Like the Toyota Prius, the unibody Ridgeline is one of those cars that fell victim to the mean-spirited, maybe outrage-driven commentary of the mid-2000s. We all sat around the comments sections, lambasting the Ridgeline with the “not a real truck” comments, making fun of its transverse-mounted engine and Honda Pilot/Accord/Odyssey platform. “That thing’s just a minivan with a bed; get you a REAL truck,” we said on message boards as if we had reached the pinnacle of cleverness, with our fingers on the pulse of what every single buyer wanted from a truck.
Meanwhile, actual Ridgeline buyers have been exceedingly happy with them, judging from how high the resale is on first-generation Honda Ridgelines. Even with more than 150,000 miles, it’s not uncommon for a good condition example to fetch in the five-figure range. That’s not cheap for a truck that is now more than fifteen years old at its core. I’ve been passively looking for broken-down Ridgelines to buy, recondition, and sell, but as quickly as a candidate appears on the usual apps, it’s gone.
Look For A Cheap One, And You’ll Find Rust. Lots Of It
However, the handful of trucks that aren’t snapped up by other shrewd flippers are in really, really rough condition. As an Ohioan, I’m no stranger to rust, especially “Honda rust,” a common name for the mostly cosmetic rust and bubbling that often appears on rocker panels and rear wheel arches. The Ridgelines I’ve seen, though, go way beyond Honda Rust, and into serious structurally-compromising rust. Every third Ridgeline I’ve seen for sale has a “bad frame, parts only” caveat in the ad. Even the ones that are somewhat still streetable often have rotten rocker panels, disintegrating wheel arches, and a grodiness that I have not seen on any similar vintage traditional truck. Hell, the Ridgeline shares some of its structural design with the Accord, Odyssey, and Pilot, but I’ve never seen corrosion eat up those cars like it does the Ridgeline.
Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist listings represent just a single datapoint to inform my claim that Ridgelines are rustbuckets, so I went to the internet to figure out if I just had coincidentally found a bad batch of worn-out Honda trucks. Turns out, no — these things have, for a long time, been crumbling like Oreos left in milk for too long.
You’ll Find Plenty Of Rust On Ridgeline Forums
In 2016, a man took to the Ridgeline forum asking if his then nine-year-old, 83,000 mile 2007 Ridgeline RTL should be this rusty. In 2018, another forum member declined to buy a then-12-year-old 2006 Ridgeline with a mere 135,000 miles because of terrible rust. Just typing “Ridgeline Rust” into the Google brings up plenty of Canadian and U.S. rust belt Ridgelines with once-happy owners who are seemingly left with a truck-shaped pile of iron oxide that has a Honda badge on it.
The Ridgeline’s rust issues are fairly well documented; after all, the truck has been recalled for that very recently. We’ve written about it here back in June 2022; Honda recalled Ridgelines in rust belt states explicitly for rusting rear fuel tank and subframe issues. Salt brine used on roads can become trapped between the fuel tank and frame, and could eat away at the straps that secure the fuel tank to the vehicle’s frame, meaning the fuel tank could fall off. It was so bad that NHTSA issued a stop-sale on the affected trucks until Honda came up with an official remedy.
The remedy isn’t easy. If the corrosion is so bad that it’s unfixable, Honda may offer to buy the truck back from the customer. According to NHTSA, Honda received complaints about the Ridgeline’s fuel tank rust issues as early as 2016.
The Recall And Remedy Procedure Are Absurd
The severity of this truck’s ability to corrode cannot be understated. It’s more than just forum posts and classified-listing anecdotes. Honda’s own recall remedy procedure shows some pretty harrowing conditions underneath Ridgelines, confirming that these machines (especially early examples) can be complete rust buckets.
The procedure begins with an inspection, which starts off with the technician lifting the Ridgeline from the spots pointed out above. “If the vehicle’s support points are compromised due to corrosion,” the procedure makes clear “please use best shop practices to lift the vehicle.”
From there, the tech uses a specialized frame inspection tool to attempt to puncture the frame rails. The goal is for the tool to not puncture, indicating that the frame is strong enough to be operated on. If the tool goes through the steel, it’s a fail, the car can’t be worked on, and it’ll likely be eligible for a buyback from Honda.
Yet, if the punch doesn’t go through, then the technician is likely in for probably one of the worst jobs of their career. Aside from washing out any lingering salt via the holes shown above, and applying wax inside the frame rails, the technician will install new tank straps and affix a brace to the unibody. On its face, sure, that sounds simple and easy, but these are rust belt cars; there might not be much metal there to affix to. Parts might disintegrate as they’re removed, and some bolts may break off or just spin in their holes.
The image directly above shows wax application in a hole normally used to hold up the fuel tank. Honda recommends that technicians hold up the fuel tank with a jackstand, then install a new crossbar that squishes the fuel tank straps against the body:
Unsurprisingly, Honda has a repair procedure if parts break or bolts spin in their holes. It involves things that most midwestern wrenchers are pretty familiar with like torching, cutting, and using loads of penetrating oil. I’ll bet that it still won’t be enough to make this job easy.
Procedure C Is A Job From Hell
Heck, just look at the state of the frame in the official pictures that Honda uses to illustrate to technicians how to do the job. There are several alternative procedures to do if the truck’s frame is that crusty, and all of them look like hell on earth.
Repair procedure C is particularly gnarly. It looks like the front half of the whole rear subframe mounting points love to disintegrate. The fix first involves “Using an air chisel or air saw, [to] remove a portion of the body panel as indicated in green [two images above] to allow access to the bolt top end and its frame collar.”
After shoving vice grips through the hole you just chiseled into the body, you’re then told to remove the rusty subframe bolt. At that point, the repair appears to involve a brace that marries the remaining bits of the old rear subframe to the remaining bits of the truck’s granulated unibody.
I suppose it’s probably safe, Honda is very strict on how this repair is applied. There can’t be any deep cutting into the unibody structure, which would unequivocally compromise crash strength. But I question: If the truck needs specialized braces, is the rest of the truck worth saving?
Probably not. Here’s a video of a NY-area Honda technician implementing that same repair. Although it technically passed the punch test, the rest of the frame was in terrible shape, to the point where it qualified for a manufacturer buyback, even after the work was done.
The Ridgeline’s Platform-Mate Has A Similar Problem
This fix doesn’t even seem to be all that unprecedented for Honda. Although I’ve never seen too many failed rear subframes personally, Honda had somewhat similar issues with the First generation Pilot. Like the Ridgeline, the fix involved welding in new Honda-provided braces to the rear subframe. The repair procedure for the Pilot includes the images below alongside the text “Cut the frame along the scored cut lines using a cutoff wheel being careful not to cut into the frame insert mounting holes” and “Install the cast frame insert and hand-tighten the frame insert mounting bolts in order.” Yes, you read that right: Cut the frame on a unibody vehicle; how is this procedure even worth doing?
Despite the terrifying rust issues, I still like the Ridgeline, and I am in search of a not-unsafe one as a cheap tow and haul pig. If you’re looking for a first-generation Honda Ridgeline, just do me a favor, look closely, and be careful, okay?
Image Credit: screenshots from Honda/NHTSA
I think it’s wild that Honda is volunteering this recall. It’s not at all uncommon here in upstate NY for all different makes/models that are 10-15 years old to be scrapped for corrosion. Look at the example listing you posted… rusted out after 17 years and 388 THOUSAND miles is a completely acceptable lifespan in my book.
Inquiring minds want to know: are there examples of people who had their trucks Krowned or DIY rustproofed from new who aren’t experiencing these rust issues?
Having installed Safe-T-Cap frame panels on my rusted Tacoma, I feel the pain of working with this David Tracy (Non Cali-fancy version) level of rust. I filled a 5 gallon bucket with the flakes that fell out and off of the frame.
At least with frame repairs you can remove the bed. The Ridgeline and Pilot are unibody. I suspect we will see more issues as people keep their vehicles longer due to insane car prices.
That and the dealer markups often equating to a 50% markup over MSRP. (And then.. if you’re in CA, you’re paying 10% sales tax on that markup..)
The tech in the video 100% was milking Honda for a warranty claim. He got it to pass the punch test allowing him to do gravy warranty work knowing it would be a buyback anyway because of other very rusted areas. Honda’s a great company to work with that considers their dealers partners and treats them very well. This tech is a scumbag and I hope his video gets him busted.
I thought the term was “Honda rot”?
I’m still stuck on collective nouns.
A McMansion of Ridgelines
(Roofer humor)
Feels like it might be worth looking into alternative de-icing agents. I know salt is cheap, but there are so many downsides.
Downsides for whom exactly?
Salt is cheap for the city/county/state.
It’s only expensive in terms of maintenance for the private citizens. Why would our government care about their costs?
Traded in my 2014 Sport a year ago. It lived outdoors in SEWI and showed far less corrosion than my Dodge pickups after similar age and miles. Zero exterior corrosion and very minor underneath, only around interruptions on surfaces. No corrosion of brake or fuel lines (Dodge looked okay but trans, fuel and brake lines were all replaced by 7 years, along with the oil pan and gas tank filler tube.) So, I’ll count myself lucky and cross my fingers on my 22 Black Edition. Honestly very surprised to read about this! BTW I have a factory plastic fender flare kit, if anyone needs, black finish.
Would it be worth mentioning in the article that this is a voluntary recall by Honda?
https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-db2492147c55da663fd32edfea1b6ef5-statement-by-american-honda-regarding-rear-frame-corrosion-recall-2006-2014-honda-ridgeline
I wondered why I didn’t see too many of these around recently. I know frame rust and stuff happens on “real” trucks, but I live at the southern end of the rust belt and I’ve never seen a truck that new rust out that bad. Hell, my ‘99 K2500 was a plow truck all its life before I got it last year, and even it’s not *that* rusty. Yeah, the cab corners are bad and the rockers aren’t great, but the frame is fine. That Ridgeline rust is the stuff of nightmares.
Look south, and keep it the hell away from real winter, I guess. One of my friends sorta-inherited a Ridgeline and NGL, it’s a pretty nice truck. Comfy, rides well. The biggest downside is that it has some big blind spots.
Breaking News! Japanese car sold in America rusts like crazy! More news at 10.
Honda has had significant manufacturing and engineering operations in mid-Ohio for 40 years +. So they certainly have plenty of environmental experience.
But Honda hasn’t been making unibody trucks for 40+ years in any market. Third-gen CR-Vs, first-gen Pilots, and first gen Ridgelines are all hitting the 15-20 year mark and all are having some kind of catastrophic rust failure problem. Somewhere in the process of increasing the frame stiffness for increased GVWR Honda learned how to build efficient salt traps, and now they’re having to unlearn it.
I mean, 17 years and hundreds of thousands of miles in the rust belt will corrode basically anything. It’d be nice if it lasted longer, but it’s a decently large multiple of the warranty period at this point. “Like crazy” is maybe a bit hyperbolic.
I mean…. this is really no different from domestic trucks. 2nd and 3rd gen Dakotas, for example, turn into swiss cheese pretty quickly, I see them often with visible gaps INTO the bed from outside the vehicle. I’m surprised the fenders stay on. They use so much road salt here this is the fate of any ferrous vehicle driving regularly in winter, eventually.
This is also why I drive a first gen Insight all winter; salt won’t really kill an all aluminum chassis in my lifetime.
Thing with a BOF truck is the frame’s condition is usually observed by just looking, and since the bottom sections rust first, you can often get substantial holes forming before the frame is in danger of failing. On unibody trucks there are critical suspension pieces or subframe attachments where the thread eye is welded into a multi-layer”rail” of steel stampings which are not separable from the body. Hence the punch tests required by this TSB, the “frame rail” can be completely rotten from the inside and just show surface rust from the outside, right up to the moment where it literally falls apart at highway speed.
I wonder if any of this is just a lack of truck experience with Honda?
The wife asked me why rear wheelwells go out on trucks and I explained the lack of a plastic liner to keep crap from flinging out of the tires and causing damage like cars have. Surely Honda didn’t get blindsided by such factors on a vehicle that can’t afford to have the body rot off to the extent a BOF truck can?
For some reason BOF struck me as funny.(-:
Liners help but they also can be traps for the salt mix if anything gets by.
I think Honda, as others have, got caught by lack of testing and possibly the realization of some regions love of salt. At various levels it’s a big employer and if you have a local mine it’s gold to a politician and it sells more cars.
Would the stinky underbody spray prevent this? This was the first winter I had my car sprayed and I wonder if the treatment is wishful thinking or actually prevents rust.
Use WoolWax and you get good protection AND a very nice smell. I wish they had that stuff 40 yrs ago when I lived in Cleveland.
Thanks! I have no idea what the tire shop used, but my van stank like a refinery for days. I will definitely look up WoolWax for next season.
I have no affiliation with the company but I love their stuff. If you have an air compressor, you can apply it yourself pretty easily with the kit they sell. If you heat the product up to 120 degrees or so it sprays on nicely then sort of congeals on everything.
Generic is waxoil but i prefer stinky por15. Get an air freshener anti rust isnt a perfume.
Masterseries isn’t as well known but works just as well in my experience. It’s easier to apply and clean up than POR, and it’s easy to sand too. Just make sure you top coat it and you’re all set, guess the upside is that POR works pretty damn well without a top coat too. Did a comparison on my 72 Super Beetle, about 12 years ago I painted my front brake drums with Masterseries and the rears with POR. Both covered in a solid layer of rust, no prep or top coat. Both have some rust through, but there’s a little less on the POR drums. That car has (unfortunately) seen its fair share of snow and salt as well. When it goes under the knife for rust repair, I’m likely to use either Masterseries or POR as a primer to really keep things protected. Not sure where I was going with that, but here we are.
Toyota had the same issue back in the 90s on their trucks. They ended up buying many of them back with great credits towards a new model. A friend had a Toyota pickup where the frame rails rusted so much, the entire rear end fell out. The truck had over 300k miles, but Toyota gave him 10k on a trade. He didn’t pay much more when it was new.
Every used Taco ad: “Frame replaced under warranty”
Former Honda Tech here… I had done about 15 or 20 of these trucks. Thankfully all repair procedure A though so the “easy” one. Out of the few hundred trucks my dealer did while I was there, 3 failed (and about 5 more should’ve but at the test point, they were fine). I can can confirm, this is the worst recall I’ve ever done on a vehicle and I felt like I had to cut corners just to make flat rate time (2.2 hours for A, add .2 for B and .2 for C). I had one of the 3 failures and it was a similarity clause vehicle imported from Canada and that was a nightmare of a car to get sorted as Honda of America didn’t want to cover it and Honda Canada didn’t want to touch it either. It’s amazing how rusty some of these vehicles are that are still on the road…
Did the Japanese have rustproofing brain fart around 2000-2008? because this,roughly coincides with Mazda’s rust issue era. I am thankful I left the rust belt in 94, we only ever see rusty fasteners around exhaust manifolds and the orange stuff is usually rock dust
I think everyone did.
You outta see the Caliber/Compass/Patriot front and rear subframe issues….
Funniest thing is that the original 4 model years, 2007-2012, got an extended warranty…. that the 2013+’s didn’t get, despite the fact that if you compare them, they’re the literal exact same.
Early 2000’s is when automotive paint began to be legally required to be water based, (instead of laqure based), which caused rust issues for many auto makers.
Above said some auto makers also have a business strategy of making & selling cheap ass shit & they could give 2 fucks if their cars rust significantly past 5 yrs., in the US the worst offender I know are of course for Stallantis products. Producing & selling cheap shit (& continually hovering near bankrupcy) was their business strategy for easily the last +4 decades.
The Honda Ridgeline recommended by David Tracy
A unibody vehicle is not conducive to rust repairs or replacement of rusted out frame bits? WHO WOULD HAVE EVER GUESSED THAT?
literally everyone with any sort of rusty unibody car experience ever
Unibody pickups make no sense. People use and abuse Trucks, having a Truck with a rusted out bed is not very uncommon, but treat a Unibody pickup the same way and you’ve compromised the structural integrity of the WHOLE vehicle, not just the bed.
I understand your point, but I don’t think I agree. A dented up, rusted out, beat to shit bed is in fact a common occurrence…….. on work trucks and farm pickups. I don’t think that’s the problem with the Ridgelines here, and I don’t think it will become a problem with Mavericks and Santa Cruzes, just because they are never ever used as work trucks and won’t get hashed bed floors.
Oh also the Aussies and Europeans use unibody utes for work trucks all the time and beat on those, and I don’t know that they have notable rust issues.
Well that is simply because Australia doesn’t really get winter at all, and most of Europe has nothing like the conditions of the US Rust Belt (and uses a lot less salt as a result).
FTFY
And if you build a pickup to be durable enough for the few it’ll last even longer for the many.
Yes but as it has been beaten into our heads people dont use trucks for truck stuff and have no business driving them.
So what I am hearing is that I want to find Ridgelines from Arizona or Cali. Except then I need to replace some plastic or rubber parts from the dry heat.
Shop Oregon or Washington, no road salt less sun, although Willamette Valley vehicles sometimes grow moss
Stop telling people!!!!
I’ll be selling my 2006 once I find a SUV I like at MSRP… 😀
I had an 07 RTL That was great in every way except for a check engine light and rust. It’s a shame, it’s an awesome truck.
Also Ohio.
So Honda did a bad job by having Ridgelines rust while having 300k+ miles on them living in Ohio? I wonder how many pickups from the big 3 (or toyota) would look after the same amount of miles in the rust belt. Maybe Honda’s problem was they made them too reliable so they even got to 200k-300k.
This is spoken like someone who has never actually been to the rust belt and seen how many old trucks are still driving around.
Amazing artwork can be performed with urethane spray foam, an electric carving knife, sanding block and color matching paint. If you haven’t seen what people keep on the road it is worth a trip.
Also shiny silver tape, that makes rust all better you know
I see a lot of 90’s GMs where the box pushing against the cab is what keeps them from collapsing. The 90s fords and dodges tend to have massive body rust but less obvious frame collapse. 2000’s ones are definitely starting to hit the frame collapse years and most I see from the big 3 are well into the body rot years unless they have been very well maintained.
Sure, but those trucks are a decade or more older than these Ridgelines.
Plenty of GMT400s still working hard around here.
The frame isn’t rusted on those, its the bed supports that have rotted out and let the floor of the bed drop onto the frame. It was a pretty easy fix on my superduty
Did you read the article? It’s not Ridgelines with 300k+. He specifically said that a lot of this debilitating rust was on vehicles with 150k or less.
Ah, good point, didn’t read the whole thing. Under 150k and rusting THAT bad isn’t acceptable.
Darn, here I was thinking about buying a Honda Rustline … I mean Ridgeline.
CRV’s are also now being recalled for rust
https://apnews.com/article/honda-crv-recall-frame-rust-de27e6f9d1bdf891f28043e67b46b623