Need some opinions please. I have a 04 Foreman ES with only 300 miles of non-abused driving. The first sign of trouble was that the speedo was stuck on zero. After shutting it down for about 10 minutes, it worked fine afterwards. Getting home, I backed it into the garage and shut it off in reverse. Wanting to leave it in neutral, I turned the key back on and tried to shift it into neutral electronically. It would not shift. I could hear it trying to, but it would not. I checked to battery, it was fully charged. I tried with the manual shift lever but it still would not go to neutral. When I tried to use the manual lever, the gear indicator on the instrument cluster flashed 9 times.

It's been at the Honda dealer for 3 weeks. They originally could not figure out the problem. Now they are telling me it is a shift mechanism located on the shaft in the engine that broke. Parts will be about $30 and labor about $640!

I feel this is an issue that Honda should take responsibility and fix at no cost. Obviously, with only 300 miles on the quad, it was either a bad part when they installed it or it's a poor design. No, I did not purchase an extended warranty. I thought I was buying a good Honda quality product. I could have purchased a Polaris or Yamaha or whatever at a lower cost but was willing to pay more for Honda quality.

Any opinions on this situation?

 

I constantly bring up the fact that there are an unusually large number of posts on problems with ES! Every time I do, the usual bunch of suspects come out of the woodwork and say owning an ES is better than sex. These people are in denial!

Until Honda gets the huge amount of bad press on this issue that they deserve, nothing will ever improve! Desertrat, all I can say is that if you had paid attention to my posts for all these years, you wouldn't be in this situation.

 

reconranger, has a right to express his opinions...just remember they arent facts.
Things can and do go wrong with every brand. This is just an unfortunete experience, and quite posibly you could get your dealer to go to bat for you, and get a reduction on the costs, from honda.
There are alot of es hondas out there with no issues, and i have one of them.
Lets face it, most issues you hear about on the forum is about bad experiences, and look at yours...first post, and an issue. If you were a happy owner, you never would have posted about being happy with it. The reason we post is because of problems, so thats what youll read.
Facts are, the overwelming majority of es models are trouble free. This was a freak occurance.

 

Thanks for the input Hondabuster. Where in Minnesota are you?

 

If my ES is in gear when I turn the engine off, usually it will not shift into neutral---unless I "rump it forward an inch". I figured this out by instinct.

 

Porka, that's the first thing I tried. It also wouldn't shift into neutral when I tried to use the manual shifter and rocking it forward and back at the same time.

 

Did you check the fuse and clean the connections?

 

Mid mn, about 30 miles north of minneapolis.
Its kind of like dealing with a car dealership. There are times, when they can extend a good will adjustment for unusual breakage. It sure cant hurt to try, and if the dealership wont go to bat for you, try the honda hotline.
let us know what happens.

 

Thats very wierd!

 

Porka, no I didn't check the fuses or connections. Didn't see the need to check these. The shifter sounded like it wanted to work using the ES, but even with the manual shifter, it wouldn't shift out of reverse.