My son bought a 2008 Fit new. At about 16K miles, the clutch suddenly started slipping. He barely made it to a dealer and it was replaced at no charge. Recently, the clutch suddenly started slipping again at ~32K miles.
Before you say he’s hard on a clutch, he drive a 95 Civic with no clutch troubles for over 140K before selling it to buy the Fit.
He took the Fit to another dealer (he’s in a different state now) and was told the clutch is OK, they drained some fluid out. Would excess fluid cause a problem – after 16K miles?
Do you know if anyone replaced the REAR MAIN SEAL on this engine? They certainly should have done it during the clutch job. If that rear main lets go it will douse your flywheel in oil and NO CLUTCH can get past that.
Sounds funny but if you have a new clutch in there you need to look for an oil leak where the engine and trans mate up. for a test you could pull the exam plug off the tranny and have an assistant push the clutch in while you spray Castrol Super Clean degreaser into the clutch exam port…turn the engine a bit and spray some more…then rinse and repeat…if you suddenly have a clutch return on you then you know your rear main is blown…but you can find the rear main integrity well before my silly test and degrease option.
As far as draining some type of fluid out…I dont see how this can cause an issue UNLESS somone installed the clutch incorrectly…perhaps the clutch slave and its lever werent done right…maybe the clutch slave lever is binding up on something preventing the clutch from being released properly and making it slip…I would look into the operation of the clutch slave as job number one…
Dealer replacement? Dealer issue. Do not take no for an answer. The dealer repair on this issue could make it a zone quality problem. Either the first one replaced a clutch and ignored other issues. Or the second is not telling you what is going on. Talk to a zone rep. Someone fudged somewhere.
Just because Honda Civic clutches last, doesn’t mean a Fit uses the same set up. These new cars keep using smaller components and lighter materials in their design. A clutch that is burned out at 16K miles is unacceptable. Yet, perhaps Honda is under engineering the clutch.
Apparently the Fit uses a very small and light battery. If they have cut corners too close for the clutch then Honda has a problem. Take the car back to the dealer for resolution of this problem.
On the fitfreak.net forums there are no mentions of clutches needing to be replaced early, and many have well over 50,000 miles on their clutches. Makes me suspicious of what else might be wrong with this vehicle that’s causing the clutches to fail.
EDIT: Maybe the transmission was overfilled with fluid and this caused transmission problems?