Experience brake problems yet?

[chillimouse]

I had my Pilot less than 2 weeks ago and is already in the dealer for brake failure inspection for 1 week already. With on the road for less than 350 km, I found one day that the brakes seem to be not responsive all of a sudden. The symptoms of my brakes is identical to what was described in the Pilot user guide under the section Taking Care of the Unexpected - Brake system indicator. When stepping on the brake pedal, I need to go way further than normal inorder for the car to slow down and then press even further down to bring it to a stop.

Until now, Honda dealer and Honda Canada can still not give us a satisfactory answer. Apparently I heard from the dealer that there was one Pilot there that had their Master Cylinder changed already.

If you are already driving a Pilot, beware of your brakes!

[SkyPilot]

No issues here yet, touch wood. 2000 Km logged so far. Will definitely watch for changes in braking.

Thanks for the warning, and Keep us posted!

[chillimouse]

Originally posted by gewf631
Just got back from a 3,000 mile trip (Chicago -> Florida -> Maryland -> Chicago), and experienced a similar problem with the brakes. One day, kind-of suddenly, the pedal seemed to travel further. Problem wasn't 100% at first, but the next day it got worse. Still had enough pedal to safely stop the vehicle, but just wasn't the same.

Thought it might be the heat (90 degrees), but took it in anyway. As expected, the dealer couldn't find anything, and fortunately, it was fine for the rest of the trip. Many years ago, had a car that acted the same way when it got too hot. Explained this to the dealer, but they refused to do anything.

Ed F

Oh, this seems to sound quite similar to my original problem. Pedal not only travels (almost to the floor), but also braking way different than it was normal - although eventually able to brake safely, but needs more time and way more longer distance to stop. Like your case, the next day when we bring it back to the dealer, everything was normal and nothing can be found! For our case, it's definitely not the heat as the weather in Vancouver is getting cooler and cooler.

I don't know if I am lucky or not, but when we took it back to the dealer, of course they found nothing. However, given that there was an incident with that particular dealer that they ended up changing the Master Cylinder of another Pilot, they recognized that the brake pedal is lower than normal. Although couldn't found out the cause of it, they refuses to let our Pilot go. They insist to keep it for further road tests, which we had left it with them for a few days already, but of course the reply we always got back is everything is normal, yet you cannot drive it away because we want to do more road test. We finally got so fed up with it that we deny them from touching our Pilot anymore. This time instead of getting swapping around from sales managers to service managers, we insisted to talk to the dealer's GM for a satisfactory answer.

When the GM got back to us, he offered a very satisfactory resolution to our ongoing saga - to order another new Pilot for us. It was a very good faith gesture he did, but came too late to offer us confidence in the car that I really love. To make it more interesting is that this upfront offer leads us to believe that there is really something (maybe some facts) with that Pilot that we're being denied of. Through two weeks of consideration and discussion, we ended up trade in the Pilot for 2003 MDX, which we're now waiting in line for it to come. The dealer is willing to offer us full price of the Pilot and of course, we have to scramble for enough financing for the price difference between the two. In the meantime, I am just driving a Civic (which has fantastic brakesd) until then.

I hope that it's just one 'lemon' that I've got, but given the nightmares that we've gone through those couple of weeks, until now still found nothing that leads to the failure in braking I encountered, I urged readers like you who are driving the Pilot to be cautious of your brakes. If you encounter any symptons like mine, take it back to the dealer and INSIST them to check thoroughly, insist on a satisfactory answer from them.

I will now be moving onto the acuramdx forum for checkout on issues. Good luck to all.

P.S. I owned my beloved Pilot for three weeks only - driven it only for 5 days for 350 kms before it's certified at the dealer!.