Brand New CRV Oil Leak

Hi all,

I wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this. My wife bought a
2005 CRV a couple of weeks ago, and we took it back yesterday as it was
leaking oil in the driveway. When I looked under the car, you could
even see the wet oil. At the dealer, the advisor seemed suprised, and
he said he would talk to Honda Corporate next week and try to get a
diagnosis. His guys thought it may be a rear main seal, but they
weren't really sure. He also said he hadn't seen this problem in his
10+ years dealing with these cars. Of course, that's likely an
exaggeration. The car has 600 miles on it, and I really think it's
been leaking longer. I noticed oil spots earlier, but just assumed it
was from a leaky seal that I had on my car a few months back.

Has anyone here seen or heard of anything like this? I doubt the
dealer or Honda will be likely to give us a new car, but this is pretty
damn scary for a brand new car! Has anyone had similar experiences?
Thanks.

DP

 

Perhaps the drain plug is not in tight?

 

maybe crank case porosity - it's come up here a number of times on the
newest vehicles. dealer will sort it.

 

I bought a new one a few months ago. At hand over the sales guy made a big
deal about checking the oil before each trip - wonder if this is a 'known'
problem and he was warning me

 

theres an issue with the oil filter on the CRV... might check that.

 

Thanks for the replies on this. The service advisor said it didn't
appear to be the filter. Also, the oil seemed to be coming falling off
of the crankcase (or what I think is the crankcase). The porosity
issue that was mentioned could be the problem, but I'll post more once
they diagnose it.... hopefully tomorrow. Thanks again.

DP

 

If it is as serious as porosity, you need a whole new engine, they
can't fix that in the shop.

They won't give you a new car, though, regardless of what's wrong. The
exception is if you can use your state's lemon law. Keep your service
slips and find out how many attempts your law says they must be given
to fix the problem. The manufacturer usually also gets one try after
that. If, after about 5 tries to fix it, it still leaks, file the
lemon law complaint with your local authority. Make damn sure they
write up a service slip and put it in their system each time they
"service" the car. If it isn't officially documented, it was never
there.

 

So, we finally got a diagnosis from Honda. It seems like the car needs
a rear main seal. That's pretty sad for a new car, but it's not as bad
as I was initially thinking. Hopefully that really fixes the problem,
and thanks to all for your responses.

DP

 

Occasional early failure of manfactured parts (in all areas of
manufacturing) is not unheard of, and is in fact expected--or at least
anticipated. That's one reason you have a warranty.