At some point, with some safeguards in place, I think these updates will be put in the hands of the owners.

 

I took my '06 in for this update. My dealer says with it being at 38 months and 43K miles, its not covered under the warranty. I have an extended warranty and its not covered under that either apparently. I asked for the goodwill coverage and Honda USA rep says they'll cover half. So it's gonna cost me $53.50 to get the TSB 09-058 update installed.

Did anyone out of the regular warranty get this done for free or did anyone get it covered under the extended warranty?

It pisses me off because it's going to take them all of 5 minutes to do this and it's a documented flaw after all!

Thanks,
-dan

 

I have 53K on my HCHII and Honda picked the whole thing up. It only took an hour.

I would push back on this. Even the TSB says that Honda will pick it up, besides, it is covered under the emissions warranty.

 

It probably has a lot to do with how you ask for it. If you go in and say: "I want you to upgrade my car with this software" they are probably going to charge you. If you go in saying that you are experiencing problems with your IMA battery, and you describe a similar situation to what the TSB addresses, they should pick it up for you--especially since it's a hybrid component and it is covered by the 80k warranty.

 

This is exactly what I did. I came in and described my complaint exactly word for word as the TSB symptoms paragraph was written, and then suggested that I had heard that this TSB might solve it.

The service writer said no problem, it was covered under the emissions warranty, and 45 minutes later, I had the new software in the car.

 

I hate having to deal with the service people at these places.

I went in awhile back to get my oil changed and had them look at this, I told him I drove in the city almost exclusively and with the AC on and driving around town the battery would slowly discharge and once the level reached 2-3 bars when I took off from a stop it had very little power.

They came back and told me that they drove it down the freeway for several miles and couldn't duplicate the problem, well of course not, the problem doesn't exist on the freeway. But he assured me they would go ahead and do the update.

Well after the description of the update I have read here, and the fact my car still does the same thing it did, I know he lied. Big surprise there.

Anyway I have grown to hate dealers. because every one I have ever dealt with was like this. Actually somehow my car seems worse, to the tune of about -5 mpg on the highway, I'm still not sure if I want to go through the reason they couldn't duplicate it with them in an attempt to get them to do the tsb or not, it's such a pain, it's sad but I am hating this car more and more.

 

I just told my dealer that there was a software update tsb available for my car and he asked if I was sure it was in the right VIN range and I said yes. He wrote "check for available updates" and then the service person wrote back "installed all updates". They even washed the car this time. The car was definitely updated as it drives differently.

dantheman- if you are in CA, it's covered under your CA emissions warranty. Tell them this and if they don't do it for free, take your business elsewhere.

Cyrion- I also hate going to the dealerships. I don't get my oil changed there (they supposedly sometimes update your car during oil changes). Take it to another dealer and see if they can check for updates. Maybe even tell them your whole story.

 

Hey Everybody,

It's been awhile. Good to see some old-timers and a lot of new posters as well. This site was getting a little stale and my HCHII a little boring, so I haven't had anything to post about.

To get on topic, am I the only one who just drives my car, get's mid-40s, and changes the oil, and that's it?

I did get the Rear-Control arm done, but I failed to see much difference and am just not into to hunting around for stuff to do for my car anymore.

It's boring, cheap, and bulletproof. What else could I ask for?

Cheers, nf

 

Does anyone know if HondaCare warranties cover TSBs? I've got HondaCare and 45K on my HCH II.

 

As I found out, it depends. I have a Honda extended warranty but I was told it didn't help with this TSB. Many of the readers here got the TSB work done for free, even without an extended warranty and outside of the bumper-to-bumper 3/36 warranty.

Honda has these TSB's setup to be fool proof with the dealers, I watched the service rep check my extended warranty for coverage. The TSB's include one or more repair codes which the rep types into Honda's warranty checker application. It spits out whether the repair is covered under extended warranty.

Not being satisfied with a simple "no" from them, I had them explain why it wasn't covered. In this case, and this is certainly up for debate, "software updates" are not covered under the extended warranty. Only mechanical failures (and not all of those either) are covered.

As other readers have said, your chances will depend on which dealer and how you ask them. I suggest you explain the problem you are having as it is described in the TSB - BUT DON'T MENTION THE TSB. And see what they figure out.

Good luck.

-dan