Today I had a horrible experience with my HCHII and the snow. Today was the first day we had a heavy snow fall and that wreaked havoic on my car. As everybody knows the under body has a plastic splash shield that spans from the front to the rear of the car.

Well, the roads I was driving on were not plowed very. You know how the snow collects in the middle between where the wheels travel on the road. There were several occasions where the snow was high enough to catch the front part of the splash shield and it ripped the spash shield off. The middle peice came off first and the driver side front peice. I called mye dealer and asked them what to do. I wasn't too far and he said drive it in. It shouldn't damage the undercarrige if I keep driving. So, I did and they removed the peices. The center peice flew off from collecting snow. Then the driver front piece was catching snow, but still attached. They removed it. Then I asked what they were going to do and he said that it wasn't under warranty since it was damage done and not a flaw. Well, I told him it was a flaw in design. He said I would have to buy the parts and have them installed. The parts were about $300 for 4 or 5 peices. Then $50 for labor. I told him I wasn't very happy that I would have to pay for it and talked to the service manager. He wasn't much help either. He said he will call Honda and see if they will cover it. I then asked if my dealer could do a good will and cover it. He said he will see what Honda says. He says this happens all the time in the Insights and wasn't surpirsed it did the same for me.

I never liked the service department at my dealer and I only go there since it is close to my work. I then go to the Honda dealer downtown where I get all my service and warranty work done and he said he would cover it without any probelms. This isn't the first time it the dealer downtown has come through. Isn't it sad when a the service department at dealer where you didn't buy your car from treat you better than the one you did?

The service department I despise and purchased my car from is Muller Honda in Northbrook.

The service depart I like and recommend is Fletcher Jones Honda in Chicago.

Has this happened to anybody else? Also when I was driving on the highway at 50 mph it whole car was shaking. The dealer downtown said it was because the car underside was catching the wind. It will be fixed when the splash shield was attached.

 

OH boy- so that was what that thing hanging down from the middle of the car was. It ain't there any longer (although it looked more like a small trap door.

 

Well, if I'm ever in Chicago, I know where to (not) go! Suffice to say, it's definitely a warranty issue, because the order the panels are affixed, by design, should prevent that from happening. The furthest one back goes on first, followed by the center, and finally the engine. Rather like your roof shingles lay on top of each other to keep the rain from becoming trapped underneath, so too do our plastic carriage shields have that pattern.

 

maybe they didn't put them back on right after an oil change. i will have to look next time an oil change is done. it just peeved me with my dealer, but it was the cloesest one to me at the time. otherwise I would have gone to FJH.

 

Sorry to hear about this. I presume that the undertrays were installed in a reverse order instead of overlapping correctly from front to rear. There is a way to place the front undertray so the front lip will catch wind, air, snow, bugs, etc. and if this was the case then another section might have been overlapped this way and caused what you have. I have some photos of my car's underside if you want to see how it looked at 2 days old, but all of the photos have the frontmost plastic shield covering the next one back and so on to the rear bumper. Good luck though.

 

sure, are you able to post it on here or do you want to email them to me?

 

Pics are in the Share section. Be sure to read the notes on the photo as it tells you where I was standing (front or rear) as you might wonder why the Cat is after the muffler in one of them. =)

 

Thanks for loading them up. I will take a look under my car when they install the new one and make sure everything is up to par.

 

exbauer - yeah we had some bad snow here. I'd b disapointed too if they dont fix that. you can try shaumburg honda or castle honda. but it does seem like something that you would want to fix

 

FJH is fixing it under warranty...like it should be. The service guy at Muller said it doesn't serve any purpose but wind resistance. The service manager said no, it protects the electrical wires underneath. I took a look and there were orange wires underneath. They were the hybrid electrical wires. Since it is called the spash shield I wonder if any damage was done to the wires with the wet snow.