Problems to Look Out for When Buying a Used Honda CRV

hi I'm Greg your car angel in this video I'm going to be sharing with you some of my observations that I have had over the years on my inspections on CRVs now in this video I'm going to be concentrating on some of the problem areas that you might look at when you're considering a purchase of a UC RV now if you're in the market for a used Honda cr-v you're probably considering the competition which would be the Nissan Rogue the Mazda cx-5 the Toyota rav4 the Subaru Forester and if you're looking at American manufacturers the Ford Escape but really I consider the only competition to the CRV the only real competition is the Toyota rav4 in the subaru forrester CR V stands for comfortable runabout vehicle it is comfortable and it is a runabout vehicle it's very very practical it came in three different trim levels you had the base model which was the LX and that lacked the sunroof and a lot of other amenities and then you have the e^x which added the sunroof fog lights and a better stereo system and then you had the EXL which the L stood for leather and it usually included navigation the SE came in at the later production of the CRV and it was the Sport Edition I'm going to preface this video with a disclosure that no car manufacturer is perfect there's no perfect car out there at some time there's going to be issues on every car that gets manufactured it's just how major are those issues and when can you expect those issues to show up during your ownership since Honda debuted the Honda CRV in 1997 they've seen the sales increase on a year-by-year basis from that time and that's because the small SUV segment has grown in popularity since then in this video I'm going to be concentrating on the second generation to the present overall the Honda CRVs were tough doesn't matter which generation you're looking at between 2002 and 2006 which was the second generation that car had one problem which could be described as catastrophic in nature and that was the AC system it totally imploded basically the compressor would cease and there would be metal shards going through the system and it is not a cheap fix it's between 1,500 to 3,000 dollars for a replacement system so if you're looking at that generation you have to look at to make sure that the AC system has been thoroughly replaced the third generation ran between 2007 to 2011 which is what this is and the first thing that you see is that the CRV grew in size it became much bigger and they did away with the spare tire and they also went from the side hinge lift gate to the traditional lift gate now because the car grew in size it became much better for tall people like me the CRV is a particularly good car for tall people lots of legroom lots of headroom the other problem that came with the car growing in size is that it became more cave-like inside that it's it's a very large resonating chamber and what you get is a lot of noise and the CRV is a particularly noisy car especially when you get on the 2.4 engine it is raucous some of the main problems with the third generation you see RVs that I experienced in my inspections are the sway bar links are weak they tend to go out early and the struts tend to wear out particularly early on these VC RVs it makes a lot of noise too which adds to the noise factor in the cabin that I spoke about earlier so you have to look for suspension issues on these cars other problems that I see have to do with the rubber trim you have these seals that go around the windows and especially right here at the base of the window on the sill and in hotter climates such as what we have out here on the west coast you'll see a lot of oxidation and deterioration on all of these rubber air they'll start peeling away and over time they actually start getting really gummy and it's this black goo that's just a disaster it's just particularly bad here on the west coast with the heat another area that is related to sun damage are these panels here these panels have a lot of oxidation damage over time I guess because they're black and they absorb a lot of heat and you'll see that this will deteriorate to the point where you'll start seeing some of the materials start to come out I don't know whether it's fiberglass or what but it becomes white and it's just completely ugly now I've had these particular ones repaint it sand it and repaint it and so there is a remedy to it but that's another thing that I find in one last problem that I've seen on this generation of not just the CRVs but all Honda's is the locking mechanism you'll find that the locking mechanism on this generation of Honda's have notoriously failed and I think one of the reasons they fail is because there's something in the control mechanism that would activate the locking of this car over time every time you come to a stop sign and then start at 15 miles an hour the locks will engage again and that just keeps on happening every time and it just basically wears them out so this is just something that I see all the time in Honda's the fourth generation was between 2012 and 2016 great cars except the 2015 had a particular problem with vibration coming through the seat and the steering wheel at idle this is a common enough problem where Honda created a technical service bulletin on it which means that they don't pay for it but it's still a known problem and basically when you're sitting at a stoplight you'd have a heavy vibration coming through the seat very annoying the remedy to that wasn't cheap and you could only get it done at the dealer and it involved some of the mounts on the radiator of all places which you wouldn't think would be part of the problem but it was creating a resonating factor in the engine compartment that translated into the interior of the car so if you're out there looking at one of these model years for the CRV pay special attention to that now for 2017 which represented the fifth generation of CRV Honda just totally redesigned the car and it's much more refined and it came with what was known as the Honda sensing package now the Honda sensing package was only available on the II X and above why they wouldn't put it on the LX model is beyond me I personally feel that if you have a safety feature you want to put it on your entire lineup not just for people who can afford it that doesn't make sense to me Toyota does it and they put it on all of their cars and I don't know why Honda didn't do that now as much as I like the newest generation of Si RVs and I really do they were a big improvement over the previous generation they had one particular problem and it showed up on the e X and the EXL models with the turbo engine and that problem was that the gas would intrude into the oil areas and gas and oil do not mix now you would know that you'd have that problem if the dipstick level of oil would go up because there'd be gas coming in to there'd be that much now Honda issued a couple of technical service bulletins on this which is one step shy of a recall and the difference there is that a recall Honda would be paying for it in a technical service bulletin they're calling it a drivability concern and to me this is beyond a drivability concern it's a reliability concern so at the time of this video this is an ongoing thing I fully anticipate Honda to do a recall on it but the verdict is still out at the time of this video so these are the things to look out for when you go out to purchase a used CRV I really want you to have is much information that I've accrued over my years of inspecting these cars I'm Greg your car angel thanks for watching give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it I appreciate that I'll see you in the next video take care

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,255,722

Rating: 4.9149323 out of 5

Keywords: CRV, Honda, problems, a/c, struts, sway bar, inspection, recall, tsb

Id: Ax-7hYZOcss

Length: 9min 15sec (555 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 24 2019