Sorry to hear about all the $$$ ( I think you wrongly) had to pay, good thing your s' in running well now, and I wish you the best!

 

Wow!! If I was you in this story I would have a huge ulcer by now. Sounds like you remained level headed through the whole thing. Same kind of thing happened to me on my MR2 Turbo, but I just ended up selling it to a guy who had a Japanese engine to put in it and I lost half of what it would have cost me to rebuild the engine.

Is there no way to buy these engines on the market for less than the cost of rebuilding the original engine? I would think with all the stories of junked S's that people would be selling off the engines for a couple K dollars...no?

James

 

Did you have any type of warranty on the vehicle? Just wondering if this is another case of Honda denying a claim.

 

I don't think that HondaCare is available past 75,000 miles.

 

...or is it 7 years and 100,000 miles? I forget now. Don't flame me if the above post is incorrect.

 

Honestly, I'm very surprised the dealer covered any of the cost. Seems like you have a dealer who really wants to keep you as a long-term customer. Somewhat rare, in my experience.

 

In answer to your questions:

There are used engines, but typically they don't have warranties. Even if they did, my hunch is most S2000 engines live hard lives, so if I can afford it, I'd just as soon have a new one.

The car was not under an extended warranty, so this is not a case of Honda disallowing a claim. According to the dealer, Honda originally wanted to pay 25% of the cost of the bottom end as "good will", but did not agree with the dealer that the top end might have had heat damage. In the end, the dealer and I agreed to do both top and bottom end and split the cost. But it seemed to me that Honda was still paying the dealer's half. So I wonder if dealers have a pool of Honda good will dollars that they can choose to expend as they want?

In fact, not a month or so earlier, the same dealer had convinced Honda to replace - at no cost to me - the convertible top, which had several holes from folding wear.

To the two folks who said Honda, or the dealer, should have picked up the whole tab: likely I could have forced that issue and won. The dealership Service Director essentially called me and said, "What do you want to do?" My bet is I could have hardballed him and gotten 100% coverage.

Why didn't I? Two reasons. First, I've found it's rarely good to take 100% advantage of someone; in the end, it's almost always better to leave some goodwill on the table. That alone might have gotten me to pay 25%. Second, I'm fairly certain the problems with the crankshaft did not start with (though they may have been made worse by) the loose oil filter event. Likewise, I could have forced them to investigate the oil consumption problem, and I could have declined to drive the car back from San Antonio. Although I did take their advice strongly into consideration, in the end those were my decisions and I knew I was running at least some risk.

As to whether the dealer wants to keep my business, or just make sure I wouldn't flame them, I'm not sure. As you can tell, I'm not the type to flame, so you may be right about keeping my business. I am dismayed that the dealer had so many contributing factors to this problem, but I can't complain about the degree to which they ultimately stepped up to fixing the situation.

At any rate, the engine seems great, and I have great hopes for a long run of trouble free motoring! I still haven't decided whether I'm going to keep using this dealer...

Thanks,

Paul

 

pdippell -- a major thumbs-up for your excellent attitude.

 

I agree.

It seems like the board is lacking in that department for quite some time now. Really sad.