Recall for Honda City and Honda Jazz
Honda Malaysia Sdn Bhd today announced a recall affecting 21,956 units of the City (manufactured 2009) and 1,680 units of the Jazz (manufactured 2009 & 2010) to replace defective lost motion springs and retainers in used their 1.5-litre i-VTEC engines. Current selling Honda models are unaffected, and this includes our version of the Freed, which actually runs on the same engine.
Elsewhere in the world, this same recall is affecting 15,000 units of the Jazz (named Fit) in Canada, 57,853 units of the City in India. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Honda will be recalling nearly 700,000 units of the City, Jazz and Freed worldwide.
But what is the real problem here? Here goes, the lost motion spring is part of a bigger mechanism called the lost motion assembly. During engine operation, the lost motion spring gets compressed by the rocker arm on which the VTEC mechanism operates. The defective springs are found to potentially bend or break over time, resulting in irregular engine noise and even stalling. No accidents or injuries relating to this fault have been reported thus far.
“We sincerely apologize to our customers and deeply regret the inconvenience caused by this predicament. It is our priority to put our customers first. To address this issue, we will be writing to all the affected customers to send their vehicles to an authorized dealer as soon as they receive notification from us,” said Yoichiro Ueno, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Honda Malaysia.
Honda Malaysia is currently in the midst of preparing the replacement parts for the affected cars. The company will perform the necessary inspection and replacement work as soon as the parts are ready at no cost to customers.
