NHTSA Complaint #11561380 — 2018 HONDA RIDGELINE

Our 2018 Honda Ridgeline broke a connecting rod, that quickly punched through the engine block. My entire family was left stranded on the side of I-79, at night, in the mountains of West Virginia, in subfreezing temperatures, with no power or heat. It took an hour for a tow truck to reach us (we were in the middle of nowhere) and another hour to get it towed to the nearest Honda dealership. The only warning we had was a slight rattle for about 10 minutes, followed by a POW, immediate and complete loss of engine power, and all the dashboard lights came on simultaneously. The dealership (Urse Honda in Bridgeport WV) confirmed the hole in the side of the engine block, and let me take pictures of the broken rod cap. Ironically, the month before the catastrophic failure, on 11/9/2023 Honda internally released Technical Service Bulletin (TSB) [XXX] that speaks to "internal damage at the connecting rod bearings, possibly leading to engine failure." However I only found out about this TSB AFTER my engine blew up. Furthermore even though this TSB describes exactly the failure I experienced, it ONLY covers 2017 and 2019 Ridgelines, mysteriously skipping over my 2018 Ridgeline. Because of this (for now) Honda is refusing to cover damages to my engine, and also to repair other customers' 2018 Ridgelines before they too catastrophically fail. Even more curious the front 2/3rds of the Ridgelines and Pilots are the same, replacing only the third row Pilot seat with a truck bed in the Ridgelines. Yet the 2018 Pilots ARE covered by this TSB. Honda cannot explain this discrepancy. INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)