This Honda Pilot which I purchased new in January 2003 was my third Honda vehicle in twenty years. Other cars that I owned in the past included Volvo, BMW, Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen. The best service I had from all the vehicles that owned was from the Honda's and it gave me a sense of comfort when I bought the Pilot. This SUV performed very well over the past 12 years.

My wife and I are both gentle drivers borne out by the fact that we got 160,000 kilometers (100k miles) from the first set of brake pads. At the time of replacement the rotors were still in perfect condition and did not need any machining. The car is still running on the original Good Year Integrity summer tires, which have done close to 90,000 kilometers. One cannot get this kind of mileage when you are a hard driver. I was planning to drive the Pilot for 20 years!

A year after I bought the Pilot we received a recall notice for a potential transmission problem. I took it to the dealership that did the necessary work. There were subsequent recalls including one for the ignition switch that we did not receive, due to the fact that we relocated to another city and the notification never reached us. The ignition switch/lock failed and the SOB’s at the local dealership did not bother to inform me of the recall and happily charged me $500+ for the new switch/lock. Well that is water under the bridge now as I only learned of the recall pretty recently.

Recently the transmission started acting up by becoming jerky and at times it would not engage third gear. The engine rpm’s would also increase a bit between changes. I took it to the local dealer who withheld the recall information on the ignition switch/lock and they suggested we do an oil and filter change. $139 later I was on my way again with a bit of an improvement. At least the gears changed without missing any changes, yet the engine still revs up a bit between changes and the gear changes are very jerky. I decided to visit some online forums to find out if other Honda owners are experiencing similar problems. That is when I came across this site – wow! With all the lemon tranny’s in the Accords, Odysseys and Pilots, I am absolutely appalled by the action of local dealer, Carlton Honda, who played ignorant and suggested the process of problem elimination. Step one was to replace the transmission fluid as per their suggestion. Who knows what else they would do to extract more money from me for something that is clearly a Honda design problem. A problem that they should be fully aware of! They will be hearing from me now that I have an arsenal of information to confront them with. This is going to get interesting!

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