[CRasco]

So I ended up trading our vehicle in this morning. With 67,000 miles on a 2016, I don't have a lot of powertrain warranty left nor patience to constantly be worrying about the safety of my family in the vehicle. We drove home in a 2019 Buick Enclave Avenir. I'll miss the pilot, but it's off my list until this issue is fully under control.

 

[Stride]

I have been following this thread for a very long time. Every time someone adds a story, I hope a final resolution has been found. There was a time I concluded this was simply a battery problem but I have read here it appears a battery replacement is not the solution but only a temporary fix. I see what a lot of owners here that have experienced the problem are doing is hoping that with more reports sent to the NHTSA, that Honda will be compelled to acknowledge this is an issue that needs to be investigated and resolved. This has made me do my own extensive research and I wish all I have is good news. In 2018, AHC sold almost 160,000 units of the Pilot! That was record-breaking and the most they have sold since launching the Pilot! The last time they came close to that figure was in 2006 when they sold 152,154 units. So the truth is, more Americans are buying the Pilot and there are definitely a lot of happy owners out there. When I checked the NHTSA list of 352 complaints filed for the 3rd generation that started in the 2016 model year, the most number of complaints are related to the electrical system - 142 in all! The next that comes close is 'Unknown or other' at 84.

There are so many questions that popped up in my mind. If there are these many complaints lodged into NHTSA why hasn't there been an official concerted effort from Honda to fix this? They have not even officially acknowledged this is an issue. When I look at other siblings of the Pilot, the oil-dilution problem in the CR-V comes to mind. But as I write this, the CR-V is the best selling CUV according to some postings I have come across and the CR-V Hybrid is coming for 2020. Whatever the case, the CR-V is still selling so very well!. Kyle Plush died when he was trapped in his Honda Odyssey minivan after the 3rd-row seat unlatched and flipped over him. NHTSA has received almost 180 Honda Odyssey seating complaints over the years but what is alarming is despite Kyle's tragic ending, none of the complaints have elicited a federal recall or further investigation (you can read the story here: (https://www.cincinnati.com/story/mo...nda-odyssey-owners-warned-feds-seat-dangers-before-kyle-plush-death/2115462002/ ). It wasn't only Kyle that faced injuries from the seat, another lady sustained a broken arm when the 3rd row slammed down on her right arm. The article I shared also has her story and says it appears the NHTSA appears to have taken no action.

I wanted to get an idea what Honda does with all these reports to the NHTSA and came across this statement from one of their spokespersons, Chris Martin. Here’s what he said: "It's possible to find complaints regarding nearly any vehicle in our historical lineup, especially with any part of the car that can be adjusted or moved by vehicle owners, like seats, doors," Honda spokesman Chris Martin said. "We do not individually investigate every complaint sent through NHTSA's early warning database or reported directly to us. Both Honda and NHTSA look for patterns in order to determine if there is a concern that merits further investigation... Neither NHTSA or Honda have seen such a pattern." Will Honda see a pattern with all the reports associated with this? For us owners, the pattern is too obvious. I have not experienced what a number of owners are reporting here but I really hope a real fix is provided. I would hate to trade my Pilot.

 

[Jastilley]

So I ended up trading our vehicle in this morning. With 67,000 miles on a 2016, I don't have a lot of powertrain warranty left nor patience to constantly be worrying about the safety of my family in the vehicle. We drove home in a 2019 Buick Enclave Avenir. I'll miss the pilot, but it's off my list until this issue is fully under control.

Sadly, I’m considering trading mine in as well. I don’t think Honda has a solution and as the next poster pointed out, they don’t seem to be prioritizing this. Are there problems with the Idle Stop and shutting off on all years of the third generation pilot? I think I’ve only seen 2016 and 2017 model years mentioned. Just curious if others with 2018 and 2019 Touring and Elite models have experienced this issue as well. I haven’t looked back through all these posts in awhile so I may have overlooked comments on those years.

 

[Jastilley]

Well, I ended up trading the 2017 Touring for a 2020 EX-L. The EX-L has less bells and whistles than the Touring, but at least I won't have to worry about an Idle Stop feature malfunctioning and leaving me sitting in a stalled car on the highway.

 

[AussieSteveGuy]

success this summer after opening a case with ahm. We’d already had our battery and start button replaced. Because we’d opened a case with AHM, escalated to AHM execs, and involved the dealer service manager, dealer worked with AHM tech line and received new ‘heavy duty’ wiring harness and starter. Problem solved.

 

[Stride]

success this summer after opening a case with ahm. We’d already had our battery and start button replaced. Because we’d opened a case with AHM, escalated to AHM execs, and involved the dealer service manager, dealer worked with AHM tech line and received new ‘heavy duty’ wiring harness and starter. Problem solved.

This is the best news on this thread! Thank you so much for returning to share this update. At least, there’s a solution out there. What do you mean though by “heavy duty” wiring harness? Is this originally missing on the vehicle and the culprit?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[CRasco]

success this summer after opening a case with ahm. We’d already had our battery and start button replaced. Because we’d opened a case with AHM, escalated to AHM execs, and involved the dealer service manager, dealer worked with AHM tech line and received new ‘heavy duty’ wiring harness and starter. Problem solved.

How long ago was this? So far lots of "fixes" have been temporary in nature.

 

[Mammalakn]

Hi

We have a 2017 Pilot Elite, just hit 34K today. We developed the issue described here about 6 months ago. It started with the car being sluggish and the radio not coming back on, or freezing after stop and start. It progressed to the car stalling and shifting in to P at a stop sign.

The dealership said the battery was bad, and replaced it under warranty. This was about 6 weeks and less than 500 miles ago (this is our family vehicle, not driven daily). This afternoon, in peak traffic while exiting the interstate (and driving over 200 miles, so the battery should be full), the issue came back. Thankfully the car did not stall but took several seconds to come back from stop and start.

It is extremely upsetting, not to mention dangerous. With stop and start disabled, and on the interstate this car is an absolute dream. However, on principal, one should not have to dissable a feature for your car to work properly.

 

[Jastilley]

Hi

I signed up for an account to follow this post.

We have a 2017 Pilot Elite, just hit 34K today. We developed the issue described here about 6 months ago. It started with the car being sluggish and the radio not coming back on, or freezing after stop and start. It progressed to the car stalling and shifting in to P at a stop sign.

The dealership said the battery was bad, and replaced it under warranty. This was about 6 weeks and less than 500 miles ago (this is our family vehicle, not driven daily). This afternoon, in peak traffic while exiting the interstate (and driving over 200 miles, so the battery should be full), the issue came back. Thankfully the car did not stall but took several seconds to come back from stop and start.

It is extremely upsetting, not to mention dangerous. With stop and start disabled, and on the interstate this car is an absolute dream. However, on principal, one should not have to dissable a feature for your car to work properly.

Can anyone please link me to the page where I can file a complaint?

Thanks!

You are absolutely correct; it is definitely a safety issue. I filed a complaint and also traded in my touring for an EXL. Hopefully if more complaints are filed, the company will take action. This is a link to file a complaint: https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/VehicleComplaint/.

 

[Sleepwalker65]

Turn off the ECO switch. I have a new 2018 Touring model and find that the ECO mode causes the engine to struggle after resuming from idle stop.

 

[cabntman]

The engine ideal light comes on and says it is not available what is up. My wife had it stop and not restart for about 5 min what gives.

 

[Sporadic]

We have been having this issue (along with multiple infotainment issues that they finally acknowledged as a known issue but also with no fix) since before our warranty expired, but up until now, they refused to even look at it. I was simply told it’s a known issue with no fix. This is a dangerous issue to just brush off like that.
Well they finally looked at it after I involved Honda corporate. Brought it in for them to look at both issues. They tried to blame the infotainment issue on my phone, the cords, etc. and they simply said there was no fix for the idle stop stalling and the battery tested good. After speaking to the case manager with corporate, I was informed that they couldn’t replicate the auto idle stop stalling and the case manager was the one to admit the infotainment issue is a known issue which they hoped would be fixed by a future software update although none of the software updates up until now have addressed this. I told him if they simply told me they couldn’t replicate it, I could have driven them around and replicated it within 10-15 minutes. So we set up for me to drive the shop foreman around, and I replicated it within 10 minutes. I left the car with them to further investigate the issue and connect with Honda tech line. Well I just got a call back, and they say Honda is recommending replacing the battery and starter. Honda will cover part of the starter cost, so they want us to pay almost $900 for this issue that was brought up prior to the warranty expiring. However, I have seen a few reports in this thread alone stating that the issue persists after replacing the starter and the battery. I filed a report with NHTSA back in April but have not heard anything from them since. I don’t know what to do. This is not safe, but we can’t afford this suggested repair which apparently doesn’t fix it nor can we afford not to have a car.

 

[kmc27]

Unfortunately, I'm back to report that we have begun recently experiencing the auto idle stop stall again. I've posted a lot on this forum after we had the problem in 2017/18. We replaced the battery in August 2018 and that solved the problem until now. We made it over 1 year. But it's happened again a few times now. Started happening where the radio or DVD player would cut out but has progressed to full on stalling after entering auto idle stop. So there seems to be something where the new battery was strong enough to overcome the problem but after one year of use the battery is apparently not strong enough to restart the car sometimes. Made an appointment to bring into Honda service. I sent a follow up to NHTSA to let them know the problem has reoccurred. Had opened a case with American Honda last year and will have to call them back.

 

[Wendy L]

Same issue(s) here: 2017 Pilot Elite. Joined to follow this thread. I have brought it in 2 times before, but 3rd issue below just started happening and is really bad:

1. Pop of radio/electronics, beeping due to random error, error flashing briefly, car recovers
a. This will be Honda Ron Tonkin’s 3rd time looking at this
i. Previously reset some error code which did nothing
b. When: taking foot off break while in autostop.
i. Doesn’t seem to matter how long in autostop
ii. Not seeing any pattern of when this occurs
c. Types of errors – unrelated to what is actually happening
i. Break/collision
ii. Transmission
iii. Perhaps others
d. Frequency: Has been happening on and off in 2017
i. Can sometimes go a week without happening
ii. Can sometimes be in stop and go traffic and it happens along with #2
e. Priority: This is very annoying and slightly delays the car restarting, so could result in accident
f. Video of this available


2. Pop of radio/electronics, car doesn’t necessarily error but beeps, is suddenly in “Park” or “Neutral”
a. This will be Honda Ron Tonkin’s 3rd time looking at this
i. Previously reset some error code which did nothing
b. When: taking foot off break while in autostop.
i. Doesn’t seem to matter how long in autostop
ii. Not seeing any pattern of when this occurs
c. Problem situation: you are driving and on the freeway in stop and go traffic or at a red traffic light that turns green. Suddenly you are unable to drive forward, you can’t get out of Park/Neutral, even while pressing break. (panic ensues). People start honking at you and you are lucky if they don’t hit you assuming you will be moving. You must press the break and the power button to restart the car while on the freeway!
d. Frequency: This was the first problem I started seeing, it happens maybe slightly less than the #1.
e. Priority: Critical, this is going to get us killed!
f. Video of this available, of trying to get car restarted at traffic light.


3. Huge/loud pop of radio, car doesn’t beep, is still in Drive, but is dead
a. This will be Honda Ron Tonkin’s 1st time looking at this
b. When: stopped but not sure that autostart is on… both times this horrible one happened, it was a very brief press on the breaks (11/5: on freeway; 11/6: at stop sign). Screens on dash popped loudly, and suddenly engine was dead.
c. Situation: This was not a full autostop issue, so there wasn’t any expectation that it was going to restart, rather it was still in drive and the engine was going. Suddenly I am rolling backwards as engine is dead. I am still in drive, so I have to press the break to stop rolling into the car at the stop behind me! Then I try to put it in park or press drive again, that doesn’t work. I have to completely reboot the car by pressing break and pressing power button, then press drive. This is incredibly scary on the freeway because this was not as slow moving traffic as when the other situations happen (i.e. you are just pausing, not stopping long enough for autostop to do it’s thing).
d. Repercussions: seems that after the huge “pop” one of the screens under steering wheel is not working properly. There is a blank screen instead of the “home” one which normally shows things like your cruise control following distance/set rate. Also the buttons for collision and lane departure turned off and I had to turn them on manually.
e. Frequency: first happened Tuesday this week driving home from work, car had been parked all day, this was about 35 min into my commute., I called and made yet another appointment to have it looked at. Then it happened the next morning, was chilly, this time happened within four minutes of starting up.
f. Priority: I am extremely lucky I didn’t have a fender bender either time. This should never happen, you should be able to trust that your engine is going to stay running. This will also get us in an accident.
g. Video: none, happened twice.

 

[kmc27]

success this summer after opening a case with ahm. We’d already had our battery and start button replaced. Because we’d opened a case with AHM, escalated to AHM execs, and involved the dealer service manager, dealer worked with AHM tech line and received new ‘heavy duty’ wiring harness and starter. Problem solved.

Problem still solved? Sent you a message, but posting here also. As I mentioned, we've had the same problem with our 2016 Pilot. Replaced the battery last summer and everything was working again fine until now. Can you share anything more specific about the "new heavy duty wiring harness and starter." Do you have the part name/number or anything else from your service records? Or a case number from AHM so I could have my dealer reach out to AHM to find out more about this solution or the name of your car dealer so I could have my shop contact them?

I got a call and email back from NHTSA. Here was the response "Unfortunately I will not be able tell you where we are or what is going on with our research. Regarding your new incident my Manager recommends you submit a new complaint (VOQ). This new VOQ will automatically merge with your existing complaint and will also help us to understand what is going on. I will also recommend you attach any report or finding from the dealership."

 

[kmc27]

Unfortunately, I'm back to report that we have begun recently experiencing the auto idle stop stall again. I've posted a lot on this forum after we had the problem in 2017/18. We replaced the battery in August 2018 and that solved the problem until now. We made it over 1 year. But it's happened again a few times now. Started happening where the radio or DVD player would cut out but has progressed to full on stalling after entering auto idle stop. So there seems to be something where the new battery was strong enough to overcome the problem but after one year of use the battery is apparently not strong enough to restart the car sometimes. Made an appointment to bring into Honda service. I sent a follow up to NHTSA to let them know the problem has reoccurred. Had opened a case with American Honda last year and will have to call them back.

An update after I brought the car into the dealership. As expected, they found nothing wrong with the car and battery tested fine. They were not able to replicate the situation. The next step would be to replace the starter and they quoted me $1660. Car is almost at 70,000 miles. But they warned that its only a 50/50 chance in their opinion that replacing the starter would actually solve the problem. They said replacing the starter has fixed the problem with some cars, but not others. Some cars have still experienced the problem even after replacing the starter. When I spoke to the manager this morning, he said some cars have failed to restart at all after entering into auto idle stop and replacing the starter might help with that. But he wasn't sure if it would help where the car does restart after putting car into park, pushing brake pedal, and pushing start button. Sounds like in his opinion replacing starter probably won't solve the issue long term in my situation. Still debating what to do. Will call AHM to update them but I'm sure they will just tell me to do whatever the dealers says.

Based on what I've read on this forum, seems like some have still had the problem after replacing the starter. Given what others have said and what the dealer told me that its 50/50, I'm doubtful that it will fix the problem.

May be at the point of just trading it in and seeing what I can get.

 

[kmc27]

An update after I brought the car into the dealership. As expected, they found nothing wrong with the car and battery tested fine. They were not able to replicate the situation. The next step would be to replace the starter and they quoted me $1660. Car is almost at 70,000 miles. But they warned that its only a 50/50 chance in their opinion that replacing the starter would actually solve the problem. They said replacing the starter has fixed the problem with some cars, but not others. Some cars have still experienced the problem even after replacing the starter. When I spoke to the manager this morning, he said some cars have failed to restart at all after entering into auto idle stop and replacing the starter might help with that. But he wasn't sure if it would help where the car does restart after putting car into park, pushing brake pedal, and pushing start button. Sounds like in his opinion replacing starter probably won't solve the issue long term in my situation. Still debating what to do. Will call AHM to update them but I'm sure they will just tell me to do whatever the dealers says.

Based on what I've read on this forum, seems like some have still had the problem after replacing the starter. Given what others have said and what the dealer told me that its 50/50, I'm doubtful that it will fix the problem.

May be at the point of just trading it in and seeing what I can get.

Another update. I called AHM and they agreed to my request to cover almost all of the cost of replacing the starter motor. They originally quoted me $1660 to replace it, but I will only have to pay $100 and they will cover the rest of it. Still questionable if that will actually solve the auto-idle stop stalling problem, but I agreed to do it for $100. Car is in the shop today.

 

[Felicia Sterling]

I have had software updates, alternator changes, button changed and new battery. none fully solve the issue. 2016 touring

 

[frazier]

Over the last couple of weeks I began experiencing the symptoms many have reported here:

• Car does not restart after 'idle stop' feature is activated
• Message quickly flashes on bottom part of instrument cluster (possibly: 'System Malfunction')
• Car cannot be restarted manually for several seconds
• Problem appears to be random

I searched the Internet to look for similar reports and, of course, this is a widely reported problem now. Question is, what do we do? It seems that the dealers do not have information about the root cause of this issue and they often replace the battery, starter, and the start button; sometimes with temporary success. Is it still the case that they don't know the cause? Surely Honda must recognize the safety implications of this failure; but it seems that insufficient resources have been allocated to researching the failure.

My 2016 Pilot now has 48K and I have a HondaCare warranty.

I would like to know:
Where should I report my experiences about this problem? Honda?, NTSB? Anyone have the best link to report this?
Anything I should do before taking it to a dealer to reduce the time to diagnose? Any TSBs that have been issued?
Should the HondaCare warranty cover the diagnosis and repair costs?

I don't mean to assign anyone 'homework' on my behalf, but I would appreciate any information that would help me, and the others in the affected group, get more attention from Honda on this. Obviously I'll have to sell the car if I can't get this fixed. My wife is very reluctant to drive the car with this problem, but she likes it otherwise.

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

 

[Bert5040]

I reported the issue to Honda Automobile Customer Service and they assigned it a case number. Sadly nothing further has happened from that end. For a while I simply disabled the idle stop by turning it off every time I started the car. That worked but is inconvenient. I looked into batteries since mine was getting old anyway (2016 Elite 46k miles), and replaced with an “Ultima yellow top” battery. It is a higher capacity battery so I thought it may help since the car has so much electrical stuff going on. It is a very heavy and very expensive battery. I’ve had it in for about a month now and so far so good.
Honestly I’m disappointed with Honda for not doing more about this. I wish I would have looked at the Highlander a little more. Good luck!