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T Honda Prospect Motor (HPM), the sole distributor of Honda cars in Indonesia, announced on Friday that it would replace an engine component in 30,252 units of the City, Jazz and Freed models.

The company said in a press statement that 3,360 City models produced from October 2008 to January 2010, 16,300 Jazz units manufactured from June 2008 to March 2010 and 10,592 Freed units made from May 2009 to February 2010 all needed to have a faulty engine spring replaced.

The part, called the lost motion spring, which is attached to one of the rocker arms in the V-TEC engine — which all of the models use, is faulty, the company said in the statement. It added that at worst the part may cause the engine to not start.

“To date, we’ve received 15 reports of engine failures due to the faulty component, but no accidents have been reported yet,” the distributor said.

The component replacement program will start on Feb. 28 in Java and March 2 outside of Java,
and will run for six months, the company said.

The replacement process takes at least three hours, it added.

HPM will replace the component free of charge and will inform the relevent car owners of the need to replace the part, it said.

“This is a form of our responsibility to ensure that our products are of the highest standards of safety and quality, even when the products have already been with the customers for years,” HPM president director Yukihiro Aoshima said.

He said the program was part of the company’s evaluation that was applied to all products in efforts to maintain customers’ satisfaction.

For further information, the company requested owners of cars that require the replacement part call the Honda Customer Care on 0-800-1122-789 from Monday to Friday between 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or contact their nearest Honda dealer.

Honda Motor Co. announced on Thursday that it was recalling 693,497 units of the Freed, Fit and City models in Japan, China and some other Asian countries due to the same faulty spring, Reuters said.

The Fit model is sold as the Jazz in Indonesia.

HPM sold more than 22,000 Jazz units in 2010, out of a total sales of 61,336 cars in Indonesia in 2010. It plans to sell 65,000 cars this year.