GREENSBORO, N.C. — Letters to Honda and Acura owners hit mailboxes about a week ago. The letters confirmed there's a recall impacting about 2.6 million vehicles due to an issue that can cause the engine to stall while driving. The surprise to owners was that the part to fix the issue was largely out of stock.
Local drivers asked 2 Wants To Know why Honda issued the recall if there's no right-now fix. We contacted Honda and in part, a spokesman said:
We appreciate the patience of our customers as we work to acquire the needed replacement parts. It just takes time for the supplier to ramp up production to produce this number of extra fuel pumps, something that cannot happen overnight.
Honda expects to have the parts in mass by the fall of this year. Auto experts say recalls with no immediate fix are all too common in the auto industry.
"The situation arises because of federal law and the law is very clear when an automaker discovers that there is a problem with a feature with safety or emissions, they have to immediately report it to the highway traffic safety administration and they issue a recall," said Patrick Olsen, CARFAX.
Olsen says a classic example of this was the Takata airbag recall.
Honda says at this point, there have been no reported crashes linked to this issue. The spokesperson added:
We are reserving the low number of replacement parts that we do have to repair vehicles that experience a fuel pump failure, which is still very rare.
The recall impacts 2.6 million Hondas and Acuras, models you know well like Civics, Accords, and the Odyssey vans.