Honda 600-4
 

A good friend of mine over here works as a chief mechanic in a large Honda dealership and earlier this afternoon he mentioned something rather concerning to me. The matter in question is being played down by Honda themselves and are treating any incident on it's own merits.

Apparently since late 2004 they have been using a different manufacturer for the crank shafts for all of their IL4 600 motors,(except those with special order status for race purposes). The exercise was apparently a cost cutting exercise and, should the new supplier match their stringent requirements then engine parts for more models would have been granted to this company.

The new company are it seems based in mainland China where labour and materials can be obtained much cheaper. All appeared well until a concerning number of bikes were being returned to dealerships with seized engines, when a pattern began to emerge Honda decided to look deeper.

All failures are so far connected with cranks supplied by the Chinese company and managing the situation could prove a nightmare for Honda on the public relations front. Honda have carried out metallurgy tests in their Labs and found the specification of the material used to be far below their guidelines.

There is a smoke screen surrounding this whole issue and one feels for any owner of the mentioned bikes as they really have no idea of knowing if the crank in their bike is ok. And if they approached a dealer they would get fobbed off I am sure. :?

It happens all the time. Just look at the "new" VW Beetles they started making in the late 1990's... they had a nsaty habit of catching on fire! But VW took care of it and somehow managed to keep it quiet.

Even SV's have mediocre cranks and tend to blow up over 90HP, the 03+ bikes sometimes blow up for no good reason.

The Brooklyn bridge here in New York was built with faulty materials and during its construction sub-standard steel caused a cable to break and cut many workers in half. Much of the weeker steel is still there.......

It happens all the time, we just don't know about it.

Yikes, what a good job I wasn't thinking of getting one :lol: .


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:laughat: Honda build quality.... that saying will go...

feel sorry for the affected owners tho

Whos going to tell Scoobs ??? :P

I'm sure there will be no shortage of volunteers! :roll: :lol:

Shhhssshhh

oops to late :lol: :lol:

Do'h! ohh well... probably find out that Kawasaki dropped a clanger on the 636's now... :lol:

They better not!

hehehe.. yeah, last thing some of us want at this point in time! :lol: