Why thank you for the very kind words! LOL I suppose your description goes way beyond the description of myself being mechanically savvy!

Cheers and all the best!

 

Well, OK. I'm feeling a bit on the hot seat here . . .

Background: I'm 59, retired electrical engineer. I've worked on cars and motorcycles since I was 19, because then I had no money. Now I could afford most any normal car or motorcycle I would like, but I still work on everything I own, because I have the tools and equipment to do so, because I enjoy it, and because I'm pretty good at it.

Over the years, there have been roughly 10 to 15 occasions where it was necessary to take a car (and rarely, a motorcycle) to a dealer or independent mechanic for work, because either (1) I was going out of town and could not do it, (2) because tools were needed that I did not have and would not need in the future, or (3) because one of my wife's cars was damaged in a collision and it was an insurance job.

I am NOT exaggerating when I say that in more than two-thirds of the cases, the vehicle was effed up in some way, occasionally in a very unsafe fashion. For example, years ago my wife had an '89 Accord that needed rear suspension work. The bolts were frozen such that they had to be burned off. I took it to a large local Honda dealer. I was out of town when she called me to say that on her way home from work, the car slithered around and had to be towed due to one of the rear wheels turning sideways. The "factory-trained" tech apparently went out for a smoke rather than tightening the bolts. Uh huh.

That same car was damaged in a rear-end collision. After "repair" at the Honda dealer (another one), a couple of days later the car died on the way home from work. I had it towed to my house and disassembled things. These geniuses failed to understand that the GROUND wire from the fuel pump needed to be touching BARE metal to make it work.

Shall I go on? When my Toyota T100 pickup was recalled years ago for the head gasket issue, I was loathe to trust anyone to do the work. My friend had a virtually identical truck (bought same day, same color, same engine, etc.), but since it was a company vehicle, he took it to the dealer for the work. When he brought it to my house, I found bolts missing, filthy coolant, and a cruise control wire cut. So I did my own work, at my expense. Flat rate was 10 or 11 hours; I took 32. His pickup blew up the engine a year or so later. Mine (no longer own it) is still running.

Call me suspicious. But all of my eight motorcycles and the four cars/pickups/minivans/SUVs at my house are in near-perfect condition. No one touches them but me (well, she puts gas in hers). If there is a problem with any of them, I don't have far to go to find the culprit (me).

I don't think that dealership techs have a particularly lucrative job situation and I don't envy them. Their motivations in working on my car are different from mine. If they don't beat the flat rate, they make less money (and the boss is gonna not like that). I have all the time in the world (now that I'm retired, but I always made time before that) and my motivation is to do the job right, regardless of time or effort involved.

 

Mechanical, audio, auto electrician, and I assume musical (although I've never heard you play).

My son has some of those traits. He's a guitarist (damn good even discounting fatherly pride), graphic artist, and pretty good all around handyman (taught by his maternal grandmother). His wife is a programmer/software trouble shooter), interior decorator, and provider for foster homes for cats/kittens.

While he was in Chicago (wife is from Lamont) he provided bumper music for Danny Bonaduche. Oh, and he runs chicagocubsonline.com, a study in futility.

 

Yessir, been playing for about 15 years. Haven't been as active or playing recently, day job and brewing beer have kinda taken precedent, but it will always be a part of my life.

NICE!

Yes, I'm grateful for being generally handy. I can thank my grandpa's on both sides of the family and my father for that. My GF is a finance accountant, and my day job is logistics and supply chain manager for a large manufacturing corporation here in CT, one of the last really.

Anyways, this thread has been very educational. I got an appointment this Wednesday to have the door brackets done, and have my block heater plug installed and I'll do the wiring. I'll report back on any updates.

 

Same here. I enjoy working in my cars. I'll do what I can but major stuff still goes to the mechanic. I haven't been to dealerships since I was in my late 20s. Now I'm 50 and enjoy buying my cars via car buying services. Don't have to deal with the game. Also agree that it depends on the dealership. I had a great experience at a Subaru dealership when the wife and I went to look at getting a new crosstrek. Even though we didn't get anything sale reps were very attentive. Not like the experience we had at Lexus. No one even helped us.

 

So I brought my car in for the door handle recall, and they quoted me $45 bucks to change out the block plug with the heater plug only. I was going to do the wiring myself to save myself the $135 bucks in labor. Good price in my eyes. I had a loaner car for the day on the house from the dealership so i didn't mind so much. When I got my car back the door handle brackets I saw them installed properly, no grease on the windows, door skins reassembled correctly. Both techs did a great job!

Well, seems the tech in the morning working on my car for the recall had to leave early, and another tech was finishing up the block heater, but instead of looking at the repair order where I explicitly said just to do the plug because I was not going to pay the labor of doing the wiring....tech didn't read and he did the entire job for me!!

I got a bit scared when the dealership called me about the time delay and how they are being careful working around the "extra wires." I immediately questioned and figured out they didn't read the RO. They installed it exactly to the honda instructions, by removing the front bumper cover, and the extra wires they were talking about is the DRL switchbacks I have next to my foglights, like on the European Honda Jazz model. The tech somehow even fixed the bumper sag, the gap is very small now against the fender frame Not perfect, but way better than before.


I'll take some pictures of the block plug, its a lot bigger than I thought. You will loose a lot of coolant. Thankfully the dealership admitted they didn't follow instructions and kept the same quoted price. So I got my recall and block heater done (which included flushing the entire cooling system out, you cannot avoid this) for $50.15 USD!!

 

Crest Honda did a great job on the door handle brackets, no grease inside or out. Fixed the oil filter leak last week (no charge) and washed it. Brackets Tuesday and the pushbutton start didn't work for the mechanic. They ordered the suspect part, arrived this morning and installed.. The tech said this was a first on a Fit but they had seen it on older Civics and Accords.

It took about 2 hours this morning. The service writer brought it around with the "old" part to be sent back to Honda. Service writer, the tech, and I chatted around the car while the service writer started and stopped the car several times, no problem. They left and I went to drive away ... Fit would NOT start !!! On 3rd attempt, out of there with promises to bring it back if the pattern repeated it self.

I took iPhone photos that I'll post here as soon as if figure out how.

 

It's taking Beaverton (Oregon) Honda over 6.5 hours to r/r and they still aren't done. Geeeesh!

 

The piece is called "garnish" in the parts book. Mine was loose and eventually broke - cost is about $27. I just taped it in place with black tape for the time being. At least yours was broken by a tech and could be proven.

 

For Pete's sake, it took the guys at Crest Honda here in Nashville less than 3 hours, neat, clean, no broken parts complete with a car wash.

 

Scovile-Meno Honda did a great job on mine, as far as I can tell. No grease, no broken interior trim.

 

HONDA DEALERSHIP 2----ME 0

After they broke the part on the rear door about 3 weeks ago I got a call the part had come in. I set up an appointment first thing Monday morning at 7:00 AM. Got up at 5:30 and drove in. Again first in line at 6:30 AM. Took car in when the doors opened. Same as last time people come in got filters and oil changed and left apparently ahead of me. They were in the room with cabin air filters and stuff to upsell to the paying customers in the waiting room. Almost 2 hours later they told me to come outside and handed me my keyfob. All fixed. No going to counter like last time to sign off, no paperwork, no record of visit. When I got home I saw the horrible job they did on install of a part that should take all of 5 seconds to put on. I include a picture of the part installed in place of the broken one.



That ain't the worst part. I started to realy check the other doors they took apart to put in the new door handle brackets. I have a gap on the back door now next to the window. Here is a picture of that.




But the bad thing was even though the door panels looked like they were installed they were not. About half of all the push pins had not been installed. I had to go around to very door and hit it with the palm of my hand to hear and feel them seat into place. This is the worst I have ever seen. I will just live with the gap in the back door and hope I do not have any other reason to have to take it back in to dealer again. So discouraged with this type of service. I know I am not in a luxury car but still I would have hoped for better service.

James

 

There is NO EXCUSE for this kind of sloppy, half-assed work. Maybe we should send some Tennessee volunteers down to show the Texas guys how to do things right. Maybe 10 gallon hats slip down over their little pin-heads and they cannot see what they're doing.

 

And you wonder why I don't trust dealers???

I did my own door handle bracket replacements. Yeah, cost me about $25 and seven or eight hours' of my time (I have plenty of that). Oddly enough, everything looks exactly the way it did before I took the doors apart. No grease or black marks on anything.

Yeah, dealers are great. For selling cars.

 

I am actually in West Tenn. I used the dealer in Bartlett Tenn that did the door bracket work and messed it up. I will try another dealer in Memphis if I have to go in for anything else. I can go to Jackson Tenn dealer if I had to. I saw Crest Honda in Nashville is good but 3 hours from me. If you have a dealer do this recall look at it closely to make sure they did it correctly. Lots of ways they can mess this fix up.

James

 

Mason, Madison ... Texas, Tennessee, since we're both Tennessee Volunteers.

I've bought Hondas from 3 different dealers ... a Civic Wagon (Trickett in Madison), a Civic EX and a Civic Si (both from Waltrip in Franklin), and now the Fit (Crest downtown Nashville). Trickett is less than 3 miles away, but Crest offered the best deal on the Fit. They sold it, they service it.

I've had good service, customer and mechanical. Crest has been first rate from the beginning. Ray Thompson is a great salesman.

 

I finally am getting around to getting this recall complied with on my 2015 Fit EX. The letter I received from Honda in February 2016 says the repair would take 90 minutes. I took the car to the dealership on 10 March and the dealership quoted me 4 hours. I told them I would bring it back another day. So I take the vehicle in today and after 4 hours they only had 2 doors finished and told me they would need to keep the car overnight. Needless to say I am not happy and I am glad I came back to the forum to read all of the issues others are having with this recall. Like others have said, I understand this is not a luxury car but the incompetence shown by these dealerships is unacceptable. I will thoroughly inspect the car before leaving dealership and pray they send me a survey!

 

They don't have to send a survey, you are entitled to complain to their corporate masters directly, and such complaints might even carry more weight than surveys!

That said, manufacturers always underestimate the time required to complete warranty work as that reduces their costs. Dealers always put warranty repairs at last priority, since they do not pay as well as retail work. Chances are, another job came along that was charged at full retail and your car sat half-finished while the mechanics worked on that job. It's the job of the service writers and managers to make up excuses to cover that!

 

Some dealerships, not all. It took Crest Honda in Nashville under two hours to to the work, discover the reason for the starter glitch (6 speed manual EX), and correct an oil filter leak (complete oil change). Got a wash to boot. Some dealer have it, some don't. Good service writers, good mechanics, and an overall good dealership. Luck of the Irish? (Surname Finnell, Irish me boy-o)

 

I had this recall done on Tuesday and my dealer also scratched my door jambs (idiots!), left grease on the inside and outside of doors, grease on the window glass, and they removed a rubber bump-stop and never replaced it. I'm going back to the dealer to get a replacement bump-stop. Ugh, this is why I HATE taking my car anywhere for service. I wish I could do it all myself!