07 Odessey aka The Purple People Eater

Well, sometimes your life falls to pieces and you find yourself in need of personal transportation that can accommodate some offspring. 
You start off shopping for a small car because of fuel mileage and already having a work truck that chugs gas and before you know it instead of shopping for a midlife crisis sports car you're cross shopping high mileage or lightly smashed up siennas and odesseys.

Before you know it you see a picture like this on dealer lot that specializes in as is where is no inspection vehicles that are one step removed from being sent to the auction. 

Being unable to get off work that day you send your semi retired father to look at it, but he has all the sales resistance of a 6 year old in toys r us so next thing you know you own a high mileage no service history Honda Odessey.

By the time the van gets home a list is already forming.

-radio inoperable 

-tires garbage

-rear brakes thrashed

-drivers sliding door inoperable 

-rear hatch inoperable 

-passenger sliding door hard to operate 

-alignment funky

-paint about 4 different shades of blurple 

On night one you start picking the easy stuff off. Rear hatch has an access panel inside to get at the latch. Pop the cover pop the latch. Clean and lube everything and next thing you know the hatch works. 

Next up some tunes, radio shows xxxx my father thought it was shot. Found owners manual in glove box. Enter radio code and bam we have sound. 

With that out of the way I take it to a local shop I know and get them to look it over for provincial inspection. Will need aforementioned rear brakes, RF wheel bearing and did I mention the tires were scrap?

Take it home to keep working away at it.

Friday evening when you have the kids in bed and are staying sober until life stabilizes means it's time for brakes.

I was shocked, all pins had been lubed. No seized bolts, even the little retaining screws on the rotors turned right out. The easiest brake job I have ever done was wrapped up in under an hour.

See that gash on the quarter panel, consider it foreshadowing. 

Another couple days pass and progress must continue, down payment has been taken on the fuel guzzling sequoia that needs to go because of emotional entanglement. 
 

Provincial law states that all doors must function for motor vehicle inspection so I start with the one on the passenger side. Already had the mid roller in place so I replaced that and lubed all the tracks and now it works smooth (although cables are snapped so no power doors for right now). 
 

Time to tackle the drivers side sliding door, it was jammed in an almost shut position. It required all the force a 160lbs Frenchman could deliver to open it. At that point I realized the middle roller was in several pieces (had replacement in hand) and the lower roller was off it's tracks. 
Replaced middle roller but couldn't get the door back on lower track without removing it and disassembling lower roller. Am I doing this right? 
 

With the lower roller muscled into place with a couple bars and a solid piece of Canadian hardwood lumber I reassembled the new middle roller cleaned and lubed the tracks and now the door works pretty well manually. I can't imagine what kind of wrestling match the po had to get the door shut and partially latched with only the top roller in place. But I bet that's where the quarter panel damage came from. 
 

What do you do to celebrate successful repairing two doors in 2.5 hours? You polish a turd. I mean headlights. You polish the headlights because they were yellow. 

Next up I need to fix a quarter size hole in the inner rocker. Tires are waiting at the local shop and I need to decide if I want to do the wheel bearing or let the pros handle that one. Press in bearings without a hoist or press aren't a ton of fun.

 
That brings us to today, after a week of ownership. Lots left to do but it's getting closer to something safe enough to transport people. 

In the garage last night and dug out some stuff. It's my first four wheeled Honda I better do some jdm stuff. 

A friend grabbed me a 10$ speaker box and I ordered a 12$ line converter . Going to use quick connects and have the box quickly removable for when needed. 

Looking good, paint looks great from the other side of a pc!

Is this one of those that shuts off cylinders on demand?

As the not proud owner of a 2011 Odyssey, I can't imagine anyone actually putting money into one of these. Ours has been the second least reliable vehicle I've ever owned, one of the least comfortable, and the perfect example of a company that doesn't engineer, they simply copy other ideas with poor execution. 
We are days away from replacing our 2011. It will be a day that is celebrated for generations to come. 

I will follow this thread though, the threads where someone takes a regular vehicle that has been neglected and fixes all that crap are very interesting to me. 

Happy to lend you my knowledge, we had an '05 for a while and currently have a '17 with 220k on it. A few things I'd recommend off the bat:

1) Do a 3x drain and fill on the transmission (no flushes), I use MaxLife ATF on ours.

2) Install a transmission cooler (especially if yours isn't equipped with the factory towing cooler).  Transmission temps tend to get the highest at idle with the A/C blasting.

3) If no record of a recent timing belt change, I'd get the Aisin kit from Rock Auto.

Other than those three items, those are the first 3 things I'd look at.  Based on the power sliding doors and cloth trim, yours looks like an EX, I'm not sure if the '07 EX's had VCM.  If yours does, I'd recommend one of the devices to disable it.  The vacuum-actuated motor mounts on the VCM-equipped vans tend to go bad over time, and are expensive to replace (if going with OEM parts).  

I've installed AirLift airbags in the rear on both of our Ody's and highly recommend them, but they're not a necessity.

Odyclub.com is a great resource, with a lot of DIY info.  I've played around with the power sliding doors on both of ours.  The rollers are key (looks like you've taken care of those).  I've had cables snap and after trying two different aftermarket cables, I'd recommend doing what AngryCorvair did and get a whole motor from a junkyard. The actuators can go bad, as well.

Enjoy yours! They have a good combination of room, practicality, and decent fuel efficiency (especially on the highway).

In reply to DrBoost :

As my name implies I come from a vw background. I don't think a high mileage Honda is going to scare me from a maintenance standpoint.

Dj 

I think I'll leave the door just operating manually for right now. 
Transmission and sub frame rust were my greatest fears with this blind purchase but trans seems to work really well and subframes are solid.

A transmission cooler doesn't sound like a bad idea. 

Timing belt is on the list, just unsure if I'll farm that out or spend a day doing it myself. 
 

I don't believe the van has cylinder deactivation but tell me how to confirm and I will check. 

I think those years of the 3.5 v6 did have cylinder deactivation. 
 

I used S-VCM on my wife's Pilot. Probably could've made one myself, but I figured it wasn't worth the time to figure it out and just paid the man. Seems to be working just fine 

It looks like the EX did not have VCM in your year ('07), so you've dodged that bullet! I've added the VCM Tuner 2 to both our '16 Pilot and '17 Odyssey and have been impressed with it.

1SlowVW said:

In reply to DrBoost :

As my name implies I come from a vw background. I don't think a high mileage Honda is going to scare me from a maintenance standpoint.

It's not the maintenance. I've owned a lot of older German cars. It's the repairs on the thing. Transmissions are fragile, cylinder deactivation destroys cylinder walls, side door rollers made from compressed graham cracker crumbs and baby spit, power lift gate motors that are weak. 
Ditch the cylinder wall self-destruct system, add a big trans cooler and get the rear doors to open easily and it's not bad. Not great, but not bad.

In reply to DrBoost :

I see those as weak points but this thing would have been challenge priced with the Canadian exchange rate to give you an idea of cost. The door rollers were and easy fix, it's a base model so no power lift gate, and it appears I dodged the cylinder deactivation stuff. So really I'm still feeling pretty good about this one.

At challenge pricing, that's a steal. The '07 got the more robust Ridgeline transmission, and. The EX is the perfect trim level. The doors work well in manual mode (you could even convert them to full manual using LX parts), and AngryCorvair just fixed his door for like $130. Not too many vehicles that are this comfortable for 8, have a ton of space, and still knock down high 20s fuel economy on a trip.

Ours have had their fair share of issues, but I've had friends with Siennas whose power sliding doors have broken, as well. Minivans tend to get used and abused, and ours have generally held up pretty well in my opinion.

Nice find. How many miles are on it? The 2005-2010 LX and EX did not have the VCM, only EX-L and Touring trims had that, so you're good there. My self/parents/siblings combined have owned 8 of that gen Odyssey. So far, 2 of them (both 2006 EX-Ls) have had transmissions die. 1 at 240K miles and 1 at 260K miles. The 260K had been leaking trans fluid prior to it going out and the leak had been fixed, but probably too late to save the trans. My sister replaced it with a 2019 Accord and then with a 2021 Odyssey. The 240K had spent most it's life in a somewhat hilly area. Engines in both were still running strong even with VCM.

In reply to 90BuickCentury :

It's got 350k km so around 215k miles give or take. 
I hope to get two years out of this thing with a little maintenance as that's what our provincial inspection are good for. We'll see I guess.

In reply to 1SlowVW :

That's not bad. Should easily go another 2 yrs, unless the PO totally abused it.

dj06482 (Forum Supporter) said:

AngryCorvair just fixed his door for like $130. Not too many vehicles that are this comfortable for 8, have a ton of space, and still knock down high 20s fuel economy on a trip.

our 2010 EX-L has had more sliding door issues than all other issues combined. i had previously replaced the carrier/roller assembly on both doors, so this time i only had to do the door motor and cables and latch, $52 in JY parts. I didn't need the control module, but i bought it just in case.

^what Patrick said!

We bought our 2010 EX-L new and wife drives it daily-ish for kid hauling duties.  Only a little over 100k though it's getting crusty here in Detroit.  Power doors have been an issue over our ownership.  Rust has taken the front catalytic converter and the hard line for the trans cooler.  AC slowly dribbled out until we fixed that recently.  Brakes and battery.  It will be handed down to WK1 in the near future 

I'm not expecting greatness here , hopefully just reliable ish transportation for me and a few kids. I rarely travel further than 60 miles from home base and truthfully many days the company truck gets used more than personal vehicle. 
Due to the aforementioned life changes I'm having to repurchase my house so money is going to be tight for at least a few years while I pay the short term legal bills and deal with some other expenses. Thankfully like many on this site even though I was doing ok the last few years I always just drove older vehicles and this van looked like a fairly safe bet for a two year commitment. 

This should work fine and I can still fold 2/3 of the rear seat down. Ok for a 10$ box and a 22$ total cost sub install. 
 

Also patched the small hole in the inner rocker , will coat with rubberized undercoating today once the seam sealer has cured. 

I blew the budget and bought a grote fuse tap. Not exactly oe level execution but I'll call it ok for 30$.

Nothing to really add other than to let you know I'll be following along.