The Mystery Machine is good for another 100,000 miles!

Well, I spent Friday working on Dixie's van. It has almost 100,000 miles on it so it was in need of a new timing belt, water pump and spark plugs. I have a good friend that was a mechanic for a few dealerships and he said he would help me get it done quick. I was glad he did because if you are off just a little with your timing belt you will mess your engine up and have to get a new one. I didn't want to have to do that. Anyways we met at the engine shop where I work and did it there. (It is air conditioned and has good lighting!) It went great and wasn't really too bad to do. Simon is a very meticulous guy and made me feel really guilty for my lack of maintenance on the van. We found out that some mice had took a liking to the engine in the van and made a nest on the intake manifold, the power steering fluid was low, the oil was a 1/2 a quart low, the spark plugs were due to be changed and he said it was pretty dirty. I told him I don't drive the van much and he should check out the engine in the bug. He's from England and mumbled something in proper English that I didn't understand. I told Dixie that she needs to take better care of the van and she said it was my job to do that. Hmm, Oh well, I guess I will do a better job. As always here are the pictures of my Friday. So, if your going to do a timing belt on a Honda odyssey you need to get a timing belt, water pump, a tensioner, both serpentine belts and 2 gallons of coolant. I would get these parts from the dealer. You may spend a little more but the parts are better quality. If you can get a discount on dealer parts all the better. I spent $316.00 with a discount. It's about 400 without. Still, it's money well spent. Honda's have an interference fit engine so if the belt brakes, you will be buying a new engine. Here are the parts ready to be installed.

 Here is the Honda just as I pulled it in. I was surprised to see how dirty the engine was. I need to do better with that. I actually sprayed it off before Simon got there. I can't imagine what he would of said if he saw this mess.

Here it is sprayed off and I thought it looked pretty good. You need to jack it up and drain the coolant and remove the passenger front tire.

 So this is the first thing Simon saw. It's the mouse nest under the intake. He lectured me on how bad mice are on wires and that they like to chew on them. I quickly got my pliers out and removed the nest and I had to text Dixie about it. She told me to be quiet and I was telling her too much stuff she didn't want to know about.

Remove the plastic foo foo stuff that Honda puts on so the engine looks good and then you will need to remove the power steering pump. That is what is seen on top of the engine. Do not unhook the hoses, just remove the bolts and put it on top of the engine. You also have to remove the front engine mount. Make sure you support the car on a jackstand and then put your jack under the engine to support it when you remove the mount.

 Here is Simon. He is giving me a lecture on how to properly maintain a vehicle. He is an awesome guy. I really thought I was pretty good at maintaining vehicles but compared to Simon I suck. He is like the monk of mechanics. If you have ever seen monk you will know what I mean. I was completely amazed at how fast Simon was at wrenching. He was explaining the job as he was doing it. I actually was going to blog out the whole job with every detail, but I couldn't keep up with Simon. He was like a surgeon.

 Here you can see the first peek at the timing belt. the aft cover over the cam is removed. The forward one is still on.

 Here is a shot of the van and how it is set up. You have to remove some of the bottom plastic fairings and the jack is under the engine here supporting it while the mount is out.

 OK, here is the timing belt we are replacing. The water pump is in the very middle and the tensioner is on the left side of the picture. It's just bolts from here.

 Before you remove the belt, you want to put the engine at TDC on the 1st cylinder. This engine has 2 cams. Here is one cam. If you look closely you will see 2 marks that line up. It is important to make sure these marks are aligned. You will have one on each cam and one on the crank pulley and gear. When the engine is at TDC, all these marks will be aligned.

 Looking down the engine, you will see the crank pulley mark and the triangle on the block pointing to the mark.

Here are the water pump and the tensioner that have been replaced. You can reuse the tensioner but the majority of them are leaking. It's good security to just replace it.

 Here you can see the water pump. This is the new one and Simon is using it as a diagram. He likes to put each bolt in the same position it came out so as he removes the bolts he puts them into the correct hole in the new pump.

 So we really fast forwarded here. It is all buttoned up and put back together. It goes together pretty good and you just need to remember to refill the coolant after you have put the drain plug in. When you start it up, turn your heater on full heat, vents only at fan speed 2. When you do that it will bleed the coolant system. Run it until you have heat coming out. If you have a rear heater system like the vans do make sure you get heat out of your rear system also.

 It run like a top and on the road again. Simon reminded me I needed spark plugs so I promptly drove to the dealer and picked up some steering pump fluid and 6 spark plugs. I headed home so I could put them in.

For some reason the next 3 pictures turned sideways on me but they still show what I mean. Changing the plugs on this van is a piece of cake. Just remove the wire connection for the coil.

 Next remove the screw with a Allen head bit and the coil pack will just lift straight out.

 No spark plug wires here. Just remove the plug next. There is plenty of room to remove them. That is very nice because a lot of new cars don't have much room for regular maintenance items.

 Here is the new and old plugs. These plugs are iridium so they cost a lot but they will last 105,000 miles.

Make sure you put spark plug anti seize on the threads.

 This shows you how much room there is on the firewall side. It was plenty to get the plugs out and in. It actually was easier to get them out then the front ones by the radiator.

 So , here it is all put back together and cleaned. I vowed to keep it in tip top shape so Simon won't have to lecture me anymore. He made this job go so easy, I couldn't of done it without him.