Long story short after driving the other day my engine started acting weird so i pulled off the road into a parking lot and my engine died. So later that day we got it towed to Honda and they diagnosed it that a screw had been sucked into the engine and completely destroyed it. I have been told that the screw would have had to come in through the air filter. However I haven't had the air filter changed for 10k miles at Honda and can't imagine that it would all of a sudden show up. However I havent had any real work done on my car and every little thing besides oil changes have been at Honda. My question is what is the most likely explaation of how a screw out of no where makes its way into my engine and destroys it. I had a Honda warranty to 100k miles but they say it isn't covered because their aren't any missing screws from the engine or any part of the car. I am now at a loss of how this happened and what to do..! Any info would be great


Thanks,
Brian E.

 

OK, that doesnt completely explain it. Besides, theres gotta be a hundred little parts in the engine. How did they inventory & verify EVERYTHING? Its an auto shop, not a CSI lab.

Was the screw foundin the crankcase (like in the oil)? I dont know how you would prove that you never opened the oil fill cap & dropped something in there.

Or was it found in a combustion chamber? Can they show you the air filter? If it has no holes, then the mystery screw has to come from somewhere inside. I would try to make the argument that theres no way for a random piece of debris to get into the engine. But OTOH, rodents LOVE to chew holes in air filters.

 

Well the screw managed to get into one of the cylinders on my engine. trapping itself right above my piston which kept ramming it into the engine block. so it totally destroyed that piston and the engine block.

 

this is one strange/sad story. Don't give up on the warranty coverage.
I believe the most likely way for a screw to get in there would be during manufacture of the motor

 

If it was there from manufacture, how could it hang out for 5 years & only NOW cause a problem?

But anyway, if you can show that the air filter element is intact, thats the only way in.

Air intake system is opened up whenever theair filter element was changed. Youhave tomakea casethat the dealer was the ONLY one who ever opened up the intake.

 

The problem with that is that the air goes from the bottom of the air filter to the top then goes to the engine. So how does the screw make it around the air filter because it would have to shoot up around it or through it. Is there a chance a smaller screw could have made it around the sides of the air filter when I was accelerating.

 

If the filter is in position properly, there is no way around it. The rubber lip of the filter is clamped between the top & bottom of its box.

If theres a hole in the filter, the air prefers to go thru the hole, with larger velocity. Still, it would have to bea pretty small screw. Maybe small enough to NOT do much internal damage.

Seems more likely it was dropped in downstream of the filter, when replacing the filter element. When was it last replaced? It might hang around for awhile (not 5 years) before working its way through the intake manifold.

 

it was replaced a little under 10k miles ago..!

 

Strange situation. I dont know how we would be able to understand it since we arent the ones dismantling the engine.

Keep us informed because ImREALLY curious about this one. But I dont know how much help I can be.

 

later tonight i will try to post some pictures that show the screw fragments and the damage to the engine.