2012 Accord EX-L V6: Two weeks in Rehab

TLDR:

There's a 2010 Honda Accord EX-L V6 in the fleet. I bought it new, and one of the kids has been driving it for several years. It currently resides in another state.

About a decade ago, my cousin drove that car and really liked it (they are great cars!). He bought the 2012 version of essentially the same car. He recently bought a new Honda Pilot and doesn't need the the Accord anymore. It's two years newer, and has half the mileage of the 2010, so we made a deal and I bought his car. It will replace the 2010.

Both the 2010 (green) and the 2012 (gray) have been living in other states. The gray car has been delivered to me. It's been sitting a while, and needs some attention. I have two weeks until the green car gets here, and then I will send the gray car off with the kid, at which point, I will probably do some stuff to the green car and then put it up for sale.

I've created this thread to track my progress on the two cars.
 

More to come.

The gray car has 94,000 miles on it and is still on it's original timing belt.

My cousin was generous enough to have the oil changed, and replaced the battery and wiper blades before driving it up from DC.

Two days after it arrived, I sent it off for a new timing belt, tensioners, water pump, thermostat and serpentine belt.

271 hp at 6,200 and 254 lb-ft at 5,000. 
 

I needed to buy a cheap sales car so I bought the best car at the lowest version they had - 5-speed 2.4 and I loved the car.  
 

At 75,000 miles the wife asked if I was tired of shifting gears?  NEVER!

These are/were great cars. 
 

This was a city car, having lived its life in Washington DC, so the outside has it share of lumps and bruises, but no accident history. 
 

After some serious cleaning, the interior is perfect. 
 

I got a phone call from my cousin when he was somewhere between DC and Connecticut telling me that the brakes would need immediate attention, so I ordered a four corner kit by Centric from Amazon for about $250. 

The short trip to the shop and back for the new timing belt confirmed that the brakes were, in fact terrible. The parking brake was also useless, so I decided to start at the back of the car. I had just done rear brakes and adjusted the parking brake on the green car, so I knew that it would be a fairly quick and easy part of the job.  
 

The rear brakes looked terrible, but seemed to have very few miles on them. But since I already had all the parts and they were part of a kit that I couldn't return, so I decided to replace everything anyway. 
 

Two of the wheel studs snapped off when I was removing the lug nuts from one of the rear wheels, so progress ground to a halt while I ran to the store to get a couple of replacements. 


 

Fortunately, the shorter rear studs are easier to remove and install than the fronts as there is plenty of clearance on the back side. The broken studs came out easily with a couple of gentle whacks with a mini sledge and installation was simple with some spacers and a spare lug nut.

Something looked funky with one of the parking brake cables. 

Not sure who my cousin hired to do the previous brake job, but it made me take a closer look at the whole system. I wouldn't have been able to adjust it right without getting the cable located properly in the mounting bracket. 
 

Adjustment was pretty straightforward after that. I was able to access the adjuster linkage without taking the whole console apart, mainly due to the fact that I had done the same job on the other car a few weeks earlier and I knew exactly where it was.  
 

I thought I had pictures, but I guess not. I removed just the rear cover of the center console from the back seat and used a 12mm socket on a 12 inch extension to get to the adjuster. 
 

Parking brake works now. 
 

The front brakes should have been as easy as the rears, but that didn't turn out to be the case.

When I was disassembling the driver's side, one of the large bolts that mounts the caliper bracket gave me a bit of trouble coming out. I didn't think much about it at the time, but when I was putting it all back together and tightening everything up, that same bolt stripped out. I could tell that the bolt was garbage, but I didn't have any faith in the threaded hole either. I'm not sure if the bolt was over torqued during a previous brake job, or if enough corrosion had built up on the tip of the bolt (it's not a blind hole and the threads poke out into the open by about a quarter inch) and damaged the threads of the hole on the way out. 

However it happened, I needed a new bracket and some hardware. Ideally, I would have bought two just in case I had a similar problem with the other side, but replacements were two days out on Amazon and I needed to keep moving forward. Unfortunately, none of the FLAPS had two in stock, so I picked up one bracket and two bolts from Advance and hoped for the best.

Unfortunately, the same thing happened on the other side, so I had to run to another Advance Auto store to get the single bracket and pair of bolts that they had later in the day. 

I've done a million brake jobs, and I've never dealt with this particular problem before, and it happened twice on the same car. I wasted a ton of time chasing down parts.

The front pads were trashed.

About a year ago, I talked my cousin through a spark plug replacement over the phone. He's a rookie mechanic and doesn't own a torque wrench, so I wanted to take a look at the plugs. 
 

They don't have many miles on them and all looked good, but I had a set of spares on hand, so I swapped in new plugs anyway. 
 

Cylinder 6 had a cheap aftermarket replacement coil, and it was showing a bit of corrosion and not making great contact with the top of the plug. I sourced a new Hitachi (OEM) coil on Amazon, $40 with free next day shipping. 
 

Once you've used one, the magnetic swiveling spark plug socket is a tool that you'll never be able to live without. 
 

Dirty green Accord came home in the rain last night. 
 

Cleaned up the interior of the green car. Not bad for 173k!

Changed the oil and spark plugs on the green car.

For future reference:

How's the rust on the green car?  Any issues aside from dirty and maintenance? Asking for a friend, really.  

In reply to Sonic :

I hit it with a wire brush and some rust converter. 

I just ran the green car through a Connecticut emission inspection station. It passed, and is good for two years. It's transferable to the next owner at no cost. 

You mentioned the 12 is to replace the 10.  Sounds like you might be keeping the 10, but if it is for sale, it would be a excellent fit for my wife's daily. 

In reply to 03Panther :

The end goal is to keep the 2012 and sell the 2010. but I don't think that the 12 is going to be ready to go into service on Monday. The 2010 may have to head out again for another week or two, but while it's here, I'm taking care of a few odds and ends. I don't get my hands on it all that often. I knew that it's needed an oxygen sensor for while, so I just installed a new one.

It's no fun trying to sell a car that needs work.

Weekend showdown. 

Still not sure which one is leaving on Monday.

Could easily be out of my price range, but i am interested in finding out. Thanks. 

In reply to 03Panther :

I'll let you know when it's ready to hit the market, but I'm a long way from Alabama. 

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

Well, my work started this spring in S FL, back to AL for 3 days, Detroit, now SC... couple weeks in AL before a training class in NC.... most of that's a long way from you, but I'd rather travel for a guy I trust than deal with the getto/text speak ads!

Having enough budget, and timing might be problems, but we'll see!

By the weekend, I realized that the gray car wasn't quite ready yet, and that the green car would need to go back into service (and out of state) for another week or so.

I had driven the green car on Friday to pick up the oxygen sensor and some fish tacos and, with the windows open, I noticed an occasional squeak from the right rear that seemed to go away when I pressed on the brakes. I knew that the brakes were good, as I had just done them last month, and it didn't seem to be too big of an issue, so I turned my attention to oxygen sensors and tacos.

On Sunday morning, I decided to adjust the parking brake, but no matter how much I backed off on the adjuster, I couldn't get the right rear wheel to spin freely. I dropped the car down off the jackstands and took it for a ride.

After a few miles, I checked the rotor temps with an IR thermometer, and the right rear was more than a hundred degrees warmer than the left.

I knew that the wheel bearing was bad, but the car had to leave in less than 24 hours. I found a new hub/wheel bearing assembly, complete with new wheel studs, that was available with same day delivery. I placed the order and crossed my fingers. The order confirmation said that it would be delivered between 5 and 10 pm.

We had reservations for a belated Mother's Day dinner at 6:30.

The new assembly was dropped off at my door at 6:16.

It was nicely packaged, and included a pair of white cotton gloves for installation.

Sunday night, 8:10-9:50 pm. This car needs to leave in the morning.

I wanted to remove the caliper and rotor together to keep the pads from falling out. That plan made access to the caliper bracket bolts a little tricky, and I got my cordless ratchet jammed in there for a bit which took some extra time and effort to get free, but for the most part, the job went smoothly. I ran a few zip ties through the holes in the rotor and around the caliper to hold everything together as I worked.

Everything went back together and the parking brake adjustment was a success.

This post is mostly for my own future reference.

The green car was here from Thursday through Sunday. While it was here, I did the following:

-Changed the oil

-Changed the spark plugs

-Installed a new oxygen sensor

-Installed a new rear hub/wheel bearing

-Installed new bulbs and fixed the faulty plug for the fog lights

-Adjusted the parking brake

-Cleaned the interior

-Passed Connecticut emission inspection and VIN verification (transferrable)