Storm982

Just to let everyone know, (and I apologize if this is already up here, i didn't see it) that Honda and Michelin have reached a settlement for their PAX tire system. We received a notice about it in the mail yesterday. Our RL doesn't have the tires on it but our 05 Odyssey does. The settlement offers reimbursements for people who replaced their tires before 36,000 miles of use and those who switched over to a spare tire kit. I believe there was also some discount on future purchases of tires and/or spare tire kits. I can't remember in full detail off the top of my head. So just an FYI, if any of you do have PAX tires on your Honda/Acura cars, keep an eye open for this information packet. If you don't receive one, I'd suggest you contact your local dealer.

JimA

This settlement is sort of like getting the sleeves out of Honda's vests. For RL owners with PAX tires that haven’t replaced the tires you can get an extended tire warranty by 36,000 miles and $110 toward the purchase of a Honda approved spare tire kit.

Not a great settlement given the cost of a set of PAX tires.

Jim

Chas2

Agreed. And I wish the spare only cost $110!

The ones that must be fuming are the Odyssey owners. Unlike the RL tires, the Odyssey tires apparently did not wear very well. Replacement of their tires is not $2100, and closer to $1500, but it is still outrageously expensive in comparison to standard tires.

JimA

[QUOTE=JimA;10869319]This settlement is sort of like getting the sleeves out of Honda's vests. For RL owners with PAX tires that haven’t replaced the tires you can get an extended tire warranty by 36,000 miles and $110 toward the purchase of a Honda approved spare tire kit.

Not a great settlement given the cost of a set of PAX tires.

You can get all of the details at


WWW.SFMSLAW.COM

Jim

rmumby

I would appreciate any advice or thoughts on the following. Here's my dilemna:

-I have a 2006 RL (w the Tech package and PAX tires) and its coming off lease in three weeks.
-I have a nail in my driver-side rear tire that's too close to the sidewall for it to be repaired.
-There are no certified facilities near me that can even find a replacement tire or replace the tire for me (including both Acura dealers, who have washed their hands of the PAX problem).
-Even if they could replace it, I would need to replace ALL FOUR tires due to the tread depth differential that would be created by having only one new tire; this would damge the drive train for the all-wheel drive.
-The inspector is coming in 10 days to do the end-of-lease inspection.

Any suggestions from anyone out there, or has anyone had any similar experiences? Bad luck.

JimA

See the details of the settlement at WWW.SFMSLAW.COM since it covers leased vehicles as well. It might help you.

Jim

JimA

This is my first note to the Law firm handling the case

Hi Jim,

I have a 2006 Acura RL with PAX tires. I have been over the PAX settlement documents and find that it looks like Honda is giving us the sleeves out of their vests!

I don't know about the Honda's however the RL tires look like $1500 - 2000 a set. You can't find out exact prices and there is no such thing as a Honda approved spare tire per my Acura & Honda dealers. They say that one will be available in June and based on past experience I wouldn't bet on it. They will also not quote a price so I have no idea if the $110 will even come close to paying for the spare.

As far as the extended tire warranty being based on 36K miles what is the coverage if I exceed the 36K miles on my RL (from my current 25K tread wear I will probably make 40-50K miles.

This settlement seems to offer little relief and certainly doesn't address the dealer deception about Pax, serviceability, availability, and cancels the Auto warranty if you DePax the vehicle. DePaxing is certainly realistic since Acura sells the RL with standard tires as well so this should have been an option. There is more to the Pax problem than just tire wear.

Please advise.

Jim

This is my second note to the Law firm handling the case

Hi again Jim,

I believe that the following supports my theory that there was a lot of bait and switch going on especially in light of the availability of Pax dealers that I was told would be available by my dealer.

I checked and this is a real dealer, comments follow.

Opinion - Letters, column features
Letters: No interest in Pax

No interest in PAX
It’s no wonder the PAX (run-flat) System (offered by Group Michelin) is having a hard time gaining customer approval: Who wants to go to the car dealer for tires?

We love technology and asked what was involved in becoming a PAX service center in 2001. Simply, we were told it’s not for us, because only select customers were being considered.
That was then, and we would have willingly paid the thousand bucks to upgrade our Hunter TC3500 tire machine. This is now, and with almost all the Honda and Acura dealers being able to service PAX, you couldn’t pay me to be a dealer.

This is another example of a tire manufacturer doing its best to get customers to go to the car dealer for their tires and service.
Our wholesale business died with the OE programs, and now they’re trying to nip at our service. That’s OK because we have the telephone numbers of local dealerships handy, and we now refer OE customers with tire problems to them.

Spencer Carruthers
Owner
Kenwood Tire Co.
West Bridgewater, Mass.

PS - My own Acura Dealer is flaged as an PAX® System Authorized Dealer and cannot service the tires, only sells complete package i.g., Tire & Rim and cannot even allign the car beceuse they don't have the special allignment tools!


Crown Acura
Distance: 10.1 miles (16.3 km )



Map and Directions

18911 US Highway 19 N
Clearwater, FL 33764
(727) 532-0793

rmjse

Any know the average cost of changing the PAX tires to just the standard RL wheels (The ones that come with the non-CMBS package)?

Do the rims need to be replaced or just the tires?

Thanks

lland

The PAX rims are different and only work with the PAX tires. You need to replace the wheels, tires, and lug nuts (also different). You also need to buy as spare, spare holder for the trunk, and a few other items as well. The cost for the spare and related items would be around $500 at discount (before the PAX settlement discount). You can find wheels on eBay and tires anywyere but the total will probably be $1,500 to $2,000...or just about the same cost as replaceing just the PAX tires. Lickily, I found a set of near new mounted on flawless whells (with center caps and TPMS sensors) PAX tires on eBay for $700 shipped. Otherwise I would have dePAXed when the time came (still on the originals at about 35,000 miles with a decent amount of tread left).

LL

Chas2

Not that I am having any issues with my PAX tires (knock on virtual wood)...

Local Acura dealer states that they received a message from Acura a few days ago advising that the settlement is not yet final and the spare tire kit discussed in the settlement will not be available until July, not June as originally stated (not sure where that was stated). All customers are encouraged to delay purchase decisions about the spare tire until then. No reimbursements will be made until after the settlement of the class action (presumably July, but unclear).

Acura is also clear that they may be contributing to the cost of a spare tire kit, and are clear that the labor installation of the spare tire kit is not covered in the class action suit.

Basically, no one really knows what is going on and they are encouraging customers to kick the can down the road.

SpicyMikey

What a mistake I made buying an RL with the CMBS/PAX package. My back left tire got a nail last year. Took 3 days to get it fixed. Now the plug is leaking. I have to add air every week or so. Can't find anyone to repair the tire within 20 miles of where I live.

Also, for anyone that knows me on here, they know I was furious back in 2007 at how the CMBS system didn't perform as advertised after I bought it. What a waste of $4000. There's a lawsuit (started by me and some others on Acurazine) that has recently been granted national class action status by Federal courts. Acura is appealing this one because it has HUGE implications in other areas and will probably take another year to settle. I'm sure Honda is regretting (as much as us) that this CMBS/PAX package was even offered on the RL. Must have cost them 10's of millions in legal fees already.

Jackzilla

Not to rub salt in anyone's wounds, but the disaster facing PAX equipped car owners should have been apparent to any owner when Michelin announced discontinuance of development on PAX. That event sealed the fate of there "ever" being any widespread availability of facilities for servicing the PAX system -- also forever insuring that the small population of PAX equipped vehicles would NEVER bring the cost of PAX tires down to any reasonable level.

At that point, low cost sets of take-off wheels were still fairly common on E-Bay, usually at about half the cost of conventional replacement rims, tires and TMPS sensors. And spare tires could be had for barely 10% of the cost of a new one today. That was the time to move -- as the ramifications of the Michelin move sunk in, the prices of these items, even when available, would go nowhere but up. And that's just about exactly the case today. Prices for take-off sets, when even available, are twice what they were. Even prices for used 17" rims has about doubled -- making retro-fitting OEM wheels and tires almost as costly as new custom rims or Aspec rims and tires.

I point this out mainly because I could see this as the same "Olds Diesel Engine" disaster that I was a victim of in '80-'81 -- those who were first to dump their diesel's and re-power with salvage yard Olds 350 V-8s got away cheap. Once the rush was on for replacement gas V-8s the yard prices doubled and tripled for "so-called" diesel "change out kits" Then too there were pleanty of law suits, but all that most people got were re-builds of the same Olds diesel that had already failed them and which only failed again -- severl additional times if one was dumb enough to stick with it.

Company's haven't changed much since then -- they just cannot admit they made a big mistake and do the really right thing that would make the buyer "whole". Hence the "extended" Michelin warranty, a palative that does absolutely NOTHING toward solving the problem where to get PAX tires serviced or replaced? What they count on is that owners will eventually sell the problem car and "eventually" some used buyer will bite the bullet and replace the PAX tires with standard wheels, etc.

A long winded rant, but what it boils down to is this: if you really like your PAX RL, bite the bullet and DUMP the PAX wheels and tires -- hopefully when they're worn out -- and install standard rims and tires. The cost now is about the same as replacing the PAX tires, but the savings in aggrivation and being left SOL with a flat will be immeasurable.

SpicyMikey

^^ Agree. And since you will probably want a spare tire kit with those non-pax tires, taking Honda up on the offer of a credit towards said kit makes sense. Get the kit when they come available this summer and swap out those pax tires when they wear out down the road. That's what I'm going to probably do.

JimA

The CBMS package is certainly BUNDLING forcing the customer to get the PAX tires and the following quote from Tire Rack (you can go to their site and look up tires for an RL with the Tech Package and get this quote) certainly looks like Honda wanted to control the sales of PAX tires.


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Jim

123456SPEED

JimA says depaxing the RL voids the auto warranty.
Is this true?? Please clarify.

JimA

Here is the quote from the proposed settlement. See section 9 that is carefully worded to basically say that it voides part of your coverage. If it doesn't show go to http://www.sfmslaw.com/user_documents/honda-mich-notice.pdf

neuronbob

What a load of horse$hit this settlement is. At this point, de-PAXing is the best answer. The warranty is not voided if you do this according to the pdf quoted above, unless it causes a problem (multiple owners here have de-PAXed and had no problems).

SpicyMikey

I agree. Wear out the tires, then replace tires and wheels, and install one of those spare tire kits you'll get with the settlement.

Of course if you like the refreshed RL, you could take the $300 credit from the settlement and get a new RL without the PAX tires.

JimA

I agree that many have De-Paxed without problems, however, Honda's lawyers put that exception in there for Honda’s benefit not ours. You can bet that if anything goes wrong in the drive train Honda/Acura will use this as an excuse not to cover the repair from lug nuts to transmissions. Somewhere I read about de-paxing that the there were differences in some of the software and maybe the suspension. This may be hearsay however why is Honda against it if it would make the customers happy?

Jim

SpicyMikey

True, but hopefully you'll get a good 30k+ on the tires and nothing will go wrong with the engine or tranny before 48k. Also, even if it does, my guess is that Acura will make the right call and not intentionally try to screw anyone. It would be like throwing salt on an already open wound. Why would they do that? It's probably a very low risk gamble to go ahead and remove the pax wheels and tires after they wear out.

JimA

I bought the 7 year warranty so I have a lot more miles to go.

jjh427

Wished I had read the comments before buying my 06 with the pax system
I think I will be depaxing as soon as the tires wear out