Honda Pilot Complete Rear Suspension Rebuild (Part 1)

greetings viewers eric the car guy here thank you so much for tuning in today and you're gonna like this one because i'm probably gonna get tortured a bit i started doing a video about the rear bumper replacement on this 2003 honda pilot it was pretty corroded but during the process of that i was inspecting the rest of the vehicle and i found something well actually let's go look at it let me show you this is what i'm dealing with back here you see that corrosion right there that would normally be a car killer because i don't think many people would go through the trouble that i'm about to go through in order to repair something like this although i did come to find out that this was a common problem on honda pilots and i have seen people repair this in similar ways now you can see that that's actually a part of the body and this assembly holds the rear suspension and the rear differential and everything all together so this is critically important and this mounting point is only one of four so this is one quarter of what's holding the rear suspension to the vehicle and it's not doing a very good job and not for very much longer by the looks of it you can purchase this piece here well sort of honda no longer makes it but i did find two of them one was eight hundred dollars one was twelve hundred dollars so if you wanna spend that money you can go in you can drill out all these plug welds and replace just this piece here what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna rebuild this and make my own mountain back here i have a plasma cutter and a welder and some steel and that's how i'm gonna fix it in the end hang with me while i uh remove all of this and fix this as i mentioned i'm gonna have to remove all the suspension and everything back here i'm going to drain the differential i'm going to disconnect it from the drive shaft and we're pretty much going to take all this out and start over i was already going to do some suspension work there is you can probably see a leaking seal here on the differential that i plan to repair i was going to replace the rear shocks and these rear control arms the bolts that attach them to the body here are for the alignment these are cam volts so they're on an eccentric very similar to the odysseys that i've done in the past anyway the bolts will seize up inside of that bushing and therefore you won't be able to make any of these adjustments so in order to fix that i have new lower control arms new bolt assemblies and nuts and everything to go into both sides i also you can probably see i need to drop the exhaust well normally there would be a flange here at the back of the catalytic converter that i could just unbolt from that is not possible see it's all welded together now into this single piece so i'm going to be making some exhaust modifications as well starting with cutting here at the catalytic converter and dropping the rest of the exhaust down i suppose we'll need to get these out of the way now as i mentioned i'm cutting this off because well there's no flange here that i can unbolt it from i'm actually thinking i'm going to get an aftermarket catalytic converter because this is an original equipment one and install it to help deter catalytic converter thefts because they don't like the aftermarket ones nearly as much as the original equipment ones and i'm not sure if i can cage this thing in anyway i'm gonna remake the exhaust when the time comes for now this one's out of here hey look i'm a catalytic converter thief little wd-40 on the rubber hangers helps them come off nice really feels like things have opened up already but i'm wondering if i tempt fate and try to remove this shield because that will even give me even more room to work oh that is awesome and that worked that does open things up quite a bit and i'll probably need every bit of this space the rear abs sensors are plugged in up here and they're also bolted here and then while i'm working on this i'm also going to drain the differential you can sort of get up behind here with this little hole there are two points back here that open up in the differential the top one's the fill the bottom one is the drain they both just use a 3 8 drive and just like the notice says be sure to only use vtm4 fluid in this differential i'm gonna also loosen up the top that way it'll make it easier later [Music] at the sound of the tone the time is now three o'clock honestly that fluid doesn't look old believe it or not wd-40 helps a lot with plastic clips too see what i mean so there's just a little tab that i pushed up on and i was able to slide it off the mount up there yes oh that's awesome now because there will be a lot of fasteners in all of this i'm just gonna loosely thread that there so i know where it goes actually i'll probably replace these fasteners but we'll see this is kind of a winter car fun car so we'll see how much love i put into it i have another thought though all right and that's why this is going to take a minute i'm going to ask why i'm going through all this trouble in my view drilling and tapping takes longer i believe i mentioned that i was going to replace this oil seal now that everything is together that is the best time to clean everything up so i'm gonna do that now clean everything off i'm also gonna see if i can knock that fastener loose the more i can do while things are up in the air like this where it's mounted solid the better i believe might as well also seal this up and get the drain pan out of the way now this i will tighten back up because i won't need to remove it again while the brake clean is soaking in i'm going to take care of two more electrical connections that i don't want to forget about and that's this one and this one both of those connectors go to the differential it's an electronically controlled differential you definitely want to disconnect this stuff before you drop this down now there are two other clips that the harness is attached to the center section with that also need to be undone they may be a little tricky and well let's just say they may not survive just because i can't quite get in to release them quote unquote properly somehow that worked perfect so that one's loose in keeping with trying to loosen things up before i drop it down these fasteners here these three hold the back part of the differential in place they're 19 millimeter just want to break them loose that was nice really cool okay i'm liking where this is going at least that part of it anyway no one looks like 14. whoa well that just broke off i suppose i should have disconnected the drive shaft first but now the fasteners are easy to get to these are also 14. this hasn't got too far to fall once it comes loose because there's a drive shaft loop and just to be on the safe side i'm going to mark the flange and the drive shaft so that i get it back in the same location when i put it back together so i'll just put like a little dot here and also on here [Music] and then i'll do something with my marker but these will be a little more permanent sometimes marker gets washed off when i clean things although this paint marker might work really well i had an idea i don't know if the idea will work but i might just keep it together as long as we need it to as long as i don't hit my head on this i think i'll be fine i just found something else i need to buy that's a parking brake cable somehow this got flipped around it should be down like this but because it got flipped around it rubbed through right here it wasn't very kind to the bushing either all because it was just flipped up and this is the hard one this is the long one because these go all the way up here at least without the exhaust in the way it's a little bit better but that means i got to go up into here and deal with all these other crusty fasteners to get this taken care of oh joy now the plan is to go around i'm replacing these lower control arms here these bushings are kind of whacked out so i'm going to go around and loosen as much of this stuff as i can so that i don't have to do it on the ground [Applause] so [Music] at this point i've gone through and loosened all the fasteners uh with the exception of the ones that go to the stabilizer links i'll deal with those in a minute i've also removed the axle nuts and made sure that those move in and out now originally i was thinking that i could leave the brake line and everything intact and just drop it down well that's not going to be the case and the reason is it passes through and under right here so i would have to disconnect this it seems just as easy just to disconnect the brake line up here and drop it down a little trick that a viewer suggested is to jam the brake pedal all the way to the floor once you've got one of these loose the brake fluid can come out and it won't leak anything else out while you're working on the rest of stuff i'm not too worried about getting this one loose because i almost feel that it's going to pull right out of this this mount over here this one is loose and that one will come out uh i didn't get these i need to get those real quick but i got the lower ones and everything loose i also went and got these loose pretty much everything is ready to come out like i said i just need to come back and do this front lower control arm [Applause] yes now before i take this parking brake assembly apart to get to the cable i'm going to take a picture of it that way i know where everything goes and it's just a little tip for you uh that you can also use to help you remember where things go simplest way i know to take care of the spring is to or the cable so maybe take a pair of vice grips like this maybe a better pair of ice grips i don't know anyway just move the cable back a bit then you can crimp it down and then pull that right out of there now comes the fun part putting these cables in is no sweat getting them out well that's a different story always the penetrating oil there's a little clip that holds it in i've heard people use zip ties to do this that could definitely work [Applause] so it was a combo move between the screwdriver and the zip tie kick [Music] zip tie trick for the win since i had a lowered i just disconnected the battery because we're going to need to do that before we start welding anyway i have a line wrench here that i'm going to use on this brake line hopefully it won't give me issues there it is be patient you wreck this you wreck your day you don't want to have to replace this brake line i already have a drip pan underneath here now let's put that brake pedal on the floor and use this guy you've gotten this far remove the clip and the brake line will come down as long as we're in the neighborhood i'm going to undo this upper shock mount yup you guessed it i'm doing the same thing over here years of practice to get that feel because you can sort of feel when things are about to break after you've broken enough things unfortunately i've broken a lot of things i guess that's how i learned to fix things by breaking them given that so far this through bolt back here for the subframe is my problem child i'm going to leave this shock connected that way this side still supported at least by the shock if nothing else or damper if you want to call it that i'm gonna see if i can take care of my problem child first i've got my support over here which well hopefully we'll hold things in place until i get my transmission jack over here one of two things is gonna happen this is gonna break or uh it's gonna come out in a very difficult way and you are exactly where i wanna be so we're going to switch i have my transmission jack in place to support everything i believe we have pretty much everything disconnected it's just a matter of removing one two three four eight fasteners these up here for these control arms and the four that are holding us the rear subframe ends i also went ahead and removed the front wheels i did that to take a little bit of weight off the front i've got it balanced on the lift but i just am concerned because i'm removing a great deal of weight from the back here which could make it front heavy and want to fall off the lift so i have to be mindful of that anyway let's see if we can deal with this guy ah [Applause] well you're gonna have to move farther away [Music] [Applause] let's get the old pneumatic a try yeah it's just laughing at it i wonder if i can get some heat up in through that hole ah you saw it that was a hard fight but it's out if you're curious i put the heat through that little hole right there did the trick let's do the shock mount over here front control arm mounts and these are 19. i already knocked these loose by the way i'm going to be real mindful of what's happening with that sub assembly as i loosen this actually before i do this i'm going to do this other front subframe mount they're nice when they come out like they're supposed to and now these [Music] these really want to pull inward now it's the money shot i know that one comes out i'm going to try this one first which i haven't even tried but i did shoot a little penetrating oil up into here all right last one and it should be ours yes the coil springs are under tension but rear springs aren't under that much tension i think the tension's off the coil springs looks like we're all disconnected as far as all that stuff goes springs are loose brake lines or go for launch or whatever the opposite of launching is cool and now i can see the real damage that's sufficient for sure that's it that's out of there my plan is to use this uh subframe as my template for this repair now in order to do it the way i want to do it all this heavy stuff like control arms and brakes and everything kind of needs to come off i'm replacing a lot of it anyway but i really just want to strip it down to just this subframe so that i can do what i'm hoping to do as far as lining things up up here on the body i suppose we also don't need to work under the vehicle anymore so let's move this out of here come on as i start removing weight it's going to get a little topsy turvy hopefully that does the trick these are easy [Applause] [Music] yeah with how loose that is i'm not sad about replacing these at all so oh yeah these are definitely loose [Applause] so [Applause] so [Applause] those flap down like that because i've already uh loosened all the mounts before i ever took it out of the vehicle [Applause] so [Applause] [Music] well that one came apart i was debating on taking the stabilizer bar off i think i've decided if i can get these off i'll do it [Applause] worth it [Applause] this right side is not so bad now i want to lift this entire subframe off of the differential the differential is held down by my clamp up front but also by these three fasteners in the rear and that's all that's holding it however there is the vent tube that comes out the top here and attaches to the subframe here and here i'm going to try and detach this at the subframe because i'm going to try to recondition it a little bit got my trusty seat belt in place and i'm just going to use my engine hoist to lift this off of here and yes this is the element seat belt i don't feel like that guy wants to give up so it stays i think i've spent enough time on it i admit i don't love it because when i go to put this thing back on here it's going to be fun to say the least because i can't get the legs in far enough so this is what i'm going to do i'm going to pick the whole thing up drop it down then i'll take this out drop the differential on the floor if i took it off now as this comes off it could bring this with it and drop it to the floor that's too grand that's money i don't need to spend right now so we'll just do this [Applause] let's get the differential out of here these are 19s like i said i loosened everything first i think i'll put this on the bench all right i got it flipped over which is what i wanted two reasons i want to remove this broken bolt that was holding the front of the differential in place i've ordered a new one and i also want to deal with these lower control arms but first let's see we can go back to this guy here scream all you want you're coming out told you you were coming out just to be funny i guess i'm pretty sure that these are part of the bushing now but what the heck might as well save myself some effort and at least try to get these out but i'm totally prepared if they don't but i've got to tell you doing this on the ground this seems to me at least easier than doing it above your head oh this is just the outer nut don't get excited that's a no-go nope fresh pack of blades i'm gonna try this for the first time on the ground so far i like it better just because of the angle oh no my socket broke darn it yeah it's got a crack right there okay that's one side sorry about that [Applause] that took seven and a half blades i have six seven eight nine we should be good we finally have a naked sub frame which is kind of what i wanted now we can start uh working on the body well viewers this is the conclusion of part one of the two-part series of the complete rebuild of the rear suspension on this 2003 honda pilot i'll put a link to part two right at the top of the description as soon as it becomes available but if you're not a patient person and you want to see the entire video now it's available to premium members over at my website i will put a link to that down in the description as well i will also put links in the description to parts tools additional information additional videos including that one that i did about repairing the uh structure in order to even complete doing the suspension work so what i had to do to all that rust uh that's covered in another video again linked in the description also a link to ericthecarguy.com if you have automotive questions not covered in this video in other words check the description for additional information tons and tons of additional information thank you so much for watching today i look forward to seeing you back next week and if it's past next week once again that link will be right there in the description to part two be safe have fun stay dirty thanks for watching and i will see you next time

Channel: EricTheCarGuy

Views: 90,331

Keywords: Honda Pilot, Honda, Pilot suspension, Honda Pilot suspension, Honda Pilot rear suspension, Honda Pilot rear shocks, Honda Pilot rear control arms, Honda Pilot rear CV boots, Honda Pilot rear axles, Honda Pilot rear brakes, Honda Pilot parking brake cable, Honda Pilot coil springs, Honda Pilot subframe damage, Honda Pilot repair, 2003 Honda Pilot, Honda repair, how to auto repair, how to video, new ETCG repair videos, automotive education, EricTheCarGuy, Eric the car guy, ETCG

Id: MIOJbDjBlU4

Length: 28min 58sec (1738 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 08 2021