2009 Odyssey EX-L, 128K Miles
Good afternoon everyone, I just want to relay my experiences after a timing belt failure to the group and identify some major issues I've had with some remanufactured cylinder heads I received from a "reputable" cylinder head company.
I changed the timing belt about 3 years and 30k miles ago with a "Honda" kit I purchased off ebay. About a month ago the belt broke, the smoking gun failures I found were poor quality bearings and a likely poor quality belt. The idler pulley bearing had significant side to side play (0.009") and I noticed the belt had no markings on it at all. The Honda (Mitsubishi) belt i now have is well marked and I dont believe the markings would have completely warn away. The bearings were also labeled as "DKF" bearing were as the Honda Bearings should have actually been Koyo bearings. I did not try to identify any of this when i installed it, however i do remember everything coming in clearly labeled Honda parts bags. The company I ordered this kit from is apparently out of business.....
Now after the belt broke, I had (1) bent most of the intake valves on both heads (2) a rocker arm roller bearing blew apart (3) 3 other rocker arm roller bearings were noticeably rough to roll (4) damage to lobes on both cam shafts. After seeing the extent of the damage i quickly abandoned the idea of rebuilding these heads; and after seeing the cost of new heads from Honda ($2500ish) I turned to either finding used or reman heads.
I found a company I took as reputable that only deals in remanufacturing cylinder heads. I'll list the issues and summarize the problem.
(1) Paint: They painted the aluminum cylinder heads in the valve body area and this paint is just falling off. Specifically the paint on spark plug tubes. After my first 20 min run, i pulled the valve covers to inspect and noticed small silvery specs in the oil (this freaked me out), every piece i pulled out was paint. I changed the oil and put on about another 200 miles on and now im having a P3497 code and many issues with the VCM system, think this is due to the paint in the oil. I drain and strain the oil, and cut open the oil filter to inspect and see massive amounts of paint littering everywhere.
Cylinder Head Paint 1
Cylinder Head Paint 2
Oil Strainer
Oil Filter Cut Open
(2) Rocker arms missing shims: I just happen to notice two of the non-vcm rocker arms had a good amount of side to side play down the oil passage tube. Each non-vcm rocker arm should have shims on both sides of them. I had to pull shims off my old heads
Missing Shims
(3) They assembled the rocker arm bridge with a damaged bolt: As I was replacing both heads i had several fastener types that i wanted to make sure the torqued down correctly. This included the rocker arm bridge. I backed each of them out slightly the went to torque them down to 16 ft-lbs. As i go through these each of them were at the torque with roughly 90 deg rotation , then i get to one of them and the bolt just keeps rotating....... I then go to back out the bolt and see what looks like a bolt that was severely stretched however it was no longer than any other bolt. I end up pulling all of the bolts out and replacing them with the bolts from my old heads.
Bolt
One of these bolts
I plan on discussing these issues with the company tomorrow, Ill post how that conversation goes.
Update : I purchased these heads from this company (Cylinder Heads for All Makes and Models | Cylinder Heads). They are a distributor for these heads, they actually came from Allied Motor Parts.
Good afternoon everyone, I just want to relay my experiences after a timing belt failure to the group and identify some major issues I've had with some remanufactured cylinder heads I received from a "reputable" cylinder head company.
I changed the timing belt about 3 years and 30k miles ago with a "Honda" kit I purchased off ebay. About a month ago the belt broke, the smoking gun failures I found were poor quality bearings and a likely poor quality belt. The idler pulley bearing had significant side to side play (0.009") and I noticed the belt had no markings on it at all. The Honda (Mitsubishi) belt i now have is well marked and I dont believe the markings would have completely warn away. The bearings were also labeled as "DKF" bearing were as the Honda Bearings should have actually been Koyo bearings. I did not try to identify any of this when i installed it, however i do remember everything coming in clearly labeled Honda parts bags. The company I ordered this kit from is apparently out of business.....
Now after the belt broke, I had (1) bent most of the intake valves on both heads (2) a rocker arm roller bearing blew apart (3) 3 other rocker arm roller bearings were noticeably rough to roll (4) damage to lobes on both cam shafts. After seeing the extent of the damage i quickly abandoned the idea of rebuilding these heads; and after seeing the cost of new heads from Honda ($2500ish) I turned to either finding used or reman heads.
I found a company I took as reputable that only deals in remanufacturing cylinder heads. I'll list the issues and summarize the problem.
(1) Paint: They painted the aluminum cylinder heads in the valve body area and this paint is just falling off. Specifically the paint on spark plug tubes. After my first 20 min run, i pulled the valve covers to inspect and noticed small silvery specs in the oil (this freaked me out), every piece i pulled out was paint. I changed the oil and put on about another 200 miles on and now im having a P3497 code and many issues with the VCM system, think this is due to the paint in the oil. I drain and strain the oil, and cut open the oil filter to inspect and see massive amounts of paint littering everywhere.
Cylinder Head Paint 1
Cylinder Head Paint 2
Oil Strainer
Oil Filter Cut Open
(2) Rocker arms missing shims: I just happen to notice two of the non-vcm rocker arms had a good amount of side to side play down the oil passage tube. Each non-vcm rocker arm should have shims on both sides of them. I had to pull shims off my old heads
Missing Shims
(3) They assembled the rocker arm bridge with a damaged bolt: As I was replacing both heads i had several fastener types that i wanted to make sure the torqued down correctly. This included the rocker arm bridge. I backed each of them out slightly the went to torque them down to 16 ft-lbs. As i go through these each of them were at the torque with roughly 90 deg rotation , then i get to one of them and the bolt just keeps rotating....... I then go to back out the bolt and see what looks like a bolt that was severely stretched however it was no longer than any other bolt. I end up pulling all of the bolts out and replacing them with the bolts from my old heads.
Bolt
One of these bolts
I plan on discussing these issues with the company tomorrow, Ill post how that conversation goes.
Update : I purchased these heads from this company (Cylinder Heads for All Makes and Models | Cylinder Heads). They are a distributor for these heads, they actually came from Allied Motor Parts.
