We’ve owned our 2017 Fit since new and have logged 60,800 so far. My wife primarily uses it to commute to work. We live in the rural Sierra Nevada foothills in N. Ca and she has a 50ish mile round trip everyday. 2 stop signs on our side and two traffic lights on the work side—other than that, just rolling hills at 60 mph.

We’ve been satisfied with the ~37 mpg for a cheapy commuter like this. It’s a base model 6 speed manual that we got for $14k out the door on a promotion.

Two days ago she got in the car in the morning and started it to warm up—usually 5+ minutes to thaw out in the winter. When she got back in the dash was lit up like a Christmas tree. Electronic steering light, stability control light, tpms light and check engine light all came on. So we parked it and she drove one of our trucks to work instead. Yesterday I got home early and pulled the codes. P0302. So I figured I’d swap #2 coil into with #3 and #2 plug with #1. Then I got the idea to pull the intake manifold and to my surprise, the valves looked pretty funky. I know GDI engines can have this issue, but hadn’t heard much on Honda Earth Dreams engines.

Before purchasing the items to do a walnut shell blast, I decided to give the CRC GDI Service kit a go. It seams to have smoothed out the idle and the CEL has not returned. Still not sure about the electronic steering and traction control; although I’ve read the electronic steering computers in Hondas and Acuras have been known to fail. I checked all the fuses and fuseable links related to these systems as well as verifying battery condition. In the process of checking the electronic components, I disconnected the battery and thoroughly cleaned the terminals and leads. Fingers crossed the computers just glitched and needed to have the battery disconnected for a period of time much like a smart phone or PC.

After everything was put back together and the valve cleaning complete I topped up the tank with some PEA injector cleaner and went for a drive. So far, so good. A little over a hundred mile cruise with no new CELs and a computer calculated 45.8mpg (these computers are very optimistic, lol). So I figure it’s probably close to 40mpg actual.


I’ve been a Honda fan for a while, but this one has been scaring me with the 4th CEL in 60k. I still own my 2006 Element EX-P 5MT that I’ll keep forever. It only gets about a 1,000 miles a year. GDI engines can be problematic I guess. Even when you perform every scheduled service well ahead of time, only use the best oils and fuels and drive it like you want it to last forever. Hoping that if I keep doing the CRC cleaner every 10k or so and possibly run a catch can, it’ll prolong its life. Then again, we’ve been thinking about trading it in on a new Toyota Corolla iM.

 

So far, no lights. 300 miles since “service”. Changing the oil in the morning.

A tidbit of knowledge I read, which makes total sense and may be well know amongst y’all here:

We have a couple long descents leaving our property. Two exceed a few miles in length. During that time, the Fit is in gear but pulling a super deep vacuum. Staying in third or fourth keeps the revs between 2-3k, but not using any throttle probably gets the engine well below 20kpa or 24”+ of vacuum. That is probably somewhat of a contributing factor to oil vapor being sucked into the intake tract at a higher than normal rate.

I’m looking into a catch can setup and combing through the threads on here. I’ll also be switching to Red Line Performance 0w20 as it scores the highest on the Noack oil volatility tests. Also doing the same for my 2019 Silverado, as it’s direct injected as well. However, on that guy I’ll be running Pennzoil Ultra Platinum 0w-20, as it is DexOS certified and was second to the Red Line on the oil volatility tests. Don’t want to give ‘the general’ any reasons to void my warranty.

 

Same problem again. Key on, TPMS light is flashing with the check engine, light traction control and steering light all solid. After a minute, tpms stays solid with the other three lights. Car seems to drive okay, tire pressures are all near 37psi. I met my wife at her work to swap cars for the drive home.