Honda tells you. Get a second opinion.

 

Excellent electronic engine management masking a sick motor. When I worked at a garage, we tuned up the cars before doing computer diagnostics (or at least preached that theory).

 

You just hit on a very good point. Todays ECMs are good, very good. They will do their best to keep a sick car running as nearly normal as possible. Finally the engine will just get so bad that the ECM can no longer "cover it up" and then we notice it. The problem had likely been developing for awhile and we were just unaware.

As I said, the ECM depends on you providing it with a healthy engine. We still need to do the old fashion things like maintaining the engine and making sure all the mechanical things are fine. I spent three years on a Lemon Law board and you would not believe the things dealers did to cars without ever finding the root cause. They seem to like to throw parts at them and hope something in there will fix the problem. I saw one dealer throw $2k worth of parts and labor at a car only to finally figure out it had a bad intake valve. They had a P 0300 misfire code but never did a simple compression test on the car.

 

my car is doing the same thing, it's not shutting off but it feels like it's going to...only first thing in the morning when it is very cold. Planning on doing this adjustment this weekend. my car only has 60,000 miles on it, but it seems like this is a fairly common issue.

 

just went to honda same problem ans i have 55840 miles valve clearances adjusted

 

My Fit starting acting up at around 40k-50k miles. Local dealer didn't have a clue. They even drove the car while doing recalls (twice) and never commented on just how bad it was running. This same dealer brags about their "World Class Service".

I called Honda and they swore they had never heard of this problem with the valves. I told them their manual was part of the problem as it said the valves didn't need adjusted until 100k+ "unless they make noise".

If I owned any early model Fit, I would adjust the valves, PERIOD, just to be sure. The tight exhaust valves I found on mine, and all of them were really badly tight, would have ended up burning the valves or head in time. You really DON'T want to do that.....$2k repair bill on that one.

The valves are straight forward to adjust. You do not need to drain the coolant as I saw in one manual. You do remove the upper intake manifold and swing it out of the way.

My favorite tool to adjust valves is a "Go-No Go" feeler gauge. Like one of these:

Lisle , 68150 Go-No-Go Feeler Gauge - .004 In to .027 In

Amazon.com: KD Tools 2424 Go-No-Go Feeler Gauge: Automotive

I break the set down and remove the two gauges I need for this job. Then I bend the end over back from the "step" so that it is easier and more accurate to slide them in between the valve and the rocker. What is really nice on the Fit engine is the way the cam sprocket is marked so you know exactly where the engine should be rotated to set each set of valves. Also, use a 19mm socket on an extension inserted through the provided hole and you can quickly and easily rotate the engine to get to the next cylinder.

This is a pretty straight forward job for anyone with fair skills. Of course proper torquing of fasteners is always important, especially when you do that plastic intake.

There are copies of the Honda repair manual you can find on-line that shows step-by-step with pictures how to do this job.

Go for it.

 

The valves in my car needed to be adjusted at around 30k... this was with around 6-7k of having the KW supercharger on the car. Nearing 50k now and probably need to get it adjusted again

 

Was your car messing up before the valve adjustment ? Was there a noticeable improvement after the adjustment?

 

In fact, I can hear my valves more after the adjustment.

 

I can not speak for anyone else, only my own experience. In my case I don't think the valves changed so much due to the mileage, I thing the valves were incorrectly adjusted from the factory. It was like they set the intakes to exhaust specs and vise-versa. My intakes were all much too lose and evenly so. The exhaust were all very tight, only a couple of thousands at most, and again, all evenly so.

I worked for years as a tech and adjusted valves on more cars, trucks, motorcycles, and other engines. Never did I see this happen unless the valves were set wrong to begin with at the factory.

It will be interesting to see how these engines do once the valves are set up correctly. My Accord has 200,000 miles without valve adjustment being needed.

I suspect that the valve adjustments were off when the engines were built and that is why you see it so serious an issue on quite a few cars.