Fixing the Fit

We've had this ongoing problem with the Fit that's been around for a few years, if not more. Now I (incorrectly) attributed it to some bodywork that we had done several years back, when our mechanic RM was closing the back hatch and being the massively strong guy that he is, put a major dent in the door. He took full responsibility and referred us to a guy who does bodywork. I felt bad because it wasn't completely his fault, but again, he took responsibility and offered to pay, so we went and had it fixed.

Shortly thereafter the latch on the back hatch started having problems, and it became stiff and difficult to move. The spring action on it was gone, and over time it became very hard to use. If you didn't go to great lengths to make sure the latch was back into place (since the spring action was gone), the hatch wouldn't shut properly, thus risking it flying open while we were driving. You literally had to push hard to get it back into place. I tried using WD40 with no luck. I figured it would be really expensive to fix so I lived with this for a couple of years and while it was a complete pain, it was manageable. One of the major drawbacks of the problem, however, was when we locked the doors, the hatch would lock and then it would not unlock. It took a lot of fiddling with the key, sometimes applying a bit of force to get it to work. I was afraid of breaking the key in the lock, so as you can imagine, it was far from ideal.

Finally I decided to deal with the problem and took it to Meunier, figuring it would cost a bundle to fix because they were going to have to dismantle the entire back side to get to it. Well, as it turns out, it wasn't a problem with the internal mechanism but rather with the hatch itself. It had rusted out so the spring action was gone and eventually it stopped working altogether. They replaced it and lo and behold, the thing works beautifully. It still cost me about $100, but not only can we use the hatch with ease, but I'm not concerned about locking the doors anymore. Thanks a bunch to Meunier, my heroes. Apparently this is a common problem because the dealer sells a fair number of these latches on a regular basis. Go figure.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Revistadelmotor for the pic.