Patman
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Interesting! Thanks! It doesn’t say that on the labels for the Canadian version of EP. I wonder if we get a different version up here?
What would you do to clean this engine?
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Interesting! Thanks! It doesn’t say that on the labels for the Canadian version of EP. I wonder if we get a different version up here?
I'd give Restore and Protect a shot for a few OCIs.
Lots of good suggestions above but some of them can wait a little while. The Honda 3.5 is a great engine but does need some preventive maintenance along the way. FWIW the Valvoline Restore and Protect is probably the easiest way to clean things up.
Around your age/mileage you should replace the timing belt, tensioner, idlers, water pump, thermostat, and during this job the spark plugs and drive belt (and probably the drive belt tensioner given thatvit will have to come off anyway). OE parts are best but the Aisin TKH002 kit from rockauto is arguably just as good (do not buy the counterfeit parts from amazon or ebay). OE for the drive belt, INA is fine for the tensioner. Only OE, NGK, or Denso high ignitability plugs unless you want to replace them again in the near future; the good ones are spendy but worth it. And never buy them from Amazon or ebay.
The valve cover is not entirely surprising if this car has the original PCV valve (located on the edge of the cover to the right of the oil fill). Use the OE part here and replace it about every 40-50k miles. I would not remove the valve cover yet; the entire intake needs to come off to access them so you can wait till the valve adjustment. Most times the valves don't really need any tweaking until around 150k. At 155k two of mine were a few 1000ths out but the rest were fine.
Also it's a good idea to flush the brake fluid every 3 years as stated in the manual. And power steering fluid isbprobably less than ideal at this point. Lucas PS fluid with conditioners is great for the Honda systems!
ATF should be replaced at least every 30k miles. A single drain/fill is usually enough but more may be needed if it has been neglected. See the model-specific forums for the preferred juice; many on the Honda Odyssey forum prefer DW-1 or Maxlife. I have used various major brand ATFs as long as they specifically say compatible with DW-1, and they all worked well.
As I mentioned, see the model-specific forums for additional issues to resolve.
Around your age/mileage you should replace the timing belt, tensioner, idlers, water pump, thermostat, and during this job the spark plugs and drive belt (and probably the drive belt tensioner given thatvit will have to come off anyway). OE parts are best but the Aisin TKH002 kit from rockauto is arguably just as good (do not buy the counterfeit parts from amazon or ebay). OE for the drive belt, INA is fine for the tensioner. Only OE, NGK, or Denso high ignitability plugs unless you want to replace them again in the near future; the good ones are spendy but worth it. And never buy them from Amazon or ebay.
The valve cover is not entirely surprising if this car has the original PCV valve (located on the edge of the cover to the right of the oil fill). Use the OE part here and replace it about every 40-50k miles. I would not remove the valve cover yet; the entire intake needs to come off to access them so you can wait till the valve adjustment. Most times the valves don't really need any tweaking until around 150k. At 155k two of mine were a few 1000ths out but the rest were fine.
Also it's a good idea to flush the brake fluid every 3 years as stated in the manual. And power steering fluid isbprobably less than ideal at this point. Lucas PS fluid with conditioners is great for the Honda systems!
ATF should be replaced at least every 30k miles. A single drain/fill is usually enough but more may be needed if it has been neglected. See the model-specific forums for the preferred juice; many on the Honda Odyssey forum prefer DW-1 or Maxlife. I have used various major brand ATFs as long as they specifically say compatible with DW-1, and they all worked well.
As I mentioned, see the model-specific forums for additional issues to resolve.
This is partially clean, I let it soak overnight after this in gunk parts and carb cleaner after this. This was the first one of these I did many years ago and got all kinds of flak because "that cannot happen to an engine with regular OCI" and Honda would certainly know about it.
A year or two later it was confirmed when lots of people were having serious VCM issues and Honda were being sued.
If I knew then what I know now and came across one this bad I would have just swapped out the cover with a new one, the stuff was hard as stone. A VCM muzzler basically cures the issue.
It is located on the left front of the cover looking at the engine. I used a 10mm head M6 bolt, once the bolt is removed carefully rotate it while pulling it out. If it breaks off in the cover which they do sometimes as they get very brittle a big easy out will remove it.
Oh really? That's interesting. I'm not sure
Wow, i didn’t realize those RDXs came with a 3.5 V6. For what it’s worth, my 06 Honda with the 3.5 has a similar looking “gunk level” on the cap and inside the oil fill area, maybe a bit cleaner, and it’s at 198K miles. (I.e. it is pretty clean due to regular synthetic oil changes done when the maintenance minder hits 30%))
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thanks sooo much for in depth reply really appreciate
The Honda OLM is WILD. It had my K20 at 20% oil life at 9k miles. It's more of a dummy reminder than something I would blindly follow.
That's pretty much what she said, drove it one day and then let it sit, all of a sudden it dropped down to 15%. We agreed that I should check the oil at least every month or two and seems to go through a quart or so between changes. It calls for 0w20 but I've been using 5w20 because I like the smaller spread, she let the dealer change it last time.
My truck has an OLM and evidently when the battery gets low it's the first one to go. I haven't been driving it so it's been sitting and I had to jumpstart but it did have some power left just not enough to crank it, funny thing it kept all the radio presets and everything but the gauge cluster OLM dropped to 0% so I just reset it so wouldn't be annoying about changing the oil. I'll probably change that again in the spring anyways.
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Looking like Typical Pennsylvania crude sludge from Pennzoil right there . Smh
Dropping in here: adjustable vcm deletes are outdated and were always overpriced half solutions. vcm tuner, vcm muzzler, etc. If it has a knob or resistors then don't buy it. They're doing basic offsets of the coolant temperature which will either go too far and pull timing (which starts < 160F) or not go far enough and then vcm kicks back in.
s-vcm I can personally vouch for. vcm tuner ii is probably the same idea in a bulkier package. A little microcontroller that dynamically sets the resistance with the added bonus of being able to disable itself if it sees an overheat condition to make the ecu aware of it too.
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