Our 2008 Fit is in the body shop after a minor parking lot accident late last year. They contacted me today after doing a final alignment and told me that our rear axle is bent. They also told me they've seen bent rear axles in every Fit they've had in their shop. This is the body shop associated with the local Honda dealer, on a separate dedicated site. I called the service dept to get their take and they had not experienced any of what the collision center has seen and new of no TSBs about it.

I asked him for the alignment readings and here's what he told me:

spec for camber: -5 to -25
spec for toe: +0 to +20

our reading DR: -1.5 castor, -7 toe
our reading PR: -1.4 castor, +25 toe

A couple of things don't make sense to me: 1) that every Fit in their shop would have had a similar problem and 2) how our Fit would have had an axle bent even as a result of our accident (someone backed into the driver front side while the car was moving damaging the front fender, wheel, door, back door, back quarter panel - basically scraped the entire side of our car with their car)

I'm looking for any other evidence. Have any of you guys after taking your Fits in for alignment found strange results in the rear?

Thanks!

 

I couldn't find the actual post on this forum, but there is a owner who rebuilt both axle ends with new custom made plates to correct this problem. I will keep searching and post again If I find it.

 

I'm inferring this means it is indeed a common problem?

Thanks for the tip! I didn't see anything previously, but now I have some more search terms to use.

 

This isn't the post, but this does show a few solutions that people are doing.
https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/1st-...es-solved.html

 

This sounds suspicious. How did they decide the axle was bent ?Impact mark(s) on the middle of the axle ?or did they decide it was bent because the rear wheels were toed beyond specification ? Perhaps your shop thinks because the toe is out unequally between sides the axle is bent; thats not the case. The axle may only be cocked to the chassis centerline.
The rear toe can be adjusted by fabricating shim plates on each axle plate or by selecting various thickness wahers on the plate bolts. Either way its not a job for the unitiated and machine shop unskilled. And just what are his readings ? degrees ?, thousandths ?
If his readings are in thousands your Fit is not much different than many Fits on rear toe. If the axle was merely 'straightened' so that both sides had the same toe, the toe would be 0.009 toe-out on each side. Spec calls for-.02 to 0 toe-in. That involves shimming the axle mounting bolts and again not real easy. But .01 toe-out works very well.
When the axle is straightened your Fit would be just .01" out of spec on both sides. We have observed considerably greater range of rear toe than yours so your shop is probably right that their Fits were not square on toe but not so that the axles were bent.
Good luck.
PS there are numerous postings on those procedures so youmight check them out.

 

I'm calling BS, at least without seeing some photographs of the car post-crash. I think the reason every FIT that comes into that body shop has a bent axle is because they stand to profit from replacing rear axles.

I worked on european cars for a couple of years out of college, and I remember aligning many a new-ish VW with single rear trailing arm suspensions that were out of spec right from the factory, and there was no adjustment for the rear trailing arm.

I remember on Golf in particular where the owner whacked a curb and seriously damaged the rear trailing arm. We got a brand new one from VW, bolted it in, and the rear toe specs were still out by a tenth on both sides. We thought we got a bad component, so the local VW dealer took it back and sent us another one. We got the second new one in, same results!!! If VW is sending cars out of the factory with out of spec trailing arms, I'm sure Honda likely is too, especially on the more 'economical' models like the FIT.