I was thinking about doing this myself, but looking at the book. It says that the steering wheel must come off, is this absolutely true? Can I just disconnect the battery and pull the cover plate and do it the way youtube videos are showing?

I am mechanically incline but I also can f@ck sh!t up because I am some times impatient. Please give your opinions.

I live near Coast Guard island and am prior military, so they have a small auto hobby shop there where I can do the maintenance.

 

I assume you're talking about the Acura service manual? Follow the book and you can't go wrong. Youtube videos give you an idea of how the system works and the high-level tasks, but doing the job varies greatly from car to car. If you're mechanically inclined you'll be fine man. The only way to f@ck sh!t up is by skipping steps and doing it half-a$$ed. The book has all the steps outlined so well that a chimp can do it. Just don't go flinging poo at people. Good luck dude!

 

I haven't changed a r&p yet, but I have seen someone do it on a 3rd gen TL and he never took the steering wheel off. Sorry, I don't have more details on what he did, but I know for sure it never came off.

 

Maybe someone who has done it once before can pop in a drop some pennies. But my opinion is to follow the book and you can't go wrong. Sometimes they make you do "unnecessary" steps, but it's only for convenience.

For example, the book says to remove the air cleaner element when changing MT fluid. But if you have long enough socket extensions, this is not necessary. Then again, all you're losing by doing this is extending the job by 10 minutes. If I didn't know any better, I would just follow exactly what it says. The worst case is that you spend a little bit more time on it than you would have otherwise, but you won't run into any trouble. Consider it an insurance policy where you're paying with your time to not have any trouble later.