2014 Odyssey Sludge/Varnish

JHZR2

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Did an oil change on our 14 odyssey tonight. It is closing in on 70k miles. It is my wife’s dd, so most use is extremely short drives, a mile or two at a time. We also use it for family trips of course.

It has had the VCM disabled since maybe a thousand miles. These last two OCIs were Rotella Gas Truck 0w-20.

I was quite surprised when I opened the filler cap, to see a lot of brown colored mess in there. I could wipe that up with my finger. Further down was a beautiful consistent gold color, which I thought was maybe just oil or a thinner layer of the sludge. It was neither. It’s on there permanently. A rich golden varnish I guess.

I don’t remember either of these things before. I’ve never seen sludge in the filler, and I don’t remember it being so golden in color. I have a hard time blaming it on one or two OCIs of Rotella gas truck either though. Just surprising to see. I usually am fairly astute with these observations.

The OCIs on this van have been done by the computer, but end up around 5k miles and six months.

I still have the filter which I’ll open, and an oil sample for a UOA. I’m not sure I’m expecting much though…
 
I'm thinking that under the filler cap, is just a stagnant area for oil to varnish/collect and bake. Perhaps the rest of the head is clean. I'm sure you maintain oci's at a reasonable length. Unless its short tripped a lot.

Maybe a HPL run of higher ester oil would clean a bit. Wayne has a thread on his ? durango. I'm going to use the HPL passenger premium plus, starting next oci in my ram.
 
I'm thinking that under the filler cap, is just a stagnant area for oil to varnish/collect and bake. Perhaps the rest of the head is clean. I'm sure you maintain oci's at a reasonable length. Unless its short tripped a lot.

Pretty much this. That's an area that collects goo over time, looking further down the hole to the golden brown color I don't see anything to be concerned about. Just keep doing what you're doing. a J-Series with VCM disabled should go for a long time.
 
I'm thinking that under the filler cap, is just a stagnant area for oil to varnish/collect and bake. Perhaps the rest of the head is clean. I'm sure you maintain oci's at a reasonable length. Unless its short tripped a lot.

Maybe a HPL run of higher ester oil would clean a bit. Wayne has a thread on his ? durango. I'm going to use the HPL passenger premium plus, starting next oci in my ram.


My lady's 98 Camry is like this... Actually it looked worse than above pictures. When we first got it. Got slowly better over time. And being it was seeing almost all extremely short trips before we got it. . It actually got better after it started running much longer trips to her job.

JHZR2 check your pms. Sent you one the other day. Not trying to give you a hard time here.

I was just trying to be helpful in that msg.
 
I would say going by your description of the wife using this vehicle for very short trips of 1 or 2 miles I would have expected more sludgy buildup.

Have you thought about changing the oil brand?
 
I'm not surprised to see that actually. It's a high point in the engine and I have a feeling condensation/vapors from short trips which aren't boiling off are collecting and cooling there. The deposits get left behind that would normally boil/burn off in an engine that reaches operating temp most of its life.
 
Its all good, same with mine but everything is clean.

Van is good, very reliable, runs great on 5w20.
 
At least the rings are probably in good shape, a lot of these engine have ring issues. I would change the PCV more often even though there is no interval specified and would possibly pull the front valve cover to clean out the PVC baffle. Depending on how it looks will determine the next course of action if any. JMHO
 
At least the rings are probably in good shape, a lot of these engine have ring issues. I would change the PCV more often even though there is no interval specified and would possibly pull the front valve cover to clean out the PVC baffle. Depending on how it looks will determine the next course of action if any. JMHO
ring issues? is it from extended oci's or just how they were manufactured? I have a 2006 odessey with the v6 and with 5w20 doesn't burn oil yet.
 
At least the rings are probably in good shape, a lot of these engine have ring issues. I would change the PCV more often even though there is no interval specified and would possibly pull the front valve cover to clean out the PVC baffle. Depending on how it looks will determine the next course of action if any. JMHO
I’ve never looked at the PCV. It crossed my mind so I’ll have a look. Thanks!
 
ring issues? is it from extended oci's or just how they were manufactured? I have a 2006 odessey with the v6 and with 5w20 doesn't burn oil yet.
I’ve heard that some engines have ring issues. They stop being able to move, or wear in a certain way. Iirc it is related to use of vcm somehow. There are a number of discussions on this out there.
 
ring issues? is it from extended oci's or just how they were manufactured? I have a 2006 odessey with the v6 and with 5w20 doesn't burn oil yet.
The 2005 and 2006 Odyssey models with VCM (Touring and EX-L) used the VCM 1 system which shut down the rear bank and went into "ECO" mode. these engines were fraught with issues usually resulting from extended oil change intervals over 3K or about 5K for highway/mixed use, the OLM and owners manual OCI was way too optimistic at circa 7500.
That OCI is almost a guarantee for sludge, heavy varnish, spool valve failure, the ones I have done have been fine even with VCM enabled on a 3K OCI. Even so they will commonly blow the $700 rear (actually the right) engine mount out at some point due to the 6-3 VCM configuration, disabling the VCM cures this issue as well as allowing a 5k OCI without issue.

The VCM 1 engines used a standard tension piston ring and did not have (or at least nowhere near as many) the ring issues associated with low tension rings found in the VCM II engines. VCM II uses a 6-4-3 with dual spool valves (one per bank vs rear only on VCM 1) this did help reduce vibration and blown mounts but the low tension rings exposed another issue that is the oil pumping into the cylinders of the ones shut down.
With both valves closed the pistons would allow more oil to pass into the combustion chamber than the standard tension rings, the end result was when the cylinders reactivated the excess oil would either fire if it was not too much oil and eventually blow the cats out and/or foul the spark plugs and misfire along with excess oil consumption. there were other issues with later models with the cylinder head also and PCV issues are common to both due to the valves extremely small diameter but this post is long winded enough so I will end it here.
 
At least the rings are probably in good shape, a lot of these engine have ring issues. I would change the PCV more often even though there is no interval specified and would possibly pull the front valve cover to clean out the PVC baffle. Depending on how it looks will determine the next course of action if any. JMHO
Funny, I called the dealer to see how much a pdf valve was, and the parts guy told me he has sold maybe two ever, and that nobody buys Honda PCB valves. They don’t even stock it. And this was a very large dealership, part of a significant chain. Parts guy said to clean it…

I can get an Oe one from a Honda dealer for $33, or a knockoff for $12… or just spray ours out…
 
Get the OE, SMP/BWD used to be reboxed OE but I cant say they still are, things seem to change overnight.
It is incredible they do not have a service interval for this, it is a real issue I have seen and documented many times.
I think you may be having PCV issues also. When you see the size of the valve you will shake your head and ask why.
 
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