2008 honda fit sport 116,000 miles only stalls in drive and only when first started after it has been driven say 3 miles it is good. Say when I leave house and stop at sign it dies crank back and drive a little further its good for rest of trip. Then say I leave it off for 3 hours same scenario and it is worse when air is on. We have changed plugs and took it to dealer they say there getting a misfire on all 4 cylinders and needs all 4 ignition coils replaced. No check engine lights have been displayed, we took off all ignition coils cleaned boots no excessive wear and put dielectric grease on them same problem need your help, they want $832 to do work at honda I know we could do a lot cheaper but I'm afraid it could be fixed with a valve adjustment and don't want to throw good money away. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/imag...lies/rotfl.gif

 

Went out and took notes this time okay even in park and even after cold sensor goes off it runs at 1000 rpms in idle and about every 4 seconds it would idle rough and sound like it wanted to shut off but then try to clear up. Is it valve adjustment or coil packs???

 

Have you had a valve adjustment done yet? Since you're at 116,000 miles, you should do that anyway (at 100k), and it might just solve your problem. You're also supposed to change your spark plugs at 100k.

My 07 Fit had a rough idle on cold starts, only for the first minute or until I drove 50-100 meters, then it was back to normal. It was like you described, the engine would be idling high when cold (as it should), but it would be rough and almost choke on itself every once in a while. It never actually stalled, but it probably would have if the valve clearances were any more out of spec.

A valve adjustment solved it for me, now it idles buttery smooth all the time, no matter the engine temperature. Just have the valves adjusted and spark plugs replaced first, then go from there.

 

It sounds like valve clearances might be your problem, especially since you're experiencing symptoms when the engine is cold. That suggests valve clearance as a possible culprit - the change in engine temperature causes the valves to expand/contract, which changes the valve clearances. If too far out of specifications, that would cause the issues you described. That's why valves are to be adjusted to Honda's specs when cold. That ensures that when hot, the valves will still be within specifications.

Please keep us updated.

 

Thank you so much, we did idle restart and nothing changed but my husband thinks your exactly right he said he heard something in the valves a little ticking not bad but slight. So we will get that done and report back. I hope to help people with my response, it's been doing this for months and it needs to be addressed. We have changed plugs already. Honda must love trying to solve this issue with coil packs!

 

I would clean the throttle body and check and clean the idle air control valve. Valves usually get tight so you might not hear them but adjusting them is a good idea along with idle relearn procedure.

 

More often than not, stalling until the engine warms sufficviently is due to too low idle speed. Have dealer check the idle circuit and settings. I doubt 1000 rpm is sufficient for thed first 3 miles. i don't have the manual handy.

 

I had a similar problem. Fit would start up and could not be moved to D or R without rough idle/stall. Progressively got worse. About 6 months ago I was warming it up 3-5 minutes, then it would drive fine. Then it got to be summer, still warming it up.

I drew the line when it still felt week after 20 minutes of driving in town feeling like it was going to die at every stoplight. Never saw a check engine light!

Car has 165k so I took it to Honda:

They found the Vtec solenoid to be bad. They replace it, take it off the lift and it still isn't driving right. So they look at the valves to see the exhaust are too tight. Valve adjustment and boom!

Drives like a new one now!

Good luck with your Fit if it's still not fixed!

 

We always correct the cold start circuit to provide engine running
properly until engine warmed up. The vtec valve isn't part of that during fast idlewarm up. It is active but functions only when the rpm switchover is reached. Yours may have beenm bad but replacing it had nothing to do with poor idling during warmup.
Wonder if theyneeded to replace something costly enough to make simple repair worthwhile.

 

I had the same problem in the morning. First 3 minutes warming up the car. The car would shake and then shut off. Finally adjusted my valves today and it did not show any signs of shaking at all. All my exhaust valves had no clearance and my intake valves were all out of specs.

 

That's what we did also back in October, ever since then we have had zero problems! Like having a new fit ...

 

Had similar problem at around 128K, took it to dealership for valve adjustment and no more issues....

 

Can a moderator sticky this thread?

This problem is so common with the first generation Fit, and this thread is relatively tidy compared to the numerous other ones about the same issue (less people suggesting fuel injector cleaners, seafoam, throttle body cleaning, idle relearning, spark plugs, and other things that typically don't do anything for this problem).

 

I have been having the exact same issues with my 08 Fit Sport M/T except my CE light has been on intermittently. The code that ran was Cylinder 4 misfire. I finally took it in today (NOT to a Honda dealer) and they diagnosed two bad coilpacks. They are charging me $300 to them. They recommended that I replace all 4, but I am only doing the two that are bad. It is so weird how many people have written in about these same issues. My mileage has been terrible since these issues started - would go down to 24 and then back up to 38 on some tanks. It seemed to improve with Lucas Oil fuel injector cleaner and Seafoam, but who knows... I actually gave the mechanic a list of possible "fixes" ahead of time that I found on these threads (including valve adjustments, spark plugs, coil packs, etc. because those sounded so common). I hope that was a good idea. You never know if they are going to be honest or not. Anyway, I will post again to let you know if the coilpacks do the job.

 

Any update?

 

The two replaced coilpacks seemed to have fixed the problem, but only for a couple of days. Now the issue is back. My dad is coming next week and we are planning on replacing the other two on our own (along with the spark plugs) to see if that helps. Another person posted in another thread, however, that it would be a good idea to start with a valve adjustment before replacing any additional coilpacks. I might look into that too. So, hopefully within the next week and a half I will have ANOTHER update... Frustrating.

 

Second update - changed the other two coils and the spark plugs. That was almost a week ago and it hasn't stalled on my yet. I really hope this worked - so far, so good.

 

I had a similar issue this week.

On Monday, when I started my car in the afternoon after work, the RPM's dropped when I put the car in Drive. Almost to the point of shutting off. It had never done that before. When I left work on Tuesday, I shot video footage of cranking the car, then putting it into Drive. The same thing happened. It wasn't doing this in the morning when I leave for work, only in the afternoon. So, I took it to the service center and asked them to take a look at what might be going on.

The car now has just over 83,000 miles on it. I had a valve adjustment done in January of this year to clear a CEL indicating a misfire on cylinder 3. About a month later, I had all 4 coil packs replaced due to hesitation under load. That is documented in this thread: https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/1st-...ion-issue.html

I showed the SA the video I had shot because when I started the car and put it into gear in the service drive, it behaved normally. After about an hour and a half, the SA came and got me and asked if I could show the video to the techs working on my car. I went out to the shop, showed them the video and explained to them that a valve adjustment and coil pack replacement had been done within the last 4 months. The only thing they hadn't done was replace the spark plugs. So, they took a look at them, and said there was some fouling. Since it was nearly closing time for them, they put me in a loaner car and said they were going to look at it more in depth the next day (yesterday).

At about 3:00 PM yesterday, I called them for an update. They said that they hadn't been able to reproduce the issue and the tech had been talking to Honda USA to see if they could provide some insight. They told me to just keep the loaner another day.

Got a call today from them stating that they couldn't find anything really wrong with my car except the fouling on the plugs. They asked if I wanted them to replace the plugs, and I told them, "yes", since they didn't do that when they replaced the coil packs.

I picked up the car this evening, and it was running fine. I suppose the real test will come when I leave the office tomorrow.

Doctordoom's comment about engine temperature makes me wonder whether the valves might be out of spec, even though the adjustment was done at the end of January. It was only doing this in the afternoon, and the temperatures have begun to get warmer here in Atlanta (high 70's F).

I will see how it does tomorrow, but the high temperature tomorrow is supposed to be only 57 degrees F, so it may not be a good day to see if anything has improved.

I still wonder whether it's the valves, though, since it happened in the afternoon, not the morning.

 

Do you ever "get on it hard" like take it up to redline every once in awhile? Plugs will foul much faster if you putt putt around town all the time and never get on the highway and turn it loose sometimes.

 

I don't really take it up to the redline much. I do have to goose it every now and again in traffic to merge, pass, etc. I rarely put the transmission in "Sport" mode or use the paddle shifters. However, my daily commute (38 miles each way) is 95% highway, so if traffic isn't bad, most of my commute is at 70 MPH with the cruise control on. But I do live in Atlanta, and traffic can slow things down to a crawl quite often.