"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...

You never do reply to my question about how reliable the Honda has been.

Sorry. I don't remember ever seeing you ask about reliability.

The car, a CR-V SE 1.6 4WD (6-speed manual), was new in July 2015 and has
done just over 78,000 miles (125,000 km). It's averaged 44 mpg (6.4 l/100
km) (total distance/total fuel used) which is a looong way short of the
manufacturer's quoted figures - so much so that I've asked the garage's
advice on a couple of occasions as to whether our figures are within the
normal range of what a *real-world* user should achieve. A colleague of my
wife has the same model and same engine, and almost the same age, and gets
dramatically better economy - I think over 50 mpg (by comparison, my
10-year-old Peugeot 3081.6 HDi which has done 180,000 miles (290,000 km),
has averaged 55 mpg).

In both cases (my wife's car and mine) the figures are for mainly 50-70 mph
driving, some on the flat and some in hilly country, with very little
stop-start or slow city driving. We accelerate moderately hard,
progressively up to the speed limit, but no wheel-spinning, tyre-shredding
stuff - apart from the very occasional time when it's the only way to pull
out onto a main road when no-one, not one single solitary person, slows
slightly to make a gap for us to pull into. We both tend to read the road
ahead fairly well so we slow down by lifting off the power rather than
driving flat out up to the hazard and braking hard. I probably get slightly
better economy than my wife, but then I tend to drive the Honda at weekends
when there's less traffic; my wife probably drives a bit more aggressively
(sorry, slip of the tongue, I meant "assertively") in heavier
morning/evening traffic to and from work.

We've had very little trouble with the Honda - the only things that have
been replaced are routine consumables like occasional new wiper blades and 4
new tyres at 35,000 and 60,000 miles; it was supplied with Michelin Latitude
Sport and we replaced them both times with Avon ZX7. At its first MOT (July
2018, 3 years after registration, 60,000 miles) it passed with no comments
or "advisories". We had the tyres replaced immediately beforehand in
anticipation that they might get commented on as needing replacement fairly
soon - better than finding that I'd misread the tread depth and one of them
had caused it to fail the MOT, which is embarrassing when it's something
that I should have put right beforehand.

How often are Australian cars given a safety check like our MOT? Ours is
every year starting three years from new.

The car (Hetty the Honda!) is probably too young to start to need big things
replacing. When she gets to 180,000 miles, like my Pug, and needs new diesel
particulate filter and cat, and has various problems with the
"anti-pollution system" and the clutch actuator failing, then I'll be able
to comment more. Mind you, Pug is still on his original clutch, which is
incredible - bite point is fairly high but it shows no signs of slipping at
all. I wonder if the Honda's clutch will last that long.

The next service, due fairly soon, will be the "big one" because it's the
first we'll have to pay for (when we bought the car, we bought a service
deal which covered the first 5 services) and I remember at the last one I
was told the various things that need to be replaced routinely at the
nominal 75,000 service (which will be about 79,000 because we were a bit
late in booking it in for a couple of intermediate services). I forget the
details: I should have written it down ;-)

I'm not sure what the cost of big jobs is for the car - usually at
100-120,000 most cars need the cambelt changing which is always an expensive
job - 5 mins to change the belt, a few quid for the part, but several hours
to dismantle things to reach the belt. With my Pug I was advised to have the
water pump (driven off the same belt) replaced at the same time whether or
not it needed it, because there's no point in paying twice for the same
dismantle/reassemble labour which is a lot more than the cost of the pump.
Clutch is a big one. Cat or DPF on any car are frighteningly expensive - and
that *is* mainly parts rather than labour. All of that is yet to come -
hopefully along way off!

The only thing that hasn't performed as expected is the parking sensors.
Both my wife and I have hit bollards when reversing at very low speed. We're
used to all the false alarms from the front end when parallel parking and my
front left wing gets very close to the rear right wing of the car I'm
parking behind, or from tree branches nearby when parking - or even stray
flies that the sensor sees (maybe the last bit is a exaggeration!). But in
both cases, the sensor did *not* sound, and in both cases the point of
impact was right *on* the sensor - as if the sensor can see objects from a
few degrees either side of it but not objects that are about the hit the
sensor disk itself. I nudged a road sign when reversing off a grassy area
onto a road - it was not visible in the driver's side mirror and it was not
visible in the rear-view mirror - in the very blind spot between the two
that parking sensors are designed for. My wife gave me a real ear-bashing
for that, then a few months later she sheepishly confessed that she'd done
exactly the same thing with the passenger-side rear sensor in collision with
a big wooden telephone and mains electricity cable pole just where our drive
meets the village green. No real damage done, just a bit of cracked/flaked
paint on the bumper in both cases. But something to watch out for: the
parking sensors occasionally *don't* see things :-(

I managed to dislodge the front bumper when reversing very very slowly up a
steep drive where there was a sharp change gradient between level road and
steep uphill drive. Given the high ground clearance of the CR-V, that must
have been a very dramatic change of gradient! Luckily when I got home, a bit
of firm pressure on the bumper allowed it to distort enough for the lug on
the bumper to engage with the peg on the car body and it popped back into
place. It was when we were looking at a new house that we were considering
buying, and we realised that if the CR-V grounded on a steep drive, my Pug
was even more likely to do so because it seems to have very low bumpers
and/or long overhang from the wheels.

Little niggles...

The aerodynamics of the car are such that the back-end of the car gets
*very* dirty in winter when there's a lot of spray coming up from the road.
This is only a problem in that it quickly obscures the reversing camera
which is in the boot-release handle, and the camera is then no use to man
nor beast because of the muck on the lens. Honda should have put a little
washer jet, driven from the rear-window washer, to clean the lens. But then
we used to be able to manage perfectly well without reversing cameras,
though rear windows used to be wider and deeper so had better visibility...

I'd also have put the "outside temperature" display somewhere that the
passenger can see (on the central LCD display, alongside time, average mpg
etc) rather than in the centre of the speedo where it's only visible to the
driver. Silly little thing, but other cars (eg my Pug) get it right, so
Honda should copy them.

And like so many cars, the hazard-lights switch is in a criminally dangerous
place: in an emergency you have to take your eyes off the road and fumble
blindly towards the middle of the dashboard to hit it if you suddenly come
up behind a stationary car on a motorway, when in my mind the hazard switch
should be as accessible as the horn button - maybe on one of the spokes of
the steering wheel near your thumb or else on the end of the indicator stalk
if that's not used for the horn. I've only driven one car, I think a Fiat
Punto hire car, which had the hazard lights switch on the end of a stalk -
normally it's some random place on the dashboard - or even on top of the
steering column so you have to reach behind or through the wheel (Ford, I'm
talking about you!) In my old 5-gear Peugeot, I got used to finding the
switch by aiming my hand at the gear lever (when I was in fifth) and then
moving my finger up and right slightly, but the new Pug has six gears so the
knob is further from the dashboard in the default top gear and anyway the
switch is much higher up.

I always remember a motoring magazine years ago that had an article about
how good Scandinavian drivers were and how skilled they were at controlling
the car in snow and ice, and the interview subject was... a woman (as if to
say "wow, women can be even better than men" - all very sexist and very
1970s). And the article made a point of saying that the driver could
instinctively hit any switch, blindfold (they tested her). I think modern
placement of hazard lights switches fails that test ;-)