So I have a 2015 Fit with 134k miles. I absolutely love this car! As soon as I hit 130k miles, my poor car decided it was time for self destruct mode. I replaced brakes, tires, battery, key fob battery, starter started acting funny so I replaced that, now what I thought was a cv joint that was bad.. was actually the transmission. We put it on the lift with me inside, put it in gear and we quickly figured it out that it was the trans slipping and acting crazy. It's like I'm driving over a railroad track with square tires until I hit about 40 mph and it smooths out from there.
I'm not even going to bother taking it to the dealer. I already know this is a pricey fix. So I ordered a transmission that came to me extremely damaged. I have another one on the way now.
I hope this will be the solution! I'll update as soon as shes back on the road. Unfortunately, I have a sentimental bond to this car now so I don't even want to replace it haha. I mean.. we survived hitting a herd of hogs and a deer last year and I basically live in it on the road. I can't just let her die now. Anyways. Who has high miles on their fit?

My current mode of transportation is a Ram 2500 4x4 that gets 13 mpg on a good day. This was my Sunday driver.. now its my daily.

 

I absolutely do NOT have high miles on my Fit.

But...maybe with 134K it's fair to call the transmission failure just part of life?
That's a fair amount of miles on any transmission.

But with only 2 years of usage and what I have to assume is a lot of highway miles, you'd hope it would of lasted longer.

 

I'm in the same boat (same truck!), but only because I just sold my Fit and am still waiting on its successor to be delivered... hope you get yours sorted quickly and inexpensively!



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My 2015 Fit haven't hit 36k miles yet! :O

 

It just baffles me that every other vehicle I've had.. I've gotten at least 400k miles out of them. I own a courier service so I drive a lot! Lol. I guess this will be a more annual fix? I literally baby this car with nothing but the best. The oil has never even had a chance to get dirty. I actually just took it to get a trans oil change a few months ago also.🤔 I honestly don't know why I love this car so much but I'm literally having withdrawals! It's been 2 weeks😩 my goal is to get 1 million miles out of the Fit. I'm really hoping the technology will hold up. I swear Honda better sponser me. 😂 I ordered a trans from a 2016 model with 2k miles on it. Maybe they worked out some kinks for the 2016 model.. I guess we'll test it out!

@BrotherBeijing that's a really weird problem you're having, my car drives just fine at highway speeds. Only when taking off it goes haywire.

@stembridge that's a stunning combo you have there! 😍 almost like mine except mine don't match haha

 

200K out of a car made in the last 20 yrs is a relatively standard expectancy for major vehicle components when maintained to properly, and if Kia can do it, then why can't Honda? lol

 

Well upon further inspection while taking apart my car to drop the trans.. We figured out the problem of why the transmission burned out so soon! The coolant lines that run through the trans got bent back so badly with the collision I had at 50k miles, there was probably little to no coolant cooling the trans. I'm actually incredibly impressed now that the car made it nearly 90k more miles with no problems! Fear not fit freaks, this is one tough cookie. ��

 

I agree I'd want more life.
BUT...
It's not a hard and fast rule.
My mother had a Ford that's transmission started failing at less than 70K.
It was a lemon...not representative of the vehicle as a whole...but it happens.

Plus we've discovered there were extenuating circumstances that resulted in the "premature" failure at 135K.

Yes, I'm hoping for much more life out of my transmission. BUT...if it failed at 135K, I don't think I'd define it as too far out of the possible norm.

 

Well poo. Sorry about these CVT troubles. They are reasonably simple compared to say a DCT so I would hope they would be fixable. I opted for the manual just due to the enjoyment.

 

134K miles congrats.

id be in my 3rd or 4th car by then..!! lol

i dont hear much about the cvt's failing on this car so it is probably an isolated case.

 

WOW, you're actually complaining about replacing what I consider wear or normal maintenance items. Even the starter has only a lifespan of so many cycles. I can see if the car is started and shut off many times during the day that being a reasonable replacement at 134K miles.

 

Like I said, every other vehicle I have owned required no other maintenance than your average oil change or fuel pump. Not even starters or anything lol. In fact, my neighbor bought a van from me with 400k miles last year and he is still using and driving it every day! No problems ever.

Anyways, I will post pics of what poured out of the old transmission later today. It was gnarly!

 

I've owned my 2015 Fit for 2.5 years and I have just over 80,000 miles - (90+% highway).

Last week, I was driving to work when my transmission had a catastrophic failure. It would not engage in any gear and I could not accelerate. I was very lucky to not be driving in heavy traffic as that would certainly have increased the likelihood of a crash from behind.
The vehicle was towed to the dealer. They drained the trans fluid and they witnessed metal coming out with the fluid. They said there was nothing on my part which would have contributed to the failure. I treat it well and take good care of it. By the way, I just want to say how much I really love this car.

There was a recall issued in the latter part of 2015 describing the potential for CVT failure due to the drive pulley shaft made from metal with inferior hardness.
Honda's solution was to upgrade the software to put less hydraulic pressure on it so it won't break. My car was NOT a part of this recall campaign, but I feel that it should have. I checked my VIN against thei records, but no results came up. However, The official NHTSA lists the beginning and ending range of VINs. Just out of curiosity, I took the the VINs they used for their range, popped it into the search engine, and neither one returned a result. They were valid VINs as the result will tell you if it not. Perhaps if they are fixed, they remove them from the database... BTW, my VIN appears to fit within that range, but I get no results either.
Check your VIN here: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls
Also, the official notice is here with the VIN ranges:
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/201...5V574-6037.PDF

And who knows to what degree the "lower end of the hardness spectrum" really is... Maybe on a scale of 1 to 10, the threshold is 7, and mine was at 7.3 so they know it would fail outside of the warranty period.

Good Luck to all 2015 Fit owners within these VIN ranges. If you have any problems at all with your CVT well before what is expected of the Honda Quality that has been sold to you - and that you expect, please file a complaint with the NHTSA as I have done by going here:
https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/VehicleComplaint/
It's simple, and takes only 5 minutes - and who knows, maybe they will notice a trend which will trigger an expanded recall.

It's really just a matter of speaking up and being heard!

Thanks.

 

Nice write up and thanks for the info.

Glad mine is a J-VIN.

 

I hope mine goes on forever, if not 250K miles. Don't abuse it!

 

Sorry to hear of your misfortune. Did the car give any indication before the transmission died? Strange noises, surging power etc?

My car was affected by the CVT recall and I had it done. I checked the website in your post, plugged in my VIN and nothing shows up. There have been a couple recalls I've had completed and none of them showed up. I have another vehicle that I know has an open recall and it does show up. Maybe they do remove it if the vehicle has had the recall performed as you surmise.

The range is kind of hard to decipher, but I'm not an expert. For example mine starts off 3HGGK5H89FM and doesn't seem it would fit in the range since it seems to go down from H87 to H52 but it was affected by the recall:
Begin : 3HGGK5H87FM701786 End : 3HGGK5H52FM787207

Can I ask if you have had the transmission fluid drained and replaced prior to the failure? I'm at around 45k and the MM has not notified me to do so and I haven't. This kind of makes me nervous as I do a lot of miles too, not as much as you have though. I was going to do the first transmission change myself as it appears to be a relatively easy process, but now I may have them do it just to CYA myself.

So what are you going to do? Repair or replace the whole car with something else?

 

It is hard to figure out. To my understanding, the last five numbers reflect the number of the build, in which case the second number would be more recent.

Mine is ...H85...but also 46XX. So is it in range or not? All I know is I did not get this recall notice, and the way I'm driving, I''l hit 80K in 12 years.

 

If all we're looking is the last 6, I'm definitely in the range then.

 

Well, at least it's not like the problems Nissan has been having with CVTs:

Should You Trust Nissan's CVT? | Nissan Problems

...but that doesn't mean Honda isn't experiencing teething problems with their CVTs.

Long story short: I've been a manual transmission guy for my previous seven vehicles, because of the durability of those drivetrains. Never wore a clutch out. Had some issues with the master cylinder in my 1996 Civic HX, but that's about the only problem I've experienced. Other than that, they've been relatively bulletproof.

For my last vehicle, I test drove a '16 LX CVT and I was quite impressed. I also liked the fact that the CVT had a much wider gear range than the MT. Time to give my left foot a rest. So far I've been happy with the CVT, but I also realize there might be issues that would prevent it from outlasting all the MT's I've owned.

 

Were you able to determine if the transmission failure was from a failure of the drive pulley shaft?

That's too bad, I would expect more than 2.5 years and 80,000 miles of reliability from a Honda Transmission.

Honda isn't the first or only automaker to discover what I think is a hard part problem (Drive Pulley Shaft) and try to fix it by adjusting Software.
Which always seems suspicious to me as far as approach.

If it was originally determined that operation was most efficient with the software parameters set at the original specifications then adjusting them to protect a inferior part seems like a poor approach to actually fixing the problem. Really, I think Drive Pulley Shafts need to be replaced with ones that CAN handle the original software and are NOT too soft. But software adjustment is a cheaper approach. Cheaper....for the automaker, but not as good for us the owners.

I hope you can get some assistance or help in this repair.