AVOID These Surprisingly UNRELIABLE Cars!

0:00 today I'm going to talk about surprisingly unreliable cars cars from brands that we generally relate to reliability like Toyota like Mazda and did I even say it Honda as well now each of the cars that I'm going to name in this video have got a really strong possibility of causing you some major headaches so for that reason I'd avoid them like the plague the first one it breaks my heart a little bit as a huge Honda fan but we need to talk about it it's the 1 L turbocharged 3 cylinder that you're going to find in civix from 2017 onwards now the big problem with this engine is it uses a wet belt so it's just like pu's pure Tech engines and the Ford EcoBoost engines it's really

0:45 disappointing that Honda decided to fit one of these given that they generally make some of the most reliable cars on the road but they did strangely you'll find a wealth of information about both the pure Tech and the EcoBoost engines but barely anyone is talking about this Honda unit which is why I wanted to include it as is often the case on a wet belt engine the rubber timing belt which is submerged in the hot oil starts to break apart and these little rubber particles clog up various parts of the engine we can tell its bits of belt when we strip it down because we run a magnet across it and the magnet doesn't pick it up that's a Telltale sign that that belt is breaking up and that's what we're finding in the oil usually the first casualty of this is the turbo will fail once that occurs that belt is going to

1:30 need to be changed the turbo's going to need to be swapped out and you're going to need to find a garage who are experienced and working with wet belts to do this it's a massive job it involves dismantling quite a bit of the engine and the worst part is once it's replaced there's nothing stopping the whole cycle from repeating itself once again so sadly my best advice here is just avoid this Honda engine can't believe I'm saying that next is one of the most common cars on our roads the second generation Ford Cougar introduced in 2012 they made these up until 2020 and some of these some of these could be massively problematic specifically I'm talking here about the cars made between 2012 and the facelift which occurred in 2016 these had an early version of the

2:17 powers shift automatic gearbox and it was truly Dreadful it had these plastic retainer Clips which would fatigue inside the gearbox and break off given that they were plastic after all that would leave the car stranded without drive and then what would happen is we'd need to pull the gearbox out of the car pull it apart retrieve all of the bits inside which would often make a real mess inside the gearbox find their way throughout the gearbox replace all the broken parts and put it back in for the same thing to potentially happen again now Ford realized this and in 2016 at the facelift they completely changed the design so if your heart is set on an auto cougar make sure it's a post 2016 facelift as a side note if you do go view one of these or any car for that

3:03 matter I'd really suggest taking one of these along with you this is Carly a little Gadget that works on just about any car made after 2001 it plugs right into the OBD port and it allows you to run manufacturer level diagnostic scans on that car in just a couple of minutes in most cases let me show you quickly on my latest purchase when I went to view this 2015 Volkswagen Golf R which I ended up buying I still plugged Carly and even though there was no lights shown on the dash the reason for that is Carly lets us check for any stored codes that the car might have on its many computers you certainly don't need to be a mechanic to use it you just plug it in hit connect and as you can see it starts connecting to the car right away so once that completes we've then got a full

3:48 report of every code every problem that this car has ever stored how Priceless is that when you're buying a used car let me show you in central Electronics because I did actually use this to solve an issue I had with this car last night so I had my my dog in the boot funly enough just for a short Journey when I got to my destination the boot would not open it just would not open so I plugged this in and I could see here so it was telling me that the read adjuster there was a short circuit on it now from that I determined it's likely going to be the fuse isn't it and sure enough when I checked the fuse the fuse for the boat release had blown so thanks Carly for that one the other problem I've got here radio key2 below lower limit value I

4:34 suspect that's probably just the key battery but to be sure I can make use of their smart mechanic which will basically give me a stepbystep process as to how I can look to resolve this issue and they've got a massive database 10,000 plus problems now the other thing you can do with Carly which is a bit more exciting is coding so essentially use Carly to unlock hidden features of your car this works especially well on Volkswagen Audi BMW but it works on others as well once complete we can access each of the cars ecus and make changes to them so I'm going to go for the top one here and see what we've got here's some of the changes that I've made to this car in particular so audible confirmation when unlocking so it beeps I'm going to turn that on I

5:20 like having that what else we got folding mirrors so when I lock the car using the key fob I want the mirrors to fold in it's sometimes parked on a busy road so that's ideal and there's loads of stuff you can change here even getting into the Nitty Gritty things like seat heating temperature for the driver when it's on stage three I do like a toasty seat so I'm going to turn that all the way up I'll finish off by coding that in done look if you'd like to get one of these for yourself and even better save a bit of money in the process make use of my discount code which is just sec5 honestly I wouldn't be recommending these if they weren't good I never go buy a used car without taking mine with me and having a quick look in the olden days we used to do our inspections and adjustments we set of spanners didn't we

6:07 nowadays this is how it's done right let's get back to our video Welcome Back I can't quite believe I'm going to say this but the next car on the list to talk about it's another Honda specifically it's an engine it's the newer 1.5 that you're going to find in the likes of CRVs and Civics now let me be clear here from the outset I'm not definitively saying a these engines at all costs like I would with the 1 L wet belt from Honda but there are a few things you maybe want to be aware of before you commit to a purchase on this engine so it's used all over the world in the USA there's been class action lawsuits against Honda over fuel delution issues on this particular engine similar is seen in China as well now fuel delution this is when the fuel

6:53 Finds Its way into the engine oil diluting it down and that can cause no end of problems if it's left in there now every car does it to some extent but these 1.5s they are especially bad for it when we analyze oil anything under 2% of fuel in there is considered pretty acceptable these often have quite a bit more than that now Honda claim there's no issue with the engines in the UK or Europe and therefore no action is being taken even though they're recalling millions of them elsewhere now we've seen similar to this with Forge recalling thousands of ecobust engines in the USA but not taking the those same steps here you do wonder how much the litigious processes which are common place in the USA play into these things

7:38 we just don't have the same level here in the UK the worrying thing is if you have a bit of a hunt around the forums you speak to a few owners there are now a couple that are noticing their oil level rising suggesting that some of the engines here may well have the same issues H are blamed operating in cold temperatures and short Journeys For This issue occurring and suggested that the UK just simply does not get cold enough for it to occur maybe just maybe these known UK and European cases are red herrings one-offs but I would urge a bit of caution on these 1.5s until we start to determine whether or not it is an issue they're still new enough that we don't commonly hear about widespread problems but as the years roll on who's

8:25 to say all I can do is make you aware the final car to make this list is from the last brand you would expect right after Honda it's Toyota specifically here this is more of a bargain partas but people out there are still buying them and worryingly I see them recommended all the time it's the 2012 Mark III Rav 4 well it ran up to 2012 now I felt this was an important one to include as it is often held as one of the most reliable cars you can buy whilst that may be the case with certain pet powered ones it's certainly not not the case with the Diesels it's the Diesels that are the problem these can have issues with the oil pump which can fail and end up costing you the engine they can also have head gasket problems

9:10 which is expensive even if you manage to catch it in time before the car starts overheating in general especially for this era of Toyota you should just stick to petol some of them are absolutely bomb prooof but their diesels they just weren't great and that includes cars like the Yaris and the avenus as well cars that you would just expect better from thanks to their pedol counterparts they're bit like Mazda in that respect with their Sky Active diesels these were absolutely terrible whilst the pedal equivalents well they're some of the most reliable engines you can buy it's all a bit strange isn't it well there you have it a handful of cars that you might assume are reliable sensible purchases but in reality are very likely to hit you in the wallet are there any other terrible engines you can think of

9:57 that should be in this list if so please do drop them in the comments section below if you haven't already please do hit that subscribe button I'm going to try and get to 100,000 subscribers this year I've got my place on the wall here for my little YouTube plaque so it would really help me out if you do hit subscribe also hit the like button and I'll see you for the next one