Honda Accord Problems

Did you change it yourself? Is the car performing as you would expect after the change? The first thing to do is to make sure the belt was correctly changed. If the belt change has been correctly done there is not reason it should affect the fuel consumption. Once you’ve established the belt is ok then start digging deeper into the normal things that would affect fuel consumption.

Two years is a long time for a car to be held in storage, but the car industry has been through a tough time with the market depressed until recent months and sales on a steep slide, and cars have sat unsold as a result. I wouldn't be too concerned that the car is two years old, or that it has been in storage, I'm sure the dealer would have serviced it before putting it on the road.

I'd take it to an independent Honda mechanic, one who specialises in the brand, and have him fix it. It sounds to me like the Honda dealer is giving you excuses in the hope you will go away.

There is something seriously wrong with the car for the transmission to fail three times in 175,000 km, that’s not normal. Could it have been crashed before you bought it? I would start by checking it to make sure the chassis is square and not out of alignment.

Your report is not the only one of rapid wear and warping of the rotors, but carmakers regard the wear as normal wear and tear. All brakes wear, so you have to determine if the wear on your car is indeed “normal” or something more. Certainly at 30,000 km you would appear to have a case.

It's not unusual today to see rear brakes wearing faster than the fronts. There's nothing wrong with the brakes as such. Our brake specialist Howard Reynolds of Race Brakes says it is quite common on some Japanese and European cars, and appears to be a result of manufacturers trying to extract as much braking power from the rear brakes as they can. It seems to be worse in low speed city driving and appears at about the kays your car has done.

That’s a long time to put up with issues like those you have experienced. It could be caused by outside interference, which makes it even harder to diagnose. Whenever it happens make careful note of when and where, and check around the location for other possible sources of interference. The most likely sources are mobile phone towers, alarms etc.

I'd take it to an independent Honda mechanic, one who specialises in the brand, and have him fix it. It sounds to me like the Honda dealer is giving you excuses in the hope you will go away.

Most engines are optimized to run on one fuel or another, and that's the fuel they run best on and deliver the best fuel economy, but they also have 'knock' sensors that detect pre-ignition and adjust the ignition timing to avoid it. That means that while they have been optimized to run on one fuel they can also run on another, lower quality one. Generally your car will run better on premium unleaded than they will on regular unleaded. But we were let in on a little secret and that is that the regular unleaded we are buying is no different to the premium on sale. It seems it's more economical for oil companies to produce one type of fuel instead of two. What they do is guarantee the minimum octane rating of the fuel they produce, in the case of regular unleaded that's 91 whereas premium is a minimum of 95, they don't talk about the maximum octane rating. In that case we are wasting our money buying premium when regular is the same fuel. That was last week, what they will do next week is anybody's guess. Why do we pay more for premium? Simple, clever marketing by the oil companies that has convinced us it's better.

We have had a few reports of issues with the paint on Hondas, but they’ve been complaints of fading and usually it’s on red coloured cars.