New Addition to the Garage - Odyssey Transmission Fluid Change

First of all, sorry for the lack of updates.  I've been lazy, we have a new baby, and I've been working on projects around the new house (which reminds me, Havener Homestead is also behind on updates).

Anyway, new baby means we needed to replace April's Mustang with a mom-mobile.  Something that would hold five of us comfortably (especially considering two of us are over 6' tall) with extra room for luggage or camping gear and/or extra people.  We decided on a used 2006 Honda Odyssey.

Behold in all its glory!

The van has under 100,000 miles but is getting close.  When looking for a car with this type of milage upcoming scheduled maintenance becomes very important.  Honda V6 engines generally require timing belt, water pump, spark plugs, etc. at 105K which can run over $1000 at a shop.  Luckily the previous owner took care of all of the large maintenance items ahead of time, so we were pretty much good to go except for the transmission fluid.  It looked a little dirty and given some of the issues with Honda V6 transmissions I figured it would be prudent to get some fresh fluid in there.

By the way, I recommend paying a shop to do a used car inspection if you are purchasing used.  It generally costs under $100 and they will check everything out bumper to bumper.  There are also some places that specialize in only doing inspections, some are even mobile and will come out to the car's location.  These inspectors have no incentive to suggest work that doesn't really need to be done, since they don't do repairs.  In this case I couldn't find one quickly enough, and went with a regular shop.

My original plan was to do the typical 3x3 Honda recommended transmission replacement procedure.  Each time you drain the fluid you only get about 3 quarts (the rest is trapped in the torque converter) so you drain and fill 3 quarts, drive the car through all gears, drain and fill, drive through all gears, and then one final drain and fill.

For some reason I spaced out and only brought enough fluid for one drain and fill.  Oops.  Oh well, we'll do the rest later.  Let's pop the hood and get started!  We see a typical Honda V6...

It's pretty tight in there!

A lot less room than the Acura TL.  We find the filler bolt and looked around for a spin-on type filter like the TL but don't see one, and I couldn't find any info in the service manual.  Things are so tight in here it's hard to see anything.

Next we find a suitable jacking location (front tow hook) and lift it enough to reach in a remove the drain plug.  It took a while to find the drain plug because it's hidden behind some of the trim under the bumper.  Even after I found it I couldn't get a wrench on it blind (take a 3/8" drive) so we got the car on jack stands and crawled underneath to be able to see better.  That did the trick.  I like to get the ratchet snapped onto the drain plug then push on the handle with my foot out from underneath the car.  You can push a lot harder (it usually takes some force to break it free) and you're not under the car while you do it.

All drained

After getting it all drained and putting the bolt back in, we dropped the car down and went to fill it back up.  The fill bolt was a ways down and very stuck, so we ended up having to use the impact wrench and a bunch of extensions to get it off.

Trying the breaker bar first.  The bolt is way down there!

Then we ran into trouble.  I have a very long necked funnel which does the job on the TL, but there was no way we could get it to reach on here.  It was just too crowded, so something had to be done.  We discussed some different possibilities for funneling the fluid down there, but eventually decided to remove the air filter and intake hose.

It's not too difficult: Four screws on the air filter box which then pulls off the intake, then a vacuum tube needs to be removed from the intake hose and a clamp loosened and it pulls off the throttle body.

There's the fill hole down there, much more easily accessible now.

Before I pulled the hose off the throttle body, I looked at the hose clamp sitting there precariously at the end of the vacuum tube, and thought to myself "It would be a good idea to grab that now so it doesn't fall", then proceeded to pull off the hose and knock the clamp down into the engine compartment.

Luckily Brian was able to get his eyes on the part and fish it out with some pliers.  On to filling this thing up... The factory service manual says the capacity is 3.3 quarts, with instructions to "fill until full on the dipstick".  Well, that took more than 3.3 quarts.  It's times like this that I wish a little bit more information was in the manual, as we weren't sure if we were over filling or not.

After filling the intake just had to be replaced, and we're GTG for now.  I'll do two more drain & fills when I can get to it.

Brian and I hadn't worked on anything for a while, and I was reminded at how calming it can be to work with somebody else.  We both discussed working on other projects (tractor mechanic work, building computers, etc) and how we both had thoughts of choking someone out midway through the projects when we ran into ridiculous problems (parts don't fit together, holes aren't threaded, instructions are wrong, etc).  But with our powers combined, the rage is kept at bay.  Thanks bro!