Hi all! 1st timer recommended by a friend.

My issue:
After 11,500 miles of a well running car, my car gave me a 'package ' warning of 4 items...tire pressure, traction control(car with 's' mark tire trail), powersteering?(wheel w/exclamation icon), and last but not least-the engine block icon.
Feel:
The car is almost sputtering, shaking, basically not a smooth idle and probably similarly off while driving but harder to gauge.

Ongoing fix attempts at dealer:I'm under warranty still.

1st attempt: They replaced fuel injectors and gave it back and same engine warnings came back on by next day or so.

2nd attempt : was ANOTHER set of fuel injector. FAIL again, all same warning lights come on after a day or two.

3rd attempt: : Top ENGINE CLEAN performed. Came to pick up. I knew it wasn't right- still- with shaking/light sputtering as soon as I started it. Was I imagining it or in denial? In denial I say, because I drove off instead of going right back into dealer.

4th attempt; Went back next day. Presently still in shop after a full week! The are doing a 'full engine breakdown and FULL ENGINE CLEAN. They are replacing HEAD. replacing a bad ignition coil. Replacing what else? don't know.

What's really going on?

Research suggests a flawed 'FUEL DELIVERY SYSTEM' or fuel injectors + ?...and it creates EXCESSIVE CARBON BUILD-UP.
Something about the way it's Direct fuel injector doesn't wash down/away the 'dirt'(carbon) in part of cylinder area....?

Anyone else had this problem? Seems common.

Is all there doing a band-aid fix and same issue will occur in as many miles?

What is real solution? Is there some retro-fit outside of dealer that could fix this issue?

All help and comments appreciated!

 

Lemon law this vehicle. Four attempts to fix a major problem and still not resolved, you're already over the limit of attempts to repair in most states.

Honda will fit this aggressively, as they don't want back their problem child. This is to be expected.

It's not just the 2015-2018 models that have a questionable injector / rail design, it's even the newest models. This is why I no longer recommend the GK5 in any form. If you need a Fit in the US, go back to the GD3 or GE8.

 

At 11,500 miles you don't have problems with carbon build up. Failed injectors are possible but also unlikely with that low mileage. After replacing the injectors once they should have stopped and re-looked at the problem. They simply don't seem to have figured out what the problem is and are blindly pursuing the wrong things. Don't know what their test equipment is telling them but they're missing something. Bad gas? Bad oxygen sensor? Who knows. They'll have to keep looking for it, maybe calling in Honda's expertise if they haven't already. Alternatively you could also consider going to another dealership.

 

The car is from 2019 and thus , though very low miles, three years old. The state of MA lemon law is only for first year.

"The defect(s) must be discovered and subject to a reasonable number of repairs during the "term of protection" of 1 year or 15,000 miles of use from the date of the original delivery, whichever comes first...."

 

When I asked why a 2nd new pair of fuel injectors, They said they had been shipped bad fuel injectors before, and implied these were another bad set...but I don't trust that to be true and besides, it still wasn't fixed-so what does that say? They plugged in to diagnostic and claimed reading was reason for first replacement and first repair.

If there couldn't be a carbon build up at 11,500 miles as suggested..
...then I am perhaps more lost than before in understanding problem and the real fix .


I cannot be only one to come in with same problem, Haven't thy learned what the real fix is by now from EXPERIENCE?

 

am driving a '15 LX with almost 70,000 miles on it, although I wonder if the previous owner had all problems fixed in the first year and traded it in with 40,000 miles on it. The car has been problem free for us, and I drive it on the hard side.......always looking for the "christmas tree" display of warning lights, but all has been well....I wish you luck/success

 

Totally agree.
Most who are considering a Fit are only looking at a small, economical newer car (less perceived issues with newer).
As a result, I've recommended to others looking at them to simply move onto other comparable offerings from Toyota (Yaris).

 

If God forbid something happens to my GK5, I'd probably buy another. It's been perfect. I have 60k miles.

 

Got car back today Seems to be running better so far...

they wrote cause of problem was EXCESSIVE CARBON BUILD-UP'..and .DAMAGE INTERNAL to HEAD ASSEMBLY....'
..after only 11,500 miles!

they replaced:
* CYLINDER HEAD
* S/plugs
* 1 coil assembly
* Gasket kit -Cylinder Head
* General CYL. Head...?(relates to 1st item?)
* oil change
* Filter
* washer , drain
* a Bolt !
* Coolant
* Hondabond HT ..??

Lets see how long and how many miles I'll get before the 'tree of lights' light my dashboard..
They've not told me that 'this won't happen any more.."
I'm afraid injector /fuel delivery will gum it all up at some point in my mileage. but jeez... at 11,500 miles to start !!!

 

So excess carbon at 11K resulted in two sets of new injectors, a new cylinder head, and a bunch of parts.

Glad you got your vehicle back and it's running OK. But unfortunately, if the injector / rail design is really that bad, just replacing parts won't solve the problem.

In the meantime and if possible, you might want to run Top Tier gas only as a preventative.

The thinking is that if the Fit engine is extremely sensitive to carbon buildup, the detergents in Top Tier do a better job of clearing out the backs of the valves, and thereby prolong the life of the engine. Pure speculation, but a relatively easy thing to do if you have easy access to a Top Tier station.

 

On a direct injection only engine, how's top tier fuel going to prevent this from causing valve carbon?
IMHO, since the only thing touching the backs of the intake valves is oil vapors, I'd recommend shortening your OCI.
This should prevent any additional oil vapors from starting and accumulating on the valves. This is also the practice I'm following with my Fit currently.

 

I'm having trouble believing this from the point of view that if this was a common problem with the Fit then right now there would be tens of thousands of Fit at the dealerships being worked on with the same problems. But in fact your post seems to be pretty much unique - the problem which you ran into seem to be totally unique to your car. With 5 years of Fits on the road I don't recall seeing any other posts describing comparable problems. Yes, some people here and there have had fuel injector problems - usually at a much higher mileage - but not the kind of carbon problems your dealership apparently found. For everyone else the injectors get replaced (once!) and they're on their way with no further problems. Yours was a horror show of related problems which I don't understand.

 

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-...h-extra-price/

Quote from the above site:

For its test, the lab operated an engine continuously for 100 hours on a cycle to represent 4,000 real-miles of use. The engine was then disassembled, photographed, and its key components weighed and measured to determine the thickness of carbon deposits. Six fuels were used, randomly selected and split among three basic gasoline sources and three Top Tier.

The results showed that on average, Top Tier gasoline had 19 times fewer carbon deposits on injectors, intake valves, and in the combustion chamber when compared to regular gasoline.

 

Now THIS has caught my attention. After doing quite a bit of reading on this forum, it has bothered me that there doesn't seem to be any pattern to those who have the issues, and those who don't. It's been analyzed to death, but with no real solution. It seems to me that if the Fit engine is prone to issues UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES, then the key is finding out what those circumstances are, and avoiding them. The only other explanation that makes any sense is if something in the manufacturing process of these injectors causes a certain percentage of them to be "bad", thus causing premature failure. I'd like to think if that was the case, a simple manufacturing tweak would have been made. I think the Fit engine being prone to the issue in specific use cases makes more sense. Take the Civic 1.5 Turbo oil dilution issues. Clearly there is a design issue that causes fuel to blow by the piston rings. They all have this issue, but the problem really only shows it's head if the owner doesn't regularly get the engine up to operating temperature, and run it there for some time which causes the "leaked" fuel to burn off. As a result, the "certain circumstance" that causes the issue in those vehicles is frequent short trips.

I live in an area where due to the elevation 85 octane fuel is "regular" as opposed to 87 where I used to live. I can tell you my Elantra has quite the valve rattle running on 85, but my Odyssey could run it with no issue. Different cars, different quirks.

Maybe the Fit just can't handle "cheap" gas, where other cars have no problems.

 

The 1.5 turbo with direct injection has the oil diluting problem. Turbos force more air into the engine causing greater pressures. On a small displacement engine this causes advanced wear versus naturally aspirated engines. Direct fuel injection eliminates fuel cleaning of intake valves because injectors spray fuel directly into cylinders versus intake manifold. Some manufacturers have designed engines with duel injectors to address carbon build up issues. One way to help retard carbon build up is an oil catch can. Very easy to dpi on a Fit. Quality fuel does make a difference as far as Mass Air flow is considered. Keep those throttle bodies clean.

 

Some gas stations have contaminated fuel, I had to change from those after one tankful, makes it run like the symptoms he described...

 

I read that this was a Honda recall, anybody seen something?

 

I wouldn’t say his issue is unique. We have a 2018 sport, purchased new in 2019 that had the injectors replaced at 9,600 miles. In owning this car for 3.5 years there have been 3 distinct time that a misfire on cylinder #3 has occurred. The first time lead to an injector/fuel rail change. The second time (still showing a misfire on cylinder #3) the dealer kept claiming bad gas which I considered nothing but BS as we used one brand and mid grade fuel. Now the same issue has come back up with a misfire on cylinder #3 and now Honda has put out service bulletin 21-007 claiming that carbon build is the problem. We are scheduled for the “carbon cleaning” but in my mind this is just a bandaid. We have 34,000 miles on the car - there is obviously something that the engineers at Honda haven’t figured out yet (if ever), Dealer is now leaning toward replacing the injectors again if the carbon cleaning doesn’t fix the misfire issue. I’m not holding my breath on the “fix” and am concerned that it’s just a matter of time before it happens again.

One thing that I have noticed is that these misfires seem to appear after a long road trip. Every instance for us has been after a trip across the US (east coast to west coast), showing up a week or so after arrival.

 

You say you use one brand and one grade of gas, but when you are on road trips across the country is that really true, or did you have to jump around to whatever was available. Even with the same brand because of the large geographic region the gas may have been coming from different refineries with perhaps varying quality standards.

 

I've been lucky to not have any injector issues even with multiple cross country road trips.