We bought our Honda CR-V back in September of 2000 just before the 2001’s hit the lot. We worked out a deal with the dealership and had our CR-V delivered to us a little while later.
Before our CR-V’s factory warranty was up we purchased a 6 year, 160,000km warranty from Honda for around $1200. It turns out to be money well spent.
On March 17th, 2006 we had a bunch of stuff replaced under the warranty. Front passenger upper control arm (ball joint was gone), front links and bushings, rear links and bushings and both rear trailing arms. Total cost to me would have been around $1500 but with the extended warranty I only had to pay the deductibles which ended up being around $150. We also replaced both rear struts with a set of aftermarket ‘Gabriel’ struts from CarQuest as these weren’t covered under the warranty.
Last Wednesday night, March 29th 2006 on our way to St. Alban’s we started hearing a new knocking noise. Only very occasionally at first, but within 10 minutes the CR-V started knocking with every little bump. I figured a rock must be stuck bouncing around the driveshaft. A couple days later when it stopped raining I got the CR-V up on jack stands and crawled underneath. No rock to be found but I did noticed oil leaking from the power steering rack. We then checked the fluid level and it was down a little, but far from being dried out. After pulling off both front tires and not finding anything loose or bouncing around I called Honda and setup an appointment for another visit.
Today Siobhan took the two hour drive to the dealership and had the CR-V looked at. It ends up that the driver side ball joint now needs to be replaced and the power steering rack has to be replaced. On top of all this one of the two NEW rear struts has already leaked out. The rack can’t be air shipped for some reason or another so we have to wait until at least next week for it to come in so that means another trip to Gander (approximately 240 kms each way) to get the work done. Keep in mind that during all of this Siobhan is just about ready to give birth to our child (due in 11 days). Our CR-V has about 147,000 kms on it and therefore only about 13,000kms of extended warranty left. The upper control arm and power steering rack are both covered under the warranty but I will have a little battle with the struts for sure. I hope that anything else that may go wrong does soon so we get everything replaced before the warranty is up.
Honda is being very good about all of this and the dealership is quite accomodating. Hopefully all will be good in a week or so.
Rene