NHTSA Complaint #11431246 — 2018 HONDA RIDGELINE

My complaint for my 2018 Honda Ridgeline Sport is with Honda's part number 32109-T6Z-A00 which is a wiring harness leading into the tailgate of the vehicle. This harness houses a wiring bundle including the back up camera. I experienced a failure of the camera on August 9, 2021 when the screen was black however the guide bars were still present. I consulted a few online resources and found that Honda is collecting information on this failure where the wire of the camera becomes sheered off and in the process breaks the wire to the camera rendering it blank. I contacted a Honda dealership to get a new harness and and had the repair made on August 31, 2021 only to find that Honda only authorized the same defective part number as the replacement. The 2020 and later models have a different part number with no reported issues, but because my vehicle is a 2018, they installed the same defective harness. The design of the tailgate has not changed since 2017. The back up camera is a vital safety component on my vehicle. I am at a complete loss as to why Honda would replace a faulty part with the same faulty part, other than as a way of charging $360 to get another repair.