2004 Honda Accord maintenance

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I found one for $15 online at Majestic Honda. But with their 'shipping charge' it would've been closer to $25. And then I'd have to wait for it.

So I just went to the dealer. While I was there, I was going to get some of those nice spring clamps that Honda uses on the cooler lines- for my planned trans. cooler project. Problem was the the dealer wanted $10 PER CLAMP. I politely declined... for that price, I'll just use cheap worm-gear clamps. But I'll keep an eye out for some reasonably priced spring clamps.
 
$15 was the online price I was thinking. I think some have lower shipping. I want to say Bernadi's will ship for under $10. Add those spring clamps and some other OE parts and then the shipping doesn't eat up all your savings. I could get the the filter and even Z1 ATF shipped a fair amount cheaper than list that way. Maybe you could look into that for next time.

Your Honda dealer doesn't seem to have great pricing, $10 for constant tension clamps, ouch. I totally agree with wanting to have them though and usually I try to reuse them as much as possible. It also helps to have a commercial account access, but I don't imagine you HD mechanics have much need for accounts with Honda dealers lol. Sometimes you can get them to lower the price some, but not usally by much and it can be uncomfortable if you are not a price haggler.
 
No, I haven't been impressed with Scholfield Honda's pricing. I'm dealing with them for now simply because I'm in a hurry to get this vehicle's maintenance up to my standards. But in time I'll investigate cheaper alternatives. And only a few weeks into owning this car, I'm already getting weary of this 'Honda only' mentality.

So today I replaced the PCV valve. Didn't see anything wrong with it... just a maintenance thing. The service manual says that I can check its operation by pinching off the pcv hose... I should hear it clicking at idle, then clicking should stop when I pinch off the hose. I didn't hear anything either way... with either the old or the new valve. Probably not important.

I did another trans. drain and fill. The fluid looks good, so I think it'll be good to go for a year or so now. I also replaced that mysterious transmission filter, and cut it open to have a look.

I noticed a while back when I was fixing the radiator leak at the trans cooler fitting, there was some crud visible INSIDE the fitting- the inlet to the trans cooler. I wiped out what I could at the time, but didn't worry about it much as I was in a hurry... and there was a filter between said crud and the transmission. I had a little more time today, so I took the hoses loose and blew the cooler out with shop air. Then sprayed a bunch of brake cleaner in there and blew it out real good again (I know... not Honda-approved. Don't care). The cooler flows well, and a little bit of crud came out. Nothing spectacular, but it was definitely in there. The chunks looked like tiny black gravels. I really don't know if these came from the transmission or this new 'made in China' radiator... but I suspect the latter. Unfortunately my cheap camera phone didn't really do the crud justice:

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Like I said, I replaced the inline trans filter. I also started the car for a few seconds to confirm the direction of fluid flow (I'll want to know this when I get around to installing the trans cooler). The fluid does in fact come out of the trans, through the cooler, through the filter and back into the trans. The design of the filter is conducive to cutting open with a bench grinder... took about a minute to grind through the crimp:

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Lo and behold it's a real filter- not just a 'strainer' or something. Doesn't have a huge amount of surface area to the filter media, but I guess it's enough. I cut the filter paper off, and you can see that this thing has a sturdy steel core... this isn't just an inline fuel filter:

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The bypass valve was still in working order. Nice to know that that's in there... and I suppose that this bypass is why Honda feels that they can get away with calling this a 'lifetime' filter:

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So about that filter media. Here's a trick that some of ya'll are probably aware of... but some may not be. An old-timer at a Cummins dealership showed me this trick years ago... makes it much easier to see what's in a piece of filter media. First you cut out a chunk of the filter paper:

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Then squeeze it gently in a vice- the oil will squeeze out, and you'll be able to see the crud much better. Just wipe off the oil before you remove it from the vice:

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You can see that there are some sparklies in the filter- a little steel and a little brass, it looks like. I don't see any sign of friction material. Doesn't look bad to me for being an original filter after 86,000 miles. I think it would've continued to work fine for years if I'd left it in place... but I enjoy this 'peace of mind' thing. Based on what I see here, I'll probably leave this new filter in place for a long time... at least 50k, probably longer.

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Great pics and info. I've never cut the Honda AT filter open but I've seen pics that showed it was real media filter.

With the PCV clicking check, as you most likely know if no clicking that probably means the valve is gummed, but I don't think I'd be able to hear it click on a running engine. I've always shaked them in hand to hear if they rattle or not.

It is kind of odd that Honda would place the filter on the return line, since on a new application you'd think you'd want to filter the ATF before it goes through the cooler to keep it clean.

The squeeze the filter media in a vice trick is pretty neat and sounds vaguely familiar. Your impression of the filter lasting a long time before becoming restrictive seems to agree with Honda's view that the filter change is not important. I imagine the filter is not super fine, but without a sophisticated test bench and knowing the bypass setting, there's no real way of knowing how soon the filter gets restrictive and bypasses. Of course a bypassing filter even just when the ATF is cold is no filter at all. On the other hand GM sytle AT filters that prefilter all oil before entering the pump can't bypass that I know of and seem to last a long time. Of course they seem to be a much bigger filter but the Honda filter is folded into pleats so maybe it has similar surface area.

I'd think the cluth material would be hard to detect inbeded in the filter and the with the high flow rate/pressure the best practice would be to change the filter at least every 50-60K miles. But I think despite its small size it probably does not become restrictive as fast as an oil filter does.
 
Good write up, onion. Glad to see you show us what's in that canister. I still put a magnefine filter on mine, because I wasn't real sure it was a true filter. Too late now! But I guess over-filtration wouldn't hurt in a Honda.
 
Now that I've had this vehicle for approaching 6 months, and now that I've nothing better to do at the moment- I thought I'd post an update.

As some of ya'll may remember, this car has a salvage title. It was hit in the front end, and the front sub-frame has been straightened. So I figured some of ya'll would be interested in how this turned out.

I've addressed several relatively minor issues since buying this vehicle. Most have been minor stuff related to the wreck.

I initially did lots of maintenance, repaired a broken air cleaner bracket, and replaced a transmission mount- all covered in this thread.

A few months later I installed a transmission cooler, covered here: http://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2139417

Turns out that those nearly new Riker Raptor tires were absolute junk... not even up to my own low standards. I replaced them with some better tires, here: http://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2126383

A couple months back I noticed that there was a little a/c oil leaking where the hot line goes into the a/c condensor. Also the wife had been complaining that the windows were bad about fogging up. Turns out that Jihad had had the a/c line disconnected at some point in his repairs, and cut the o-ring when he reassembled it. When I recovered the refrigerant, only about half of the rated capacity was in there. So I replaced the o-ring and re-charged with some dyed R134-A. No leaks now, and the windows no longer fog up.

Also the wife hit something with it the other day. She swears she doesn't know what happened... but the front bumper cover was all busted up. I checked around for replacements, and an aftermarket cover (which is what this car already had, seeings how it had been wrecked) costs about $120... not bad. But all the body shops around here wanted $250-$300 just to paint the thing. I ended up finding one on ebay- there are vendors who will sell you and aftermarket body panel, painted according to your paint code. Cost $200 painted and shipped. Looks good. Good deal!

Let's see... I didn't like the lack of leg-room up front. Welded up some brackets and moved both front seats back a few inches.

So far we really like how the car drives, and it hasn't had any problems besides the stuff mentioned. My only complaint is vibration- there's a noticeable engine vibration at idle (with the a/c on), and a vibration in the steering wheel at highway speed. From what I've read, though, this is very common with these cars... not something that can be easily fixed. Not a big deal, but a little annoying.

After much research and soul-searching, I've finally decided that I simply CAN'T put DexVI or Transynd into the transmission. Too risky for the price. So I just ordered four quarts of DW-1 off ebay for $8 per quart shipped, which is the cheapest I've been able to find anywhere. I'm not happy about these Honda-only fluids, and I'm not fully convinced that it's necessary. But with some shopping around, they don't cost significantly more than most name-brand fluids... so I'll just bite the bullet and buy the Honda stuff for the most part.

The car is approaching 95,000 now (bought it at 85,000), and I'll probably change the engine oil and ATF next weekend. No oil consumption so far. No funny noises. No unusual shifting. I think this car is gonna last a long time. So far I'm satisfied with my purchase, and I think it's worked out at least as well as the similarly-priced GM vehicles that I tried out would have.
 
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