An engine bay open on the workshop floor, photographed close.

Honda repair and servicing in Sharjah

Honda builds engines that run a long time and then say very little when they stop being right. Three of the complaints we see most often — an oil level that rises instead of falling, a misfire that always names the same cylinders, and a shake at a steady cruise — look unremarkable to a scan tool. They are found on the dipstick, in the per-cylinder counters, and on the road.

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What actually comes in What this make asks of a workshop The work this usually turns into Questions we get asked about these

Why we see these

Honda here is usually a car somebody has kept. An Accord or a Civic bought new and still with the same family, a CR-V that has done a decade of school runs, a Pilot or an Odyssey that has carried the same seven people since it arrived. That gives a workshop two quite separate populations: older cars with the naturally aspirated V6 and a torque-converter automatic behind it, and newer ones with a small turbocharged four and a CVT. The two ask almost nothing in common of us. For the older group the skill is knowing which bank a misfire sits on and why it sits there. For the newer group it is reading the oil properly, because the fault that matters most on the turbo four announces itself as an oil level that has gone up.

What this make asks of a workshop

Reading the oil level and smelling it as a diagnostic step on any 1.5 turbo, not as a courtesy top-up on the way out. On this engine a level above the mark is a finding, and it changes what the service should be.
Misfire counters by cylinder number, and knowing which cylinders sit on the rear bank of a transverse V6. Whether a misfire is random or always lands on the same three cylinders is the entire difference between a coil and a cylinder-deactivation problem.
CVT fluid to Honda’s own specification and nothing else. A CVT does not take an ordinary automatic fluid, the wrong fluid produces precisely the judder people come in complaining about, and on a neglected gearbox a fluid change is a gamble rather than a repair.
A road test at the speeds the owner described. A lock-up shudder, a CVT judder and a collapsed engine mount all arrive as the car vibrates, and only one of the three can be reproduced standing still.
The electric parking brake put into its service position before a rear pad is touched and brought out of it properly afterwards. Winding a rear caliper back on that system without doing this is how the warning stays on after the job and how an actuator gets damaged.
Rear geometry measured on a Civic before a tyre is blamed for wearing on its inner edge, and the rear bushes levered first, because a worn bush will not hold an adjustment.

What actually comes in

Named at component level, with what the driver notices first and what we do to establish it is that and not something else that feels identical from the driving seat.

Fuel dilution of the engine oil — 1.5 VTEC Turbo (L15B) in Civic, CR-V and Accord

A smell of petrol from the dipstick or the filler cap, and an oil level that is higher than it was at the last service instead of lower. Sometimes an uneven idle with it, and often nothing else at all.

How we establish it

This one is found on the dipstick, which is why we pull it on every one of these cars regardless of what the customer came in for. Direct injection on a small turbo engine puts some fuel past the bore, and on short journeys the oil never gets hot enough for long enough to drive it back out, so the level climbs and the oil thins. We read the level cold and on level ground, smell it, and judge its body against the interval the car has actually covered. Live data fills in the rest: fuel trims, the temperature the coolant is actually settling at, and what kind of journeys the car does. Where the oil is diluted the answer begins with an oil change and an honest conversation about how the car is used, not with a part.

Variable Cylinder Management and the rear bank of the J-series V6 — misfire and oil use on the deactivated cylinders

A misfire warning that always names the same two or three cylinders, oil disappearing between services, a puff of smoke on a hard pull after a long cruise, and a vibration through the car at a steady motorway speed.

How we establish it

The first thing that matters is which cylinders the counter names. This system shuts cylinders down while the car cruises, and the cylinders it shuts down are the ones whose plugs foul and whose rings suffer, so a misfire that lands repeatedly on the same rear-bank cylinders points somewhere completely different from a misfire that moves around. We read per-cylinder misfire counts, take the plugs out of the named cylinders and read them, and run a compression and leak-down test on those cylinders specifically rather than on the whole engine. The vibration is treated as its own question, because these engines lean on their mounts every time cylinders drop in and out, and a tired mount turns a normal transition into a shake the driver feels.

CVT fluid condition and the start clutch — Civic and CR-V

A judder pulling away from a standstill or at walking pace in a car park, a slight slip as the revs rise without the car doing much with them, or a whine that follows engine speed rather than road speed.

How we establish it

A CVT complaint is decided on fluid and on live data before anything is opened. We read the fluid for colour, smell and level by the procedure the car specifies, and watch engine speed against the pulley ratio and road speed while the judder is happening, which is what separates a slipping start clutch from the belt and pulleys behind it. The fluid must be Honda’s own CVT specification: an ordinary automatic fluid in one of these causes the exact judder it tends to get poured in to cure. Where the gearbox is already worn we will tell you that a fluid change is a gamble and not a repair, and we will tell you that before you pay for it rather than after it fails to work.

Torque-converter lock-up and the fluid in the five-speed automatic behind the J-series V6

A stutter or a vibration at light throttle at a steady speed, a flare in the revs between two gears, or a gearbox that changes up late and heavily once it is thoroughly hot.

How we establish it

A stutter is felt through the seat and blamed on the engine, so the first job is proving which end of the car it lives in: we watch engine speed against turbine speed while it happens and see it clear the instant lock-up releases. After that it is a question of fluid and of history. These gearboxes want Honda’s own automatic fluid and a drain and fill done on their terms, and a car that has spent years towing or crawling at 45 degrees has aged its gearbox well beyond the number on the dash. If what it is doing is slipping rather than shuddering we will say that fluid is not going to fix it, because on this gearbox that distinction is the one that decides whether spending anything is sensible.

Air-conditioning compressor clutch, its air gap and the relay that feeds it

Cold air that stops and starts with a click from the engine bay, a squeal at the moment it engages, or no cold at all on a hot afternoon while the blower runs perfectly normally.

How we establish it

A clutch that has worn its gap slips first and then refuses to pull in once everything is hot, which is why this fault arrives in the afternoon and is nowhere to be found in the morning. We check the clutch is actually being commanded — voltage at the coil and the relay switching — before condemning a compressor, and we check the low-pressure switch and the charge, because the car deliberately refuses to engage the clutch when the refrigerant is low in order to protect the compressor. That order matters: a compressor replaced for a fault that was a relay or a low charge fails again in exactly the same way, and the second bill is not cheaper than the first.

Rear camber and toe on the Civic multi-link rear axle, and the inner-edge tyre wear that follows

A rear tyre worn away on its inner shoulder while the rest of the tread still looks almost new, a car that feels slightly nervous changing lanes, and a set of tyres that never lasts as long as it should.

How we establish it

Inner-edge wear at the back of these cars is a geometry question and not a tyre question, and the tyre usually gets replaced twice before anybody measures the axle. The rear toe and camber are checked against the figures for that model, and the rear arms and their bushes are levered under load first, because a worn bush will not hold an adjustment however carefully it is set. We will say plainly whether the axle can be brought back within specification with the adjustment the car actually has, or whether a part has to change before an alignment is worth paying for — and where that alignment is carried out, if it is not carried out here.

Electric parking brake actuators and the service position on the later CR-V

A parking brake warning that appeared right after a rear brake job, a brake that will not release, a grinding from one rear wheel, or a message about the brake system on start-up.

How we establish it

The rear calipers on these cars are driven by a motor on the caliper itself, so the pads cannot be changed by winding a piston back with a tool. The system has to be put into its service position first and brought out of it afterwards, and where that was not done the actuator or the caliper has usually been strained and the warning stays. On a car that arrives with the warning already set we read the fault out of the parking brake module, test each actuator for supply and for the current it draws while it runs, and check the caliper slides and the pads before assuming the motor is what failed. It is quite often the caliper that seized and the motor that was asked to fight it.

Cam phaser rattle on a cold start — K-series 2.4 four-cylinder

A short, hard rattle from the front of the engine for about a second when it is started cold in the morning, then nothing at all, and nothing when it is restarted warm later in the day.

How we establish it

This is a very particular noise and its particulars are the diagnosis: a second at most, only on the first start of the day, and coming from the cam end of the engine rather than low down in it. We start the car cold ourselves rather than working from a description, because the difference between this and a chain tensioner or something in the bottom end is exactly how long the noise lasts and where it is heard from. Oil pressure and oil condition go on at the same time and the camshaft timing values are read, so that a rattle which is really a tensioner does not get signed off as the harmless one.

A car on a two-post lift with its front end stripped.

Every one of these is found on a lift in this building, and priced before it is touched.

In your own words

Pick the line closest to what the car is doing. It carries into the booking form so you do not have to write it twice.

Not listed? Every complaint we have written down, across every job

The work this usually turns into

And everything else, on the same car

The list above is what this make usually arrives needing. This is the rest of what the workshop does, and it applies to your car as much as to any other — worth knowing while it is already here.

Servicing and repair

Body, paint and protection

Detailing and protection

Getting the car to us

Pick up and drop off

Questions we get asked about these

The oil level on my 1.5 turbo has gone up. Is that even possible?

Yes, and it is the fault worth knowing about on this engine. Some fuel gets past the piston into the sump, and on short journeys the oil never runs hot enough for long enough to boil it back out, so the level rises and the oil loses its body. You notice a petrol smell on the dipstick before you notice anything else. It is well documented and it does not mean the engine is damaged, but oil that has been thinned protects less, so it wants an oil change rather than an argument. Two honest notes: there is published service information on this in several markets, and whether anything applies to your car is a VIN question only a franchised dealer can answer, so we will not tell you that you are covered. And we would look at how the car is used, because the cure is partly in the driving.

My V6 is using oil and misfiring on the same cylinders. Do I need an engine?

Not on the strength of that description. The pattern you are describing — the same rear-bank cylinders every time, oil use, a little smoke after a long cruise — is the signature of cylinder deactivation wearing the cylinders it switches off, and the first step is to confirm it with a compression and leak-down test on those specific cylinders rather than on the engine as a whole. That tells you whether the rings are the problem, and whether it is one cylinder or three. On the devices sold to keep all six cylinders running: we will explain what one does and what it does not, and we will not fit anything that masks a fault we have not established first.

Can I use an ordinary automatic fluid in the CVT?

No, and this is one of the few places where the answer really is that blunt. A CVT drives through a steel belt squeezed between pulleys, and the fluid has to give that belt a specific grip while still lubricating everything else. An ordinary automatic fluid is formulated for clutches and a torque converter, gets the friction wrong, and produces the juddering and slipping that people then bring the car in to have fixed. Use the CVT fluid the car specifies. If somebody has already put the wrong fluid in, tell us how long ago and how far it has been driven, because that changes what we would recommend doing about it.

My Civic eats rear tyres on the inner edge. Is it the tyres or the car?

It is the car, almost always, and specifically the rear geometry. That rear axle can sit with more negative camber and more toe than it should, especially if it has taken a kerb or a deep pothole, and the tyre then runs on its inner shoulder while the rest of the tread looks fine. Replacing the tyre without touching the axle buys you the same wear again. We lever the rear arms and bushes first, because a worn bush will not hold any setting, then check the rear angles against the figures for your model and tell you whether the adjustment the car has is enough or whether a part has to change first.

Can the rear pads on my CR-V be changed without the electronic system?

No, and this is where rear pads get done cheaply and the car comes back with a warning light. The rear caliper piston on that system is moved by a motor rather than by hydraulic pressure alone, so it cannot be wound back with a tool the way an older caliper can. The parking brake has to be put into its service position first, the pads changed, and then the system brought back out and the actuators allowed to find their position again. Skipping that strains the actuator, and what should have been a pad change becomes a caliper. Ask whoever quotes you a rear brake job on one of these how they intend to retract the piston. The answer tells you a lot.

Bring it in and we will find out

Nothing happens to the car until the fault has a name and you have approved the work against it.

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