In the few years I’ve been a mechanic, I’ve seen a few cars that were rusted to the point of being scrap. Sometimes they’re repairable, like with the rusted out subframe on my 96 Civic. Other times it’s the floorboards or other structure, which really aren’t worth repairing a lot of times.
This Honda Pilot was far beyond repair. One of the mounting points for the rear subframe is almost completely rusted out, leaving the left side of the subframe basically just hanging by the shock absorber.
It was towed in because the owner was told by another mechanic that it was unsafe to drive, and I would have to agree. I think it was a 2007, which is rather young to be this rusted, but it was pretty high mileage.
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This seams to be a major problem that for some reason got by Honda and NHTSA , my pilot had this problem and unless someone was really injured or killed it goes un acknowledged. The issue is water is settling in that area of the subframe. I looked after a light rain and noticed water dripping from the hole left from the part separated.
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I’ve always wondered if I’ll see this again. Still haven’t.
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I have a 2006 Honda Pilot with a little over 325,000 miles….was just informed by my mechanic that I need to start car shopping (and soon) for this very same reason
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Sounds like it’s had a good long life.
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I have a 2003 Pilot with only 65K miles. It started makes a noise in the left rear a few days ago. When I took it to the mechanic I was told the entire rear end is rusted out and would cost $7-$10K to fix. Do I have any recourse with Honda?
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Probably not. Once a car is that old it’s rare for an automaker to fix anything for free.
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