The Honda Accords sold in Australia between 2010 and 2017 were either the Accord Euro, up until 2015 (which are an amazing vehicle) or the Accord, nick named the Wide Body Accord because its exactly that. It is the barge arse of the Honda line up and hardly fits through a McDonald’s drive trough.
The wide body came with two engine options. the 2.4 litre engine that is fitted to most of the Honda range and is near perfect or, more commonly it came with an extremely high-powered V6 engine which will blow most turbo charged Japanese imports of the 1990s out of the water. Unfortunately this is probably the only Honda we would ever advise you to avoid.
The V6 came out with what Honda called Variable Cylinder Management. This is just a fancy way of saying it saves fuel by disabling one bank of cylinders under certain driving conditions, this effectively made a fuel thirty six cylinder into a very economical 3 cylinder engine whilst idling or cruising along.
Whilst it was a great idea and further developments will see this become a feature in a lot of cars the Accord was the test subject for this. And some flaws in the development meant this disabling of the cylinders was doing internal damage resulting in many of these motors needing new piston rings and thus a complete engine rebuild.
This is not a problem whilst the vehicle is covered under warranty as many dealers were fixing this whenever a car presented with a misfire, however not that warranty is running out on these cars, the dealers are being about as helpful as Malcolm Turnbull telling young home owners to “get a decent paying Job”. Effectively if you land yourself with one of these cars that is out of warranty or about to be you are potentially buying a car that may fund your mechanics first home purchase.
Symptoms of this will be misfire caused by an oiled spark plugs. Many technicians are just replacing the spark plugs and this is fixing the issue for a short time but the fault will return.
This fault only effects vehicles with a certain VIN range.
What if its too late?
We have covered this in an additional blog which you can read about here.
Please note that the 2.4 Litre in this car is near perfect. It is only the 3.5 V6 that we advise avoiding. Additionally Accords after 2015 are not effected by this fault as Honda introduced earth dreams engine which does not have this issue.
If you are looking to buy this car, don’t. Buy an Accord Euro, you will never regret it.
Menu
