2014 Honda CR-V
This year drew an ordinary 585 complaints for a Honda CR-V — the model's median is 400. What they were about is the unusual part: 8% of them mention timing, against 3% across the other years of this generation.
Generation 3 of the Honda CR-V, which began in 2012 and ran to 2016. Everything below compares this year against the others in that generation, not against a different car wearing the same name.
NHTSA opened a defect investigation into this model year.
| Complaints filed | 585 |
|---|---|
| Median for this model | 400 |
| Involving a crash | 36 |
| Involving a fire | 7 |
| Recalls | 1 |
| NHTSA crash rating | 5/5 |
| EPA combined | 25.5 mpg |
What the complaints were about
- timing — 8% of this year's complaints, against 3% across the other years of this generation (2.6×). Owners wrote it as: timing, timing chain, rattles, variable.
Words owners used for the same problem are counted together, so a fault written four different ways is measured once. Grouped by which complaints they appear in, not by a list anyone wrote in advance.
What owners wrote
AT COLD START-UP, THE ENGINE RATTLES LOUDLY FOR A FEW SECONDS, EVERY TIME NOW. DEFECTIVE VARIABLE VALVE TIMING CONTROL (VTC) ACTUATOR. VTC ACTUATOR IS DEFECTIVE. OVER TIME, THIS CAN CAUSE FRAGMENTED ISSUES, AFFECTING OTHER INTEGRAL AREAS OF VEHICLE OPERATION.
AT COLD START UP, THE ENGINE RATTLES LOUDLY FOR ABOUT 2 SECONDS. POSSIBLE FIX, VARIABLE VALVE TIMING CONTROL, VTC, ACTUATOR [VIN]. STARTED AT 36,000 MILES. KNOWN ISSUE FOR YEARS BY HONDA. SHOULD BE RECALLED AS IT HAS BEEN KNOWN BY THEM AND IS EXPENSIVE TO REPL…
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint filings, with identifying details removed.
Recalls for this year
- 23V858000 FUEL SYSTEM, GASOLINE Fixed free of charge.
How this was worked out
Every year of the Honda CR-V was compared against its own history rather than against other cars, which removes popularity and age from the answer — a common car draws more complaints at equal reliability, and an older one has had longer to accumulate them. A year is flagged when it drew at least 2.5× this model's median and at least 50 complaints.
This is a fault record, not a review. Nobody files a federal complaint to say the car was fine, so it shows what tends to go wrong — not whether owners liked it, and not whether it is a good car.
Source: NHTSA complaints, recalls and investigations, retrieved . Look this vehicle up directly on NHTSA's site to check anything here.
Own a 2014 Honda CR-V? What happened to yours?
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