2014 Honda Accord9th gen (2013–2017), second year

Updated 2026-09-01NHTSA counts read on this date — 965 complaints. They rise over time.

The Starter Is 200 Filings on the 2014 Accord — And There’s No Recall for It

200 filings on this model year name the starter. That is 20.7 percent of everything filed on the car, and the highest share of any Accord year in this series — the 2013 runs 14.5 percent and by the 2016 car it is 2.8.

33 say the owner was stranded. 30 describe a clicking sound. 8 name a second or a third starter.

Four recall campaigns cover the gasoline 2014 Accord. A connecting rod bolt, a battery sensor, a driveshaft and a fuel pump. The starter is not among them.

There’s a second part that hides the same way. 114 filings name the ABS modulator, and NHTSA scatters it across four sections so it never tops any of them.

One note on scope: the hybrids are out. NHTSA files this car under four model names and the names don’t split cleanly — gasoline cars turn up under the hybrid names and the other way around. Every filing here was matched to a gasoline car by its VIN. That took out 42.

Owners have filed 965 complaints with NHTSA about the gasoline 2014 model year. Honda sold 366,678 Accords in calendar year 2013 and 388,435 in 2014 — that figure covers the whole Accord line including the hybrid — and 2014 cars were sold across both of those years. 965 complaints against a few hundred thousand cars is not a failure rate, and 965 filings are not 965 owners.

The basics

Second year of the ninth generation and mechanically a carryover. The 2.4-liter four with a CVT or a six-speed manual, the 3.5-liter V6 with a six-speed automatic, and a six-speed manual V6 in the coupe.

Specs

Displacement and cylinder count are from NHTSA’s vPIC catalog, which holds what the manufacturer submitted. Fuel economy is EPA, city / highway / combined, in mpg. EPA rates two automatics for each engine, so both are here.

What owners filed

Sections below are sorted by count. Each complaint is counted once, under a two-step rule. Step one: if a filing names a specific failure — the power steering, a head gasket, a fuel pump, the collision mitigation system, the daytime running lights — it goes to that section. Step two: everything left over gets sorted by NHTSA’s own component labels, in a fixed order — driver assistance, steering, brakes, fuel, engine, transmission, electrical, lighting, air bags, body.

The same rule applies to every year in this series. The cross-year table on the model page uses NHTSA’s labels alone, so a section here can come out bigger or smaller than the matching row on that page.

The sections below add up to 816. The remaining 149 are spread across the smaller categories, and the last section below breaks them out.

The starter doesn’t have a section, and that is worth saying plainly. Owners describe it as a no-start, a click, a stall or a dead battery, and NHTSA files those under whatever label fits the sentence. The 200 land in seven of the ten sections: 115 in electrical, 42 in engine, single digits scattered across five more, and 26 in the thin categories at the bottom. The 200 is counted across the whole record, not inside one section, so it does not add onto anything below it.

One more thing behaves that way: the ABS modulator. 114 filings name it — the modulator, the ABS module, the ABS pump, the VSA module — which is 11.8 percent of the record and the highest share of any Accord year in this series. When it fails the dashboard lights up all at once, so NHTSA files the same part under four different labels — 40 in steering, 37 in brakes, 26 in driver assistance, 5 in electrical — and 6 more scattered past those. Five filings name both it and the starter.

It is also expensive and slow. 19 say the replacement part was on backorder, and of the 26 that give a dollar figure, 13 are $2,000 or more. No campaign covers it, and 76 of the 114 were filed in 2023 or after, so this is the part of the car that is still arriving.

Engine type comes from decoding the VIN attached to each filing. 903 of the 965 decode to one of the two engines this car was sold with — 728 are the 2.4 and 175 are the V6, so the V6 is 19.4 percent of the filings that decode. Three more come back with engines the Accord never had, which is what a mistyped VIN looks like.

This is not a failure rate by engine. Nothing here divides failures by how many of each engine Honda built, because the complaint record doesn’t contain that. What the sections below show is how far each section sits above or below that 19.4 percent.

Electrical — 241

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged electrical system.

The largest section, and 115 of the 241 name the starter. 80 say the car would not start, 72 name the battery, 15 name the alternator or the charging system.

ODI 11613998:

“part 66988 was diagnosed and confirmed starter motor not engaging replaced starter motor and verified repairs for 1062.11 dollars. I was stranded multiple times with the car not starting, as this problem was intermittent. we have a number of hondas, the starter never failed. I looked at your web site and there were many complaints about this problem. I contacted honda customer service and they refused to acknowledge that this is a known problem, and not subject to recall. I want to call your attention that many honda customers have lodged complaintes and a recall notice should be considered. thank you”

ODI 11563367:

“Honda has issued a service bulletin for a known issue with the starter on my 2014 Honda Accord V6. I have been in several situations with my children where my car would not start for 2-3 hours. This is very much a safety concern in a Michigan winter! The repair to this costs ~$750 and only needs to be done because of a manufacturing error.”

Twelve of the 200 starter filings mention a Honda service bulletin. Service bulletins aren’t recalls. They don’t show up in the recall database, and what the recall database says is that there’s no campaign for the starter.

Steering — 161

Counted as filings that name the power steering or the EPS, plus those NHTSA tagged steering.

Steering was the biggest thing on the 2013 car. Not here. That car has 514 steering filings, 36 percent of its record. This one has 161, or 17 percent. The 2013 page has the detail; the drop is real in both count and share, and the record doesn’t say what changed.

106 still name the power steering or the EPS. But 40 filings in this section name the ABS modulator, and 32 of those also name the power steering — on the 2013 car it is 17 of 324. A quarter of the steering section isn’t steering. It’s the modulator.

The 2013 car’s steering filings leaned toward the V6. These don’t: of the 153 that decode, 17.0 percent are V6s against 19.4 percent overall — two points the other way.

Engine — 145

Counted as filings that name a head gasket or overheating, plus those NHTSA tagged engine or engine and cooling.

42 of these name the starter, which is what happens when a car will not turn over and the owner writes about the engine. 21 describe oil consumption and 19 describe the engine stalling.

One of the four campaigns is here, and it is the narrowest of them — three days of production.

Brakes — 67

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged service brakes or parking brake.

37 of the 67 name the ABS modulator — more than half the section. Of the 30 that don’t, 8 are about the pedal.

Transmission — 62

Counted as filings that name the CVT, the transmission or a driveshaft, plus those NHTSA tagged power train.

14 name the driveshaft, which is the campaign below. 6 name the CVT.

Driver assistance — 47

Counted as filings that name the collision mitigation system, lane keeping or adaptive cruise, plus those NHTSA tagged forward collision avoidance or lane departure.

That’s more than the 2013 car’s 37, in a year with two-thirds the filings. 31 of the 47 are about stability control, ABS or traction control and 26 name the modulator, and 22 filings are in both — this section is mostly the modulator under a different label. Only two name the cruise control and one the LaneWatch camera. Honda Sensing doesn’t arrive until the 2016 car, so NHTSA is filing older equipment under its forward-collision and lane-departure labels.

Fuel system — 32

Counted as filings that name a fuel pump or fuel in the oil, plus those NHTSA tagged fuel system or fuel and propulsion.

11 name the fuel pump. The campaign covering it arrived in December 2023, nine years after the car was built.

Air bags and belts — 30

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged air bags or seat belts.

Seven say a bag did not deploy in a crash. Six are about a seat belt rather than a bag.

Body and structure — 22

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged structure.

11 are about a door or the trunk. Five are paint or rust.

Exterior lighting — 9

Counted as filings that name the daytime running lights, plus those NHTSA tagged exterior lighting.

Eight of the nine name a headlight. On the 2016 car the same section is 116.

The rest is thin

149 filings. NHTSA tagged 73 of them unknown or other, 19 seats, 10 visibility/wiper, 8 tires, 7 vehicle speed control and 6 suspension. Nothing else reaches five.

11 filings on this model year mention the head restraint, and 10 of those describe pain or posture. On the 2013 car, counted the same way, it is 28.

Recalls

NHTSA lists five campaigns for this model year, but one of them — 15V602000, the hybrid propulsion software — applies only to the Accord Hybrid, which this page doesn’t cover. Four campaigns reach a gasoline 2014 Accord.

The connecting rod bolts, and a three-day window

15V121000 — March 2015. Connecting rod bolts that may not have been torqued properly, which Honda says can damage the engine.

“Loss of engine power may result in a vehicle stall, increasing the risk of a crash. If the engine leaks oil in the proximity of hot engine or exhaust components, there is an increased risk of a fire.”

The remedy is not a bolt. Dealers replace the engine short block.

On the 2014 Accord this campaign covers four-cylinder cars built on three days: July 29, 30 and 31, 2014. It reaches further into the 2015 cars and the 2015 CR-V, but on this model year it is three days of production, and the V6 is not in it at all. Seven filings here mention the campaign, the short block or a connecting rod.

The driveshaft, and where the car has lived

20V769000 — December 2020, covering 2013–2015 Accords with the four-cylinder engine and the CVT, but only cars originally sold, or ever registered, in one of twenty-three places that salt their roads: Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Honda says the driveshafts were assembled with a lubricant that degraded their protective coating, which left them open to road salt.

Whether this campaign is yours depends on where the car has lived, not just on the VIN. The 2013 car got a second pass at this in June 2025; this one did not.

The battery sensor and the fuel pump

17V418000 — June 2017. Water can get into the case around the battery sensor. Honda says that can short it out and start a fire. It covers 2013 through 2016 Accords.

23V858000 — December 2023, the fuel pump, covering 2013–2023 Accords and most of the Honda and Acura line. The pump can fail and stall the engine while driving. Owner letters went out September 6, 2024.

What doesn’t show up in the complaints

NHTSA gives the 2014 Accord sedan five stars overall, four in the frontal test, five on side impact and five on rollover. The coupe scores five across all four. That is the same set of scores as the 2013.

Nothing in the complaint record argues with that. Owners do not file about crash ratings.

The 2.4 with the CVT returns 30 mpg combined, five better than the V6 automatic.

What the complaint curve says

2013    2     2018  113     2023   71
2014   70     2019  127     2024   53
2015   65     2020   80     2025   56
2016   53     2021  106     2026   22
2017   88     2022   59

The tallest year is 2019, five years after the car was built, and the second is 2018.

Those are the years the starter filings arrive. 97 of the 200 were filed in 2018 and 2019 — nearly half, in two of the fourteen years the record covers.

A complaint count going up can mean owners got a recall notice, not that the cars got worse. There is no notice here to react to. Nothing was announced in 2018 or 2019 at all.

Complaint databases collect complaints. Nobody files to say the car started. You can’t compare these numbers across models unless both sets were counted the same way. What this data supports is the ranking inside this car and how the starter filings sit in time.

If you’re looking at one

Ordered by how much it hurts if it goes wrong, not by how many people filed.

Ask the seller not to warm it up before you get there. Start it cold, then let it sit an hour and start it again. 200 filings name the starter, 30 describe a clicking sound, and 10 of those say it clicked and never cranked. The failure is intermittent by nature — several filings describe a car that started fine for the seller and failed the next morning.

Ask how many starters the car has had. 8 filings name a second or a third one. There is no recall, so a replacement sits in the service records as a customer-pay job, never as a completed campaign.

Turn the key and watch which warning lights stay on. Every car lights the dashboard at start-up and then clears it. The modulator failure is the one where ABS, traction control, power steering and the collision warnings come on together and stay on. 114 filings name that part, no recall covers it, and 13 of the 26 that give a price put it at $2,000 or more.

Ask where the car has lived, and check 20V769000 by number. The driveshaft campaign covers only cars sold or ever registered in the salt states. A car with a northern history carries it even if it’s being sold in the South.

Check 17V418000 and 23V858000. The battery sensor case and the fuel pump. Run the VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls — it only lists recalls that are still open, so a clean result means either the work was done or the car was never covered. Any Honda dealer’s service department can pull the completion record by VIN, and it’s free.

The build date is on the sticker in the driver’s door jamb. If it reads 07/14, ask about 15V121000 by number. The window is three days wide, so almost certainly it’s not yours — and if it is, the remedy was a new short block, which is worth knowing was done.

Numbers worth writing down

The three indented starter rows overlap. A filing can be in all of them.

The 2015 car is next, and the starter is still there at 112 filings.

Sources

• NHTSA complaint database — 1,007 complaints across the four model names NHTSA files this car under, of which 42 are hybrids and are excluded; quoted above by ODI number
• NHTSA recall API — five campaigns, one of them hybrid-only; quoted from the campaign summaries and consequence text
• NHTSA vPIC — engine and electrification, decoded from the VIN attached to each filing
• NHTSA safety ratings — 2014 Honda Accord
• EPA fuel economy — city / highway / combined
• GoodCarBadCar Honda Accord sales figures

Complaint counts and quotes come from NHTSA’s public database, retrieved September 1, 2026; each quote lists its ODI number so you can look it up. Engine type comes from decoding the VIN attached to each filing — 903 of the 965 decode to a 2.4 or a 3.5. 54 filings carry no VIN at all, and the remaining 8 either come back with an engine this car never had or don’t decode. Recall applicability depends on the VIN and, for the driveshaft campaign, on where the car has been registered — check yours at nhtsa.gov/recalls. This summarizes what owners reported. It isn’t buying or repair advice.