Dear Type Accord community,
After 11 years and 220 000 or so km added by me(for a total of ~320k) the engine in my trusty Honda has now come to a point where it is experiencing issues. And has shown it's Check engine light for real for the first time (i.e. not by me either me forgetting to plug someting in, or simply not plugging something in out of curiosity during servicing). So contrary to as the chaff goes, Hondas do indeed have an engine light. Maybe not as prone to coming on as a VWs though.
I practically only do longer journeys (>15km, regularly 45 minutes at 80-120km/h) etc. The DPF light has never come on, every now and then I notice a significant increase in fuel usage during a trip, and when I arrive the exhaust is hot indeed. So I suppose my DPF is as good as can be at 320k kilometres.
Anyway. This summer I've been towing a caravan around a bit. And a total of 4-5 times the engine has gone in to limp mode. I think every time after at least 2 hours of driving with constant heavy load on the engine. Fuel consumption about 11-12L/100km. The first time CEL during extra heavy load - accelerating up to speed after a town on a decent incline.
First time it logged P00AF. Shutdown and restart and it ran fine and got us gome.
Then maybe 2-3 weeks passed without any towing, I tried provoking it by heavy acceleration, high load etc, but it ran just fine. As it always has. I figured, yes there's something not 100 up to spec, but it is running and after so many miles, it is forgiven for missing once. I'll let is pass for now.. but it kept nagging in the back of my mind.
On this last trip, on the outbound leg, after about 2 hours of very good going, I for some reason decided to see if it could be provoked. And indeed, up a long incline, accelerating from ~30 to 80, just as I was approacing redline, shift to 4 and settle in, engine goes in to limp mode and looses almost all power. Luckily there's a small but ample spot along to road to pull over. I let it idle away a bit of heat from the turbocharger while rummaging for the code reader.
P1236, something with the fuel system. I clear the code, cycle ignition and carry on my merry way.
Then shorter trips for a week, no issues.
However on the leg home this morning, clear roads, good flow, eating up the miles. When about 45 minutes from home, it throws CEL and looses all power. The little it has in limp mode is not enough to move the caravan safely along a road I can tell you that. P00AF. I clear it, cycle ignition, this thing with the maybe clogged turbo added to the list of things to anxiety over.
I continue driving. At first it appears to run OK, however there is a small but noticable lack of power. Within only 10-15 kms or so it goes in to limp mode again. Pull over. PA00AF. Cycle ignition, it revs normally in neutral so I continue. Can't help but feel it is lacking a bit of power when trying to accelerate, no engine light though. After a short bit normal power appears restored and I make it home.
This to me are symptoms of soot build up, clogged vanes, what have you. It's fine, it has done 320k kms without missing a beat and now it's struggling a bit when asked to pull twice heavy a load as it's used to.
Question is what I do about it. I do not want to give up the car. It is to this day very good, there's nothing on the market I could have in the same leauge comfort, reliability, performance, economy etc for me without coughing up £20 000 and then I will have a **** with electronic parking brake, maybe not even an oil dip stick, and 1000 other things I don't want. But if I can't rely on the engine as it stands, I either need to fix it, or move on.
Thing is that this is quite a rare car in Sweden. You almost want to wave if you see another one on the road. So I've not been able to find any tinkerers specialising in these, doing DPF delete e.g. So unless I could swing it myself, I wouldn't know where to take it. Maybe I could turn the DPF to a what effectively would be a pipe, I wouldn't know where to start disabling the highway regens from the ECU.
I can get an ***umed good used turbo, for about £450. If one could find a low mileage one, it should not have these issues yet. But that still leaves me with my DPF. I'd say it is still working OK for what it is and the mileage, and I don't think it's abnormally blocked, but it will of course over time build up soot on this turbo too. But if I get another 200k out of it, I'd be pretty OK with that. By then most of the bodywork will have rusted away anyways..
I also still need to return the caravan, 300 kilometres away. I'm not sure that's quite a good idea given how it performed on the last leg home today.
That became an essay, sorry about that.
TLDR:
High mileage 2009 Accord 2.2 Diesel Manual
320 000 km
11 eyars of ownership and 200 000 km of no engine issues
Pretty much optimal vehicle usage for the DPF.
Starting to tow 1.5ton caravan
Car throws P00AF
Car drives fine
P1236, drives fine again efter stop/start.
P00AF. Slight lack of power is noticed, but normalizes.
What do you reckon?
