Manufacturing Quality

Kyle Boatright wrote:

"Matt Whiting" wrote in message
...

john smith wrote:


With the news that Piper will produce the Hondajet, I am wondering if
Piper will be able to produce the finished product to meet Honda's
quality standards.
Piper has not built anything bigger than a Malibu for 20 years.
The Cheyenne IV/LS-400 was the biggest aircraft Piper has produced.

I don't see why not. Americans at the Honda plants in Ohio produce cars
and motorcycles to Honda quality standards. And, based on my experience
with an 84 Honda Accord, purchased new, those standards aren't all that
high. The engine failed at 80,000 miles. Haven't owned a Honda product
since.


Matt


That's a rare case. What was the failure? I know of plenty of people who put
many, many miles on 80's vintage Accords with excellent reliability.

I agree. It probably was a random manufacturing defect. The reason I
won't own a Honda again isn't the failure, it is due to Honda's response
to the failure (see a post I just made). Accusing your customer of
neglect in response to an unreasonable failure of your product, is
simply stupid and I refuse to buy products from a stupid manufacturer.
There are just too many choices today to have to do that.

Matt

In article ,
"Kyle Boatright" wrote:
That's a rare case. What was the failure? I know of plenty of people who put
many, many miles on 80's vintage Accords with excellent reliability.

My current Accord has 217k miles and has had zero powertrain issues. No
engine work other than replacing the timing belt every 105k miles. No CV
work. No tranny work, and it even has the original clutch.

My wife had a 1994 Accord (purchased new), always properly maintained,
but the thing was a pain in the neck to work on. It was affected by an
oil seal recall; I forget where the seal was, but when (not if) it blew,
all of the oil got pumped out of the engine. It happened to my wife
shortly after she received the recall notice. Thankfully, she was close
to home. Honda did pick up the tab for tearing the car apart to replace
the seal (not for the towing), but at around 115k she starting having
transmission and/or torque converter issues (auto transmission). It was
also rusting in quite a few places, including FROM THE INSIDE OUT. Due
to the compounding small problems and the fact that it was useless in
the snow (even with top-shelf tires), we ditched it and bought a Subaru.

We've had good luck with the Subaru, except for some small annoyances
which the Honda may or may not have had, such as inaccurate speedometer
(errors high), etc. I know others folks who just love their Hondas, but
who have had some fairly major failures while their cars were still
young.

Driving the Honda Accord was decent but rather uninspiring--a boring
car. I didn't see anything spectacular about Honda compared with other
Japanese brands, but it's clear that Honda has greater brand loyalty.

On another note, I have a Honda engine on my $700 lawnmower, and it's
already having problems after only 1.5 years since new. It runs great,
but if small things keep breaking it's going to nickel and dime me to
death.



JKG