Page 141 of the owners manual states:

How strictly does this weight limit need to be obseved? Has anyone operated their Fit with more than 850 lbs, and if so, how did it affect ride & handling?

With its roomy interior the Fit will easily accommodate four men my size (6 feet tall, 225 lbs full clothed). 4x225 = 900 lbs. Add a little cargo, and 1000 lbs is easily reached. Can 1000 lbs be safely transported in the Fit?

 

It's not something I'd make a habit of. It is a small car and I'm sure with that much weight the suspension will be taking their toll. It could affect braking and handling.

 

Sure, Honda knows there car science. It would be foolish in this day and age to not recognize that. You must be asking what if? Do you realy plan to transport over the recomended load regular.
All that extra weight is stored energy and when it get moving behaves in ways most all of us do not understand or have experience with. At a certain speed it stops adding rather it becomes exponential in values. The engineers have equations they just plug in to get the answers to these kind of problems. It is not like you are talking about building a bridge across the Atlantic Ocean. It they could come close to that the engineers would for sure miss something they could not duplicate in a test. The Tacoma narrows (galloping gurdy)bridge is an example of that. I like science.

 

I transported around 1600 pounds of ceramic the other month in the Fit. Thankfully Home Depot is an extremely short drive away from my house (under 1 km).

I went quite slow and took generous wide turns. Definitely not something I would do often or for a distance of any longer.

The ride and handling was of course crap at that weight

Actually the stored energy is 1/2 of the mass you are carrying, it is the speed which is exponential...1/2mass*velocity*velocity

 

I took about a 3 hour highway drive with 4 people + a load of christmas presents in Dec on flat terrain on a good road. I'm sure the total weight was over 850, but probably less than 1000. The car was fine, but obviously a bit pokier than normal. I think it can safely handle over 850 lbs in moderate driving conditions.

I'm guessing its set at 850 because that's the most it can handle in a worst case condition, e.g. driving uphill in a Colorado mountain pass in a snowstorm on a road with lots of potholes......

Mentioned elsewhere, but 850 is right about what the rated weight of most of its competitors are. I wonder what some older compacts were rated at, say an early 90's Civc HB???

 

That's just the difference between US kilograms and Imperial kilograms.

(On the internet I don't even need to keep a straight face.)

 

I assume this is a joke, right?? The US has a lot of crazy units, but it isn't really dumb enough to redefine what a kilogram is, is it???

Deep breath - yes, it must be a joke.......

Back to topic - it's interesting that the weight limit for all Fits is the same even though the weights of the car differs by model/transmission, with base MT being the lightest, and Sport AT being the heaviest.

The weight difference a Base MT and a Sport AT according to the Honda site is 119 lbs, which is 14% of the total rated carrying capacity!

Since everything else is equal in the US/Canada(engine, suspension, etc), you'd think that in theory lighter models car could carry more than a heavier one (e.g. an MT fit could carry 80 lbs more than an AT....).

Assuming that the Fit is rated for 'worst case/heaviest car' situations, the 850 lbs applies to the AT sport, since it's the heaviest model. A Base MT should be able to carry 969 (850 + the 119 lbs difference between the MT base and AT sport), and so on. Loaded this way, the 2 cars would weigh exactly the same.

I suppose the tires *might* make a difference, but if we use a sport MT as our alternative, we'd still be able to add 80 lbs (diff between sport MT and sport AT)

Are there any holes in this idea??

 

Any auto engineers out there that can speak to safety margin and tolerance? The original post asked about "how strictly does this need to be observed"? In the various lines of engineering that I have done, safety margins of 150% and 200% are pretty common... does the same hold true for auto design margin? The general questions are typically "what % over-tolerance, for how long, under what conditions, and how often?"

 

thank you blinky

 

I haul items around and that is one reason I bought the Fit in fact I call it my utility car... One problem with hauling heavy stuff around is securing it. What do you think?

 

I figured it was Honda's way of tipping the odds against the Canadians... "Those extra 10 kilograms will upset their balance, surely leading to loss of control and horrific crashes! Muahahaha!" Then they went back to twisting the ends of their large mustaches and tying helpless women to railroad tracks.

 

Any manufacturer's recommended load is going to be extremely conservative, especially in a passenger car like the fit. It's a liability issue. I'd bet you could drive around with 1200+ in it all day long and it would still live a nice long life.

 

I agree Cazzzidy... I suspect that there is A LOT of safety margin in the engine/drivetrain/suspension/brake components. The biggest issue from a liability point of view is probably stopping distance and sharp cornering control on the part of the DRIVER and not the vehicle itself. After the driver, I suspect that the next most likely failure mechanism would be brake fade (since that can be significantly affected by driver performance).

 

Agreed that it's probably a very conservative estimate. One note related to my earlier post re: the same weight allowed on differerent Fits with different weights:

On motorcycles, the capacity is often given as a gross vehicle weight, i.e. the weight of the vehicle itself, plus whatever is in/on it. Maybe thats because each bit of bling on a pretty light bike is adds a greater percentage of weight to the total, but it makes the user do some math.

You might have several different trim models of the same basic bike, from bare bones to fully loaded, with the Gross Vehicle weight being the same on all models. You then have to figure out what you can carry by subracting the weight of your particular bike from the Gross Vehicle weight.

The fact that they didn't do this for the Fit makes me think that they are building in a big fudge factor into what the car can actually carry....

 

This does seem like a very conservative statement.

Just an observation, but, on the Honda website, in the internal gallery of pictures for the Fit, it shows a fully loaded vehicle in one picture. Five adults that visually appear as though they could come close to 850lbs on their own, plus a cooler in the back. One would assume that this is not an empty cooler.

 

I'm sure some of you have seen this, but still good for a laugh.

Go Here -> World Champion <- for the story.

 

The cooler is empty but the weight of its contents is still inside the fit -- all the beer is inside the 5 occupants.

 

I have a 2015 Fit. LX model with a CVT. My neighbors were on their way to visit their relative in a nursing home at which time their car broke down so they asked me if I could take them. In a situation like that I had difficulty refusing even though I wouldn't get a chance to weigh them, or even to visualize how much flesh and fat they had on their bones. I didn't get to see all of them until maybe 15 minutes later when they arrived. I always carry an emergency tool kit and a high quality 12v 14.5 amp air compressor in my car, plus emergency rations and emergency clothing. I'd say about 50 pounds (23 kg) of stuff. At that time I weighed about 146.5 pounds (66 kg) with my cotton clothing on and my pockets filled with stuff. In the front seat was a gal who I estimate, when fully clothed, weighed a little over 200 pounds, say 220 (100 kg). I got her strapped in. In the back I managed to to figure out how to get everyone strapped in correctly, despite the slightly confusing way the seat belts and shoulder harnesses work. Everything is marked but as to where it goes but the markings are not so easy to see. I eventually got all three rear passengers safely buckled in but I forgot to move their head restraints into the up position so they must have been very uncomfortable during the 15 minute ride! I've ridden in the back seat and I know what its like to have the head restraints in the down position. Nevertheless I didn't hear one complaint from any of them!. So for the rear passengers I figure – big young man about 220 pounds, grandma 150 pounds, and someone else, I'm having trouble remembering her-him, but let's say 175 pounds (100, 68, and 79 kg). So the car is probably a bit over-filled with about 962 pounds, 436 kg. Except for grandma everyone was a "large American" but no-one was, like, astonishingly large. Trip was about 5 miles 15 minutes. Their relative died the next day so I'm glad I didn't do what my initial idea was to do, which was to put each of them on a scale before allowing them into the car. You may think I'm kidding but I assure you that was my thought. Members of the "medicalize behavior" crowd might think its a consequence of "obsessive-compulsive disorder" but I think its just good common sense.

I knew the man in the nursing home who died the next day but I didn't realize that is who it was that they were going to visit, until that next day when I found out that he had died. Fortunately he didn't need a ride because he weighed about 300 pounds (136 kg) plus I would have needed to bring his wheel chair along with him. Motorized wheel chair. What does one of those things weigh, about 75 pounds (34 kg)? And folded up, would it have fitted in the luggage area with all the back seats configured so as to be able to seat living humans? I'm guessing it would not.

Anyway – nice, uneventful trip. Gal in the passenger seat next to me (220, 100) was talking on her phone the entire time. The ladies and-or gentlemen in the rear were well behaved. I didn't notice any struggling from the engine when we had to go up a hill. No difficulty cornering. No problem with braking. Everything seemed the same as if it were just me and my emergency tools in the car. If this had been, say, my 1968 VW beetle I would have noticed a difference. Just one extra person over 150 pounds (68 kg) in the Beetle and I could feel a difference. Beetle with the same 5 people I had in my still make it up a hill, no problem, but I would have to stay in lower gears for a slightly longer time and I'd feel the extra weight when going around curves and corners. Not in the Fit though. I didn't feel any difference. Fit is about 2600 pounds (1179) unladen, Beetle is about 1950 pounds (884 kg). Beetle's recommended cargo carrying capacity is the same as the Fit's, 850 pounds (386 kg). Probably the Fit's CVT would have kept the engine RPM's up high for a slightly greater number of seconds when we were going up a hill but I didn't notice it if it was doing that. I normally drive over speed bumps as if they were not there but with an elderly woman in the car, I decided to take it easy over speed bumps. My guess is that with the extra weight in the car, going over a speed bump without slowing down for it would feel different but I didn't try it, to see. What normally happens, with just me in the car, is the front suspension handles the bump very nicely but when the rear wheels go over the bump, the rear of the car feels almost as if it becomes air-borne for a bit, and then doesn't come back down onto the road for a second, and for 3 or 4 feet or so (1 or 2 meters) of travel past the bump. And if the weather is windy the rear of the car might swing a foot or so (30 cm or so) to the left or right of where it was before it hit the bump, before coming back down onto the road. Is that what actually happens when going over a speed bump? Probably not. But that's what it feels like! I'd bet with a full load of passengers in the rear seat that the rear axle would go over the bump more pleasantly, without becoming air-borne, and that it would stick to the road better.

 

I once had to drive 4 ladies and their crap in my GD. There's no way they were over 50kg/100lbs each on average and the cargo, while filling out the trunk, wasn't super heavy. Even without me in the car, it was squatting heavily. Granted, 20 year old springs might have something to do with it, but I'd imagine much more weight than this and you'd be riding on bump stops.

 

Mine had only6 or 7 year old springs.