Honda Car Forum

YouMustPay100DollarsForEachSpamYouSendMe@d1h.com (Dan Birchall) wrote:
> sbigelowXLS@rogers.com (Stephen Bigelow) wrote:
> > "Andrew" <andrew661093@aol.com> wrote:
> > > According to my mechanic, there was a service bulletin regarding this.
> > > He put some sort of special corrective fitting in there. I was losing
> > > some oil, but the main reason I brought my car in ('93 Accord) was to
> > > have the timing belt replaced. The oil leaked stopped.
> >
> > Yep. It's a little bracket, available at the dealer, a front balance shaft
> > seal retainer. http://tinyurl.com/fnzo
> > #14. Under $3.
>
> Thanks, Andrew and Stephen! After all the trolling, and troll-feeding,
> by others, I'm glad to see some real answers relating to what I've got
> going on. I'm going to check my service records and will probably take
> it in for the timing belt, and have them do the front seal _and_ check
> on PN 34312 there while they're at it. MOST helpful.

I'll preface this by saying that I am not currently a "car guy" with
regards to Hondas (I may have noted that the last car I did any real
work on was a '65 Plymouth)... but that I just ordered the Honda-published
shop manual for my Accord.

The dealer service folks (who had told me that the worsening leak was
either the front or back main seal) indicated that it'd cost in the
$600-700 range to have either of them fixed, due to the amount of stuff
that had to be taken apart. In the case of the front seal, the idea
was to do the timing belt while they were in there. I checked with a
trusted mechanic at a local service station, and he said about $450
for the front seal and timing belt, but "might as well" do the water
pump for another $150ish, so as to not have it go sooner than the
rest and require all that taking apart and putting back together.

So... I scheduled the Accord for a visit to that service station.
Dropped it off Monday morning, and fairly quickly got a call back from
the mechanic.

The worsening leak wasn't the front seal.

The worsening leak wasn't the rear seal.

The worsening leak was the BIG @#$%ING CRACK IN THE OIL PAN.

Which had, _somehow_, managed to be invisible to the folks at the
dealer.

Conveniently, it was $200+ less than I'd been expecting to have
to spend! The mechanic saved the old pan to show me - no dings,
so it wasn't an impact failure. He noted that the local parts
distributor had 2 of them in stock, which (to him) seemed very
unusual for something that's not going to fail a lot - he suspects
the pan might be prone to some sort of stress failure after a
decent amount of miles.

So... the dealer folks have tried to sell me extremely expensive
repairs that the other mechanic said weren't at all necessary (in
fact, they told me the car needed CV joints, less than a year after
they themselves had put in new CV parts). They've screwed things
up (after they changed some gaskets, they power-washed it so hard
that water got into the engine and messed up the starting, and
the transmission computer was also confused for weeks after they
serviced it in April). And now they've missed the big glaring
problem, and pointed me toward other (more expensive) repairs,
which were not only unnecessary, but wouldn't have stopped the
problem.

Needless to say, I've lost most of my trust in them. Thus the shop
manual. And the ramps I'll be getting. I may not know jack about
fixing a Honda, but that appears to put me about even with them -
and unlike them, I've got a mechanic to fall back on who _does_ know
his stuff.

-Dan (becoming a "car guy" again?)

"Dan Birchall" <YouMustPay100DollarsForEachSpamYouSendMe@d1h.co m> wrote in
message
news:slrnbh9d36.4m3.YouMustPay100DollarsForEachSpa mYouSendMe@eleele.danbirch
all.com...
> YouMustPay100DollarsForEachSpamYouSendMe@d1h.com (Dan Birchall) wrote:
> > sbigelowXLS@rogers.com (Stephen Bigelow) wrote:
> > > "Andrew" <andrew661093@aol.com> wrote:
> > > > According to my mechanic, there was a service bulletin regarding
this.
> > > > He put some sort of special corrective fitting in there. I was
losing
> > > > some oil, but the main reason I brought my car in ('93 Accord) was
to
> > > > have the timing belt replaced. The oil leaked stopped.
> > >
> > > Yep. It's a little bracket, available at the dealer, a front balance
shaft
> > > seal retainer. http://tinyurl.com/fnzo
> > > #14. Under $3.
> >
> > Thanks, Andrew and Stephen! After all the trolling, and troll-feeding,
> > by others, I'm glad to see some real answers relating to what I've got
> > going on. I'm going to check my service records and will probably take
> > it in for the timing belt, and have them do the front seal _and_ check
> > on PN 34312 there while they're at it. MOST helpful.
>
> I'll preface this by saying that I am not currently a "car guy" with
> regards to Hondas (I may have noted that the last car I did any real
> work on was a '65 Plymouth)... but that I just ordered the Honda-published
> shop manual for my Accord.

Good news!

Online manual for "our" cars ( I have a 91 EX-R)
http://www.honda.co.uk/owner/AccordManual/index.html

Online illustrated parts guide for our cars
http://www.hondaautomotiveparts.com/