American Honda Motor Co. has recalled 4,206 cruiser motorcycles whose fuel pumps can malfunction because of a manufacturing defect. The group is 820 VT1300CX models from 2023 to 2025 and 3,386 VT750 models from 2024 and 2025. A pump that fails can stall the engine, and owner letters are due to begin November 27.
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On a car, a stalled engine is an inconvenience with a shoulder to coast onto. On a motorcycle in traffic, it is a loss of power under a rider who has nothing around them but air.
Phenol fragments in a pump commutator
Honda’s defect report to NHTSA traces the failure to the fuel pump module, part number 16700-HN8-6011-M1, made by Astemo Lamphun in Thailand, a Tier 1 supplier. Inside the pump is a motor, and at the heart of the motor is a commutator, a segmented drum that passes current to the spinning armature through carbon brushes. According to the report, the equipment used to finish the carbon and phenol commutator had degraded, leaving fragments of phenol lodged in the slits between the segments.
Those fragments wear the carbon brush, and the worn brush sheds carbon powder. The powder can bridge neighboring commutator segments, and the resulting heat can melt resin parts inside the pump, leading to a loss of electrical continuity and a stopped pump. Honda’s investigators reproduced the carbon filling the slits and found the conductive bridge, then linked the brush abrasion to the phenol fragments and the brush wear to clogged slits. The report says the engine can stall or fail to start, which for a rider means the pump that feeds the cylinders can stop without the engine having any other fault. The report does not describe how a stall feels on the road beyond that, and its warning field is blank, so no dashboard cue is promised ahead of a failure.
Two and a half years from first report to recall decision
Honda received its first report on April 5, 2024, and began investigating. A July 28, 2024, report followed after the condition turned up in a final vehicle inspection at the plant, with more reports through May 2025. Laboratory work ran from August 2025 to March 2026. An inspection of the Tier 2 supplier’s brush and commutator components on June 10, 2026, found no abnormalities. The cause was ultimately traced to how the commutators were finished.
On September 24, 2026, Honda determined that a safety-related defect exists and decided to recall. By that date the company had 48 warranty claims tied to the issue and no reported injuries or deaths, and it estimates that 1 percent of the 4,206 motorcycles carry the defect. The change is a process correction rather than a redesign: the supplier found the problem in how a surface was finished, not in the pump’s basic layout. The supplier changed the commutator surfacing process from cutting to grinding on September 9, 2026, so replacement pumps are made with the improved method.
The national record, NHTSA campaign 26V633000, states the consequence in a single sentence: fuel pump failure can cause an engine stall, increasing the risk of a crash. The agency’s open recall dataset lists the subject as “Fuel Pump May Fail” and tracks Honda’s three internal recall numbers, KU9, KV0 and KV1, because the models and years sit in separate groups.
Dealer replacement and the notification calendar
The repair is a swap, and no software, recalibration or inspection-only option appears in the filing. The new pump, made with the changed process, replaces the old module outright. Authorized Honda Powersports dealers will replace the fuel pump with the improved part at no charge. Dealers were notified on September 25, and VINs became searchable on NHTSA.gov on October 8. Owner notification is staged: an interim notice goes to owners of certain 2024 VT750 motorcycles and all 2023 to 2025 VT1300CX motorcycles on November 27, and the remedy notice for certain 2024 and 2025 VT750 motorcycles goes out the same day.
Honda’s customer service line is 1-866-784-1870. In an acknowledgment letter dated October 8, Alex Ansley, chief of NHTSA’s Recall Management Division, confirmed the notice and reminded the company of its reporting duties. The staggered letters reflect the way the campaign is split into groups by model and year, so a rider may see a different date from a friend with a different bike. Riders can enter a VIN on NHTSA’s recall lookup to see whether a particular bike is in the group.
The population is defined by build dates. The VT1300CX units were produced between March 28, 2023, and March 12, 2025, and the VT750 units between March 24, 2023, and January 17, 2025. The NHTSA dataset flags the recall as neither a do-not-drive nor a fire-while-parked case, which matches the risk the filing describes: a bike that loses power while moving, not one that is hazardous in the garage.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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