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Thanks for any input ahead of time. My motor needs replacement and I picked up a motor and trans for pretty cheap. Tow yard said it came from a fear ended tl with 115k. My tl has 130k. It is complete with the harness. Should I swap the engine and trans? I checked the fluid and it doesn't look nearly as good as mine which has been drained and filled 3x. Just the motor and also should I do some pm like waper pump and timing belt? Other things? Just slap it in? Not set on how to get ot out either? Any input is great
If your trans was fine and you maintained it, then I wouldn't risk putting in unknown trans with 15k less miles. If it had 60k then maybe but 15k is nothing.
In terms of engine, if I would be doing it for myself, I would put it in the engine stand, do the timing kit, oil pump reseal, front main seal, and rear main seal, and maybe even valve adjustment. If for somebody, I would recommend it, but most people wouldn't want to spend extra buck.
Doing that while the engine is out would be couple hours max VS 6 or whatever it takes to do it on the car. Having the stand would be nice as you need to drop the pan. But can be done with just the engine jack.
If you don't want to do the oil pump reseal, at least throw rear seal and timing kit on it. Or at least throw rear seal on it. $10 and 5 minutes to be sure that it won't leak. Now I don't have much experience with taking those engine out (as I've seen only one fail and it was a while ago), but a lot of engines have small plate that holds the rear main, that bolts with couple m6 bolts to the engine and is sealed with silicon. If that is the case I would take that off as well, clean it, and put fresh silicon.
In terms of changing it, I only did MDX once, but I would drop the subframe with the engine on jack stands or some cart and lift rest of the car up. But I would do that on a car lift. No idea if you can do it if you're doing it on garage floor. Just be sure to remove bolts/nuts that hold torque converter to the flexplate. First time doing that I forgot and lying under the subframe and engine didn't feel very nice.
Get yourself a service manual to know the torque - at least for some of important fastners.
So I will be doing it in my driveway. So it won't be coming out the bottom. I belive I can just get motor out and drop the replacement in. I watched a few videos about the oil reseal and all the seals which I don't have problem doing but which ones can I but aftermarket and which ones should be honda for sure. I thought I read on here before about a few websites that sell discounted oem parts. I was gonna get the aisin water pump and timing belt from rockauto and wanted to see what else I could get from there a little cheaper.
Usually "we" recommend getting Aisin kit from rockauto. It comes with water pump, belt, idler pulley, tensioner, and tensioner pulley. I've put that kit in more than 10 vehicles for sure, including mine, and two of my friends. Stay away from ebay - there are "OEM" timing kits that even come with seals, but are counterfeit and fail a lot. I put one of those kits on a car (I warned the customer but he insisted anyways) and belt broke after ~10k miles or so, don't remember the exact mileage now.
So I'm finally getting around to the swap but some things are worrying me as I dig into the engine to oil pump reseal, mains seals,and do tb/ wp. Behind the lower timing belt cover there was excessive sludge buildup and there was black permatex in a few spots around the timing cover notches/oil pan mating surface and around the head of a bolt on the lower rear block area.. What could cause sludge buildup and was the silicon just to try to hold back the oil from failed front crank seal? Finally peeled off the water pump to find nothing but water in it and the prop on the pump was rusted pretty good. Compression tested great when I bought it. Plugs looked very good and oil had just been changed before the dono
r car was wrecked. Am I wasting my time with this donor engine.
That thing has only 115k miles on it? Do the camshaft seals for sure. Looks like somebody was driving with oil leak for a pretty long time. My engine was leaking for oil pump for ~25k miles and couple years before I got motivated enough to fix it and it didn't look as bad.
hello im curious, did you have sucess on pulling the engine out from the top? i have a 06 tl and i need to do a rear main seal and was wondering if you might have had to take the crank pulley and any other engine accessories off to make the pull as easy as possible? i have a 3.2 l engine with a 5sp auto trans. any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
If you're doing just the rear main, then sub-frame down, and then trans down, should be easier option.
There's not much holding the sub-frame really. Other stuff like dropping the exhaust you need to do anyways. And there is less stuff to take out if you're removing the trans than if you're removing the engine. Does tl has separate connector for the engine wiring harness? If no then getting the harness out will be a pita.
Additional perk is that you have easy access to power steering rack and lines and motor mounts and sway bar bushings, so replacing them is a breeze if needed.
If you want to also do the timing / oil pump / oil pan / etc. then getting the engine out might be an easier option.
