Hi everyone! I'm a brand new owner of an Odyssey. My wife and I pulled the trigger on a 2007 Touring, 8-seater this morning. Only 95K on her, she rides and drives nice, and we got her for a steal ($8000). There are a couple of scratches and the floormats are probably ruined, but the price was too good to pass up. This is my (our) first Honda, and I have a bunch of questions, mostly regarding parts stores and maintenance. I'm a DIYer, so I will probably be on here periodically asking about replacement parts or with questions about how to do things to the car.
Anyway, I'm very anal retentive about oil changes and routine maintenance. What sort of oil do you all use on your vans? I like synthetics, generally, and use Mobil1 almost exclusively. Anyone have experience with other brands that they prefer?
What websites or stores do you all use for your parts? I'm in close proximity to about a dozen AutoZones and a half dozen O'Reillys, and am a fairly savvy internet car parts shopper.
I'm already in the market for wireless/infrared headphones so my rear entertainment system will be good for my toddlers. How many pairs of earphones can be synced up to the car?
What are the recommended service intervals for non-oil change items, such as spark plugs, timing belt, fuel filter, air filter, etcetera?
I'm sure I'll have more questions later, but this will get me started. Thanks!
They say any quality/name brand synthetic oil is good and get whatever is on sale at Walmart or autozone. I personally used Valvoline full synthetic 5w-30 in my van and the inside of my engine (valve train) is very clean. Just stick to your normal full synthetic intervals (5-7k mile intervals) or just follow your maintenance reminder and you're good!
All of the service intervals/maintenance items are listed in your owners manual, I'll just name a few. 100k miles: spark plugs, timing belt, water pump, and hydraulic tensioner. Your engine and cabin air filter change intervals will depend on your driving conditions but 15-20k miles is the time to change them.
I use amazon, ebay, and bernardi.com for buying parts.
I'm coming out of my wife using a BMW X5 as her daily driver. It was a pretty car and fun to drive, but extremely maintenance, repair, and labor-intensive. For how precise and engineering-savvy as Germans are perceived as being, they sure don't build very reliable cars. The only thing that was nice about that car, from a maintenance-standpoint, was that the oil changes had a 15,000 mile interval, but that comes from having a 10 quart crankcase. Parts for BMWs are also EXTREMELY expensive. I had to change her accessory drive belt and tensioner, and that particular service set me back $200 to do it myself in my garage. Just for fun, I jumped on to RockAuto last night and shopped for various parts for the Ody, and was relatively shocked at how inexpensive repair parts can be for these cars. Front axles for $65? Wow.
With less than 100K on the clock, and my willingness to do maintenance in my driveway, I see no reason why the car can't last another 100K and give me years of reliable service.
Another quick question, is there no fuel filter on the Odyssey, other than the strainer on the fuel pump? I can't find anything about one on any website, other than people talking about the pump and filter assembly. Weird that there wouldn't be an inline fuel filter anywhere in the system.
Its actually not a big deal, just make sure you get gasoline from a good station (shell, mobil, chevron) and don't fill up your van when the gasoline truck/supplier is filling the gas station. If you're really worried, just run a can of B12 Chemtool or BG 44k through the gas tank once a year and you should be good.
Fortunately, my wife will be the primary driver of the van, so I know she'll seldom - if ever - let the fuel get below 1/4 tank, so I doubt any sediment from the bottom of the tank will be an issue, either.
I had forgotten about B12, I haven't used that stuff in a long time!
Since I just bought the van, I'll probably end up doing most of the maintenance within the next couple of weeks just to get familiar with her and to make sure that it's done right. The previous owner has a sticker from a garage called "Grease Monkey" on the windshield, and it says I have a couple thousand miles before the oil change is due, but I prefer to run my own maintenance, and I never trust service shops to do the job right.
Forgot to mention but make sure you get the timing belt, water pump, and the hydraulic tensioner out of the way first. That is the most important maintenance item that needs to be done at 100k.
I was just looking at your sig line, do you really have your van modded like that? No catalytic converters, coilovers, etcetera? I'm always interested in modding - never left a vehicle stock for longer than a few months - and wondering how you get around throwing codes for your cats being removed. Is there a tune on your van? Or are you running cheaters on your O2 sensors? I have a diesel truck as my daily driver, so gutting or removing the cats doesn't throw codes, as the cats on my particular truck aren't monitored by OBDII software, but on my old catless modded Focus, I ran a cheater harness on my downstream O2 sensor until I got a tune to take care of the problem.
Yeah, these are interference engines. Wouldn't want a belt to break or a tensioner to allow it to skip and smash my valvetrain. AutoZone has some preassembled kits that I've added to my cart for the near future. Nothing like DIY work to get one acquainted with a vehicle, right?
Yep once you start going in there, things will get easier and you can address any other issues that are present. (Isn't that a bad thing tho, looking for problems and then you can't sleep at night?! lol)
One thing though, you might want to get the OEM replacement parts, especially something like the timing belt. I believe the OEM supplier is Aisin, amazon has the whole kit.
Parts are fairly reasonable as long as you don't look at prices for oem spark plugs.
x2 on the Aisin kit, it's available from rockauto and is quality stuff...I've done the TB twice on my 05 so far, with any luck it'll make it to a 3rd time.
Definitely address the auto trans and P/S fluids while you're under there anyway.
Looking at AutoZone, I saw a couple of different filters for the transmission/transaxle. They mention that the filter is not serviceable without transmission disassembly. Is it generally not needed to replace the filter, but just to change the fluid? Or what goes into doing the transmission filter assembly? When they mention disassembly, is it just removal of the transmission fluid pan? That sort of service I am comfortable with doing, but much beyond that is a bit beyond my comfort level.
Just do a 3x drain and fill and that should be sufficient. The filter is hidden and can be accesed but its a royal PITA. ( btw there is info here on the 3x drain and fill)
It sounds like you are already getting quite familiar with your Odyssey with all the planned maintenance you have on the list. I also try to do as much as I can with both our Ody's.
As far as the transmission changes.. I generally try to do a drain/fill every other oil change. I use only the Honda trans oil, and Mobil 1 for the engines.
Enjoy and post some pics of your new ride!
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