I just thought I’d pass along some pearls of wisdom on replacing the half shafts on a Honda Odyssey (mine’s a 2007 LX). I completed this task this past weekend, but not without some major struggles. In a job like this, one needs to understand that the biggest frustration is going to be when something doesn’t come loose (as it always is with car mechanic-ing). There are 3 places that this happened to me —here’s what they are and how I dealt with them.
1) The axle nut would not come loose. I couldn’t get either one to loosen with a 1/2” breaker bar plus a pipe for extra leverage. Standing on the breaker bar, bouncing on it, hitting it with a 4 lb hammer, none of those worked. So I borrowed a friend’s electric impact wrench. That worked on the driver side but passenger side still wouldn’t budge. Finally I bought an air impact wrench and this did the trick after only 15 seconds of application. For reference, the electric impact tool could deliver about 250 ft.lbs of torque while the air tool had about twice that, and that double torque is what it took. So plan in advance for some serious torque application.
2) The ball joint would not come loose. I thought mine would come off easy since I had the lower A arms replaced about a year ago, with new ball joints. But it was not to be. Ball joints are notorious for being difficult to separate anyway, and since there is the alternative to separate at the strut mount, I highly recommend going that route. I found it was just as easy to get the axle out that way, so save yourself a headache.
3) I could not get the passenger side axle to separate from the intermediate axle. Several other people have reported this problem and it’s a real bear. Forget trying to pry them apart by sticking something up between where they join —there’s not enough room to get good leverage or force. And there's no easy way to bang on the end of the CV joint because of the exhaust and the heat shield are in the way. I ended up removing the 3 bolts that hold the heat shield and moving it aside. That allowed me to insert from the driver side direction my trusty tire tool (a 11/16” diameter, 24” long steel rod) up against the CV housing, and then 2 hard hits with a 4 lb hammer on the tool separated the joint. So that’s what worked for me.
Hopefully passing along my experience will save readers some aggravation when they try it. Forewarned is forearmed. Good luck.