Honda 3.5 Oil Pan Drop.

[chubbs1]

Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Why is it so hard to believe that a car used in severe service, stretching OCI's to 7500 miles is sludged up like that? This could just be a case of ultra severe service and an OCI that is just too long. It could also be a design flaw rearing its ugly head under the right conditions. I would consider 7500 miles to be a semi extended OCI for some, for me way beyond my self imposed limit. Long OCIs aren't for everyone in every application. This proves it.

JMO and a little bit of Devil's Advocate to spice things up before the big game!


I agree with your devils advocate theory, I could give two [Censored] what people think of my 3-4k changes with "quality syns." They are my vehicles and this is the kind of stuff you can prevent. Though It hit me in the gut seeing those pics because if it is true about the 7.5K OCI's there may be a bigger problem out there...enter the "Honda sludger years".

 

[ltslimjim]

Wow, with the rate the Honda's are dying before 300k miles I'm sure we've got the next 'toyota' on our hands. Recalls left and right.

...but seriously weren't most cars that had sludge problems ones that were following the original OEM and still would start having build up? AFTER that there were TSB etc. and adjusted requirements for such engines, even some recalls on parts replacement???

 

[electrolover]

Originally Posted By: Boss302fan
kreen? Come on guys....


?

 

[Trav]

Originally Posted By: Boss302fan
Is it easy to drop the pan on that engine?
kreen? Come on guys....


Not bad once the plastic under panels are removed and the exhaust crossover.No gasket just Honda Bond RTV and an O Ring for the pick up.
Believe it or not Kreen seems to be doing a very good job where the varnish and deposits are.
If you try it on something that needs it you maybe surprised but to each their own.

Originally Posted By: momomeister
If it was that sludged up already or with so much in deposits I'd expect the person who changed the oil to see some deposit or at least something in the oil coming out of the pan. Then at least he/she would say something to either the service writer or the owner directly.

Like someone said already (at least I think it was said), there has to be more to this story.


That does not seem to be the way sludge works,even on my wifes old Solara 3.0 there was no indication of sludge when changing the oil.The valve cover had a plate under the cap so i could not see inside.When we got the notice of sludge TSB i pulled the front valve cover and was shocked,there was sludge.
I changed the oil personally on that engine and it never saw more than 7500K OCI.It was not as bad as this one but bad enough to make me drop the pan.

There really is no more to this story.
I cant understand why for whatever reason some folks don't want to accept or believe it can be sludge with 7500K on GPIII synthetic oil but it did.
Its bad enough now but imagine what it would be like if i disclosed the make of the oil used?I will not!
There would be pandemonium on BITOG and i would get death threats.I will say it was not Amsoil and ARX or any other additive was involved in creating this mess,just commercially available brand name GPIII nothing more.

IMHO the problem is with how the vehicle was operated not with the lube or the make of the car.

Originally Posted By: Molakule
I would have the PCV system and the thermostat checked.

What year and what is the sumps oil capacity?

A soccer mom car with short trips perhaps? If so, it may not be getting up to temp such that it is forming cool temp sludge (mayonaise) and accelerating oxidation.


PCV was changed and is clear,thermostat working fine.
4.5-5 qt sump.This is the iVTEC where 3 cylinders are shut down at certain loads.
This cars daily routine since day 1
10+ (sometimes many more)daily short cold trips of 2 miles or less.
Once a week or so trip of 70-80miles each way.
Once a month or 6 weeks longer trip of 200+ miles each way.
Excessive idling to warm the car interior in winter or cool it in summer.
Car is started sometimes 15 times a day,sometimes it idles for a time then someone changes their mind and it just gets turned off again.

After reading your reply i looked at the inside of the cap and yes there is white creamy looking stuff.

Originally Posted By: itslimjim
but seriously weren't most cars that had sludge problems ones that were following the original OEM and still would start having build up? AFTER that there were TSB etc. and adjusted requirements for such engines, even some recalls on parts replacement???


Yes sir they sure were! My wifes Solara was well maintained by me personally and believe me i am uber conciousness and it developed a slight sludge issue anyway on GPIII.Not bad enough for Toyota to replace but not nice either
FWIW after cleaning it up a good GPIV/IV oil kept it super clean after even with 7500K OCI that my daughter does now.
This is her winter car as she bought a new Genesis coupe 3.8 track,both are running the same GPIV oils and staying pretty.

I would pull the pan again but i am doing this pretty much as a favor so i have to put some limits on my time.I will keep a close eye on this car and get some oil fill hole shots as time goes by.I will post some pics of the parts and engine cleaned up before i put it together,so if anyone has any request of pics or info about how to do the job just let me know.


A few final thoughts on this..
I see engines every day of all kinds and most have little or no issues with sludge but like anything else there is always a few exceptions.
My advise would be just look down the fill hole if its not clean or showing signs of getting varnish then the rest of the engine that cannot be seen is looking the same or worse and its time to either lower the OCI or type of oil being used before it gets looking like this one.
Some cars like my 5.4 ford are easy on oil and survive quite nicely on GPIII or dino but there seems to be more and more of these high tech hot running engines that dont play nice with oils and these need a little more TLC.
Oil is cheap engines are not so in true BITOG fashion.Gentlemen grab your OC buckets and get changing that oil LOL.

 

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: chubbs1
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Why is it so hard to believe that a car used in severe service, stretching OCI's to 7500 miles is sludged up like that? This could just be a case of ultra severe service and an OCI that is just too long. It could also be a design flaw rearing its ugly head under the right conditions. I would consider 7500 miles to be a semi extended OCI for some, for me way beyond my self imposed limit. Long OCIs aren't for everyone in every application. This proves it.

JMO and a little bit of Devil's Advocate to spice things up before the big game!


I agree with your devils advocate theory, I could give two [Censored] what people think of my 3-4k changes with "quality syns." They are my vehicles and this is the kind of stuff you can prevent. Though It hit me in the gut seeing those pics because if it is true about the 7.5K OCI's there may be a bigger problem out there...enter the "Honda sludger years".


Glad you agree, sometimes common sense and a little bit of knowledge goes a long way. In this case if it were my vehicle there'd be on way I would have ever done a 7500 mile OCI, with any brand of synthetic oil, under the SS conditions this vehicle was used in. I'm sure there are a lot more of these engines out there that didn't trip a CEL, loaded with crud following the recommended OCI. Driving habits and conditions come into play big time with certain engine designs, the sad news is many times you'll find out too late. IMO shorter OCI's certainly would have helped more than hurt in this case. I wonder how many years of doing an extra 2 OCI's per year it would have taken to recover the cost of this repair?

 

[Trav]

Quote:
I wonder how many years of doing an extra 2 OCI's per year it would have taken to recover the cost of this repair?

Exactly right!
He is lucky that it an easy engine to get the pan off at $100+ an hour labor around here it can get quite expensive if he had to go to the dealer or even an independent for that matter.

 

[demarpaint]

From the looks of it you did a lot more than a pan drop! Yes he's lucky it was an easy pan drop. IIRC my Aerostar has 3.5 hours in the book to do a pan drop, that doesn't include the clean up, or pulling valve covers, to clean the top end of the engine. Oil changes are cheap, and we really have no idea if some of that garbage did damage elsewhere, or if other problems might show up down the road!

You do very nice work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A great report too!

 

[Bill in Utah]

Been following this thread since my Dad has a 2005 Honda powered VUE with the 3.5l. It's the normal one and seen only conventional 5w-20 oils following the OLM. (no percentage just light comes on)

OCIs seem to be from 6500-8000 miles depending on the use. He is almost 80 so quite a bit of short trips with highway (at least 2000 mile trips) thrown in 4-6 times a year. He has over 100k on it now and its clean as new. I think the OP vehicle either has seen some longer OCIs (not doubting the OP's words but) or something is wrong with the PCV system.

Here is a photo of my Dad's fill port on the Vue around 80k. It still looks the same.

Clean as they can get.

Bill

PS: oils used have been QS, Pennzoil, Mobil 5000 and Chevron. Fram or Supertech 7317 filters only...

 

[440Magnum]

Originally Posted By: Trav

This cars daily routine since day 1
10+ (sometimes many more)daily short cold trips of 2 miles or less.
Once a week or so trip of 70-80miles each way.
Once a month or 6 weeks longer trip of 200+ miles each way.
Excessive idling to warm the car interior in winter or cool it in summer.
Car is started sometimes 15 times a day,sometimes it idles for a time then someone changes their mind and it just gets turned off again.


That right there is enough to explain it for me... in ANY engine, with pretty much ANY oil, when combined with the 7000+ mile OCI. MAYBE a really stout synthetic HD oil would survive that without sludging, MAYBE a Grp V. Maybe.

 

[INDYMAC]

My 2000 Tundra V-8 had about 120K when I had to pull the valve cover to retrieve a PCV valve grommet. I was extremely surprised to see varnish and early stages of dark reddish brown deposit build-up (no thick black sludge though)covering the entire valve train area. You can not see anything through the oil fill hole because it goes right to the sump.

I bought this truck new on 09/04/99 and switched to commercial OTC "full synthetics" at 17K miles, after the first 5 free oil changes were done at the dealership. The dealership refused to put synthetic in my truck, so I started taking it elsewhere. Pennzoil 5W-30 synthetic was used mostly as my preference with 3K OCI's. But it did see Valvoline, Castrol or M1 changes if my odometer showed I was getting close to 3000 miles and I wanted to avoid a heart attack by pulling over to the next quick lube. At about 95K, I started using ML synthetic and then PP with 4-5K OCI's and UOA's. So, you can see why I was surprised to see any varnish or build-up at all at 120K miles. But it was there, staring me in the face. And this truck has never been what I would consider under severe service conditions.

So for me, it's not difficult at all to believe what Trav is showing us here. And I appreciate him doing such an excellent documentary on the subject. This is what BITOG ought to be IMO, and not what it has digressed to lately.

 

[Vikas]

Somebody else also pointed out that if this vehicle has 85K and is 2005/2006 model; then it had about 17K per year. That is approximately 50 miles on average every single day. If each trip is 3 miles, there would be 17 trips per day! You don't rake up that kind of miles using short trips.

Something is not adding up. I suspect dealer/mechanic cheating the owner. There is no other explanation.

I googled "Odyssey VCM" and did not even get a single hit with a similar problem.

Trav, I have utmost respect for you, so I hope you don't take this wrong way but there is a missing factor in this story.

- Vikas

 

[Vikas]

Sorry; did not read the updated explanation :-(

Now it sort of makes sense and I take back my previous comment.

- Vikas

 

[Trav]

No problem Vikas i am just as shocked/baffled as anyone else.
This vehicle does not see severe service it sees abusive service.
They have 4 kids and all are involved in multiple activities at school every single day and weekends as well as the wife doing local real estate.Add trips to the store,McDonalds etc and it really adds up to a disaster waiting to happen.
You wont believe the amount of rebuilding on the electric sliding doors that has been needed almost constantly.

 

[hate2work]

Originally Posted By: Trav

This cars daily routine since day 1
10+ (sometimes many more)daily short cold trips of 2 miles or less.
Once a week or so trip of 70-80miles each way.
Once a month or 6 weeks longer trip of 200+ miles each way.
Excessive idling to warm the car interior in winter or cool it in summer.
Car is started sometimes 15 times a day,sometimes it idles for a time then someone changes their mind and it just gets turned off again.


There goes my earlier theory of weekly runs to get the engine hot would have prevented this

 

[Hokiefyd]

Something sure seems to be odd here. Our '05 MDX with the VTEC version of the J35 (not VCM) has 60k miles on it. My parents were the original owners, and dad would have the oil changed every 5k miles "or so" at the nearest Walmart. The upper head area looks just like Bill's dad's Vue engine. So clean, you could eat off it.

As maintenance-conscious as the owner appears to be, I'm guessing that he didn't do the oil changes himself. He certainly would have been alerted to all the caked-up sludge in the valve cover area when he filled the engine up after a change. And that amount of sludge and deposits don't form overnight...that was a long time in the making. There may be PCV problems, or the oil was run low, or the engine was run hot, or the VCM contributes to this somehow, or any/all of the above.

I do personally wonder where he had the oil changed (sorry if it was already posted and I missed it) and if they were pencil-whipping the work. VERY interesting, and thank you Trav for posting the pictures.

 

[440Magnum]

Originally Posted By: hate2work

There goes my earlier theory of weekly runs to get the engine hot would have prevented this

Find MolaKule's post on about page 2 of the thread- a good chemistry-based explanation of why that doesn't work. Once the breakdown process has started, the long trip/heat only accelerates it. That's why I've always tried very hard not to start one of my vintage cars unless I KNOW its going to get fully warmed up (ie, avoid firing one up just to move it to a more convenient place in the driveway- sometimes I can't help it, but sometimes I can put off the move until I want to drive it anyway.)

 

[Trav]

Vikas just google Honda sludge.
There is a few like this one..

http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19264

An excerpt
I have a 2006 RL wih 54,000 miles. I drive 75 % of the time on the highway as I live about 30 miles north of town and work in town.

As I was going to work my RL started to slow down and the engine started making strange noises. I turned off the engine and was able to coast to within 100 yds of an oil change center. I started it long enough to drive the 100yds then coasted into the garage. They changed oil to see if that stopped the knocking. It did not.
I had the car picked up and taken to a Honda dealer.
A couple of days later they called and said that I needed to produce proof of oil changes because the engine had alot of sludge. After I produced the receipts they told me they were not going to warranty the engine because I hadn't change my oil often enough.
I changed it on average around 5,000 to 5,500 mile even before the indiator came on that service was due.
I have searched the internet and have found many cases where Toyota, Lexus,Dodge,SAAB and VW have had problems where their engines have failed due to sludge buildup and they have extended their warraties as far as 8 years 200,000 miles.
Has anyone else had a similar problem with a RL?

Another kicker is when I went to look at the car myself they had only pulled a valve cover off and from that They determined that I had a main bearing out.

I had to agree to pay $200.00 to pull the pan to see what was wrong. They pulled the pan but not the anti splash plate. I asked them how can they tell what's wrong if they don't look in the engine?
I said maybe it just a broken piston and that is all it needs. They told me "we don't do repairs we will only replace the whole engine".

Has anyone used the BBB disput resolution process? How did it work for you?
I hate to have to pay a lawyer to fight this.

Watch out the indicator on your car may get you in troubleif you do what it says!!

 

[sunfire]

What do people think about spiking the oil changes with MMO? Even after the engine has been cleaned out.

 

[Boss302fan]

If it is already clean, just use a good cleaning syn oil like PP, Ultra, Edge or even Mobil 1 HM oils. Mobil 1 HM oils have a great add pack and also clean very well....

 

[ltslimjim]

Originally Posted By: Trav
Yes sir they sure were! My wifes Solara was well maintained by me personally and believe me i am uber conciousness and it developed a slight sludge issue anyway on GPIII.Not bad enough for Toyota to replace but not nice either
FWIW after cleaning it up a good GPIV/IV oil kept it super clean after even with 7500K OCI that my daughter does now.
This is her winter car as she bought a new Genesis coupe 3.8 track,both are running the same GPIV oils and staying pretty.

I would pull the pan again but i am doing this pretty much as a favor so i have to put some limits on my time.I will keep a close eye on this car and get some oil fill hole shots as time goes by.I will post some pics of the parts and engine cleaned up before i put it together,so if anyone has any request of pics or info about how to do the job just let me know.


A few final thoughts on this..
I see engines every day of all kinds and most have little or no issues with sludge but like anything else there is always a few exceptions.
My advise would be just look down the fill hole if its not clean or showing signs of getting varnish then the rest of the engine that cannot be seen is looking the same or worse and its time to either lower the OCI or type of oil being used before it gets looking like this one.
Some cars like my 5.4 ford are easy on oil and survive quite nicely on GPIII or dino but there seems to be more and more of these high tech hot running engines that dont play nice with oils and these need a little more TLC.
Oil is cheap engines are not so in true BITOG fashion.Gentlemen grab your OC buckets and get changing that oil LOL.


Well, I don't see any reason why your adjustments in oil choice/filter etc won't stop this from happening again unless something mechanically is just wrong. Look forward to the pics!