Getting my Accord V6 back to mint condition; Service & cosmetic updates

An absolute gem of an engine that never leaves me unsatisfied when I floor it and runs extremely quiet and smooth when I'm just cruising.

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Updates on Toothless

Hello once again to this lovely community, previously I had made a small post about some exhaust modification advice and any sources where I could get the parts I needed from. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find much so that project will be put on hold for a little bit. I have driven the car for around 2500 kilometers now and I just wanted to give an update since the first post I made when I first got the car.

Since then I had a pretty hefty and expensive service job done to the car. The timing belt needed to be replaced since it had been way past the 7-year/100000 km mark. I also wanted to replace the spark plugs since I had no idea when they were last replaced or if they were even replaced at all. This turned out to be a good idea because after I got the old spark plugs back I read the code engraved on them and it indicates that they were installed in 2013. Conveniently right as I reached the ASC for the evaluation the driver-side door lock decided to stop working so there was another thing to add to the list. After discussing estimates with the advisor I was called down to the workshop to finalize some stuff.

I haven't been to many workshops but I remember my dad mentioning that the Mahindra service center was an absolute nightmare and I was expecting something similar but I was completely blown away. Everything was extremely well organized and clean. There were multiple lifts for multiple cars. Everything was organized and there were several posters showing instructions for handling a client's personal belongings. There was a sign for, mechanic of the month and multiple incentivizing charts to motivate the staff into performing a car. This workshop's organization and cleanliness was reflected on my car, and every time I received the car it was always clean and the job was always well done. One of the senior technicians came to talk to me since the Accord is a rare car and the V6 variant is even more so. He pointed out that one of the brackets that mounted the engine mount to the engine was stripped and could be a risk if not taken care of. Apart from this, he tried to upsell me on a bunch of useless stuff like an entire new wiring harness which cost ₹34k to which I flatly declined and told him to only do what was explicitly required.

I got a chance to look at the entire Honda catalog and ordering system and I was allowed to specifically choose what and what not I wanted to order, which I find extremely convenient and negates any chance for unnecessary work to be done for which I would be charged. Apart from this, the accessory timing belt parts had to be ordered like the actuator and tensioner. I will attach the entire service bill in the thread so that you can take a look at the actual costs along with labor charges for an 18-year-old executive sedan with a naturally aspirated V6 (Spoiler alert: Not cheap). I was informed that in order to replace the timing belt the engine would have to be removed from the car entirely. This was kind of nerve-wracking since there are a lot of chances something could go wrong like one incorrectly torqued bolt or something that was forgotten to be put back. But I trusted the mechanics and the service center and dropped the car off. I received it about 5 days later and I was really happy to see my shiny polished up engine bay, specifically the bracket that was replaced and holding up the engine way more confidently. I also greatly appreciate that my ASC always cleans my car and polishes up the inside every time free of cost. I went to finish up the payment and take the car back home. The estimate came out to be more than what I was initially told which I was pretty disappointed by. I wasn't informed that when dropping the engine, the AC gas would need to be recharged and the wheel alignment would need to be redone. I would've had to do it anyway but I feel better knowing that I am aware of this and it isn't just a surprise to me when I get my car back. I got into my car and it started right up. I noticed that some extra kilometers were put on the ODO but I figured it was necessary since they had to test to make sure everything was working fine.

Service bill attached here:

Engine Bay after treatment:

About a month after this I had the itch to fix the heavily swirled and micro-scratched 18-year-old paint. I had some prior knowledge of paint correction so I ordered a 2 in 1 compound and polish, some microfiber buffing pads, and some car wax. I didn't own a rotary polishing tool so I had decided to put in elbow grease and do this by hand. I started on the rear of the car and started polishing the top of the trunk. I needed to make 3 passes with the polish before I got satisfactory results. After that, I would have to apply a layer of wax and buff it off. After successfully doing the top of the trunk in about 2 hours I realized that this would be a 2 week process considering I had to do the entire car. Every day for the next week I would go down when I was free and start polishing away. It was coming together although slowly but surely.

Before:

After:

Another section:

Unfortunately, I made a serious error when wiping off the compound residue, the edge of the microfiber I was using ended up pushing into the paint creating really nasty swirls that were visible from a mile away. My dad was also helping me at the time and he realized that this process was a tough one and that we should let the professionals deal with the rest of the car. After talking to a couple of places we decided to go with the same place that installed a PPF on my dad's XUV700. They had the best price and their work was done very well. I dropped it off and kept receiving videos and pictures of the progress being made. After a couple of days, I went to pick up the car. It was absolutely stunning. I had gotten it ceramic coated as well and the deep black shine with the slightly blue-tinged metallic flakes in the paint looked absolutely stunning. For all the work I paid around 15k which I think is a solid deal for the amount of work done. I drove it back home, admired it, and took multiple pictures to show to all my friends. It definitely restored some life into the car and made it that much better to look at.

After the full detail and ceramic coat:

In the meantime, I got some inspiration from the old-school Japanese clear taillights that I kept seeing online and wanted to try my hand at them. I used some silver vinyl wrap, cut it into multiple long strips and stuck them to my taillight creating a striped pattern. The results were absolutely amazing for something that took me an afternoon and 200 rupees. It added even more characteristic to the already mesmerizing rear end of the car and gave it the pop I was really looking for, since tinted tail lights are illegal in India.

Images of the modification here:

Another small encounter that I'd like to mention since it was definitely a highlight was when my best friend and I decided to go on a drive to KIA Terminal 2 late at night for some dinner. The car was gliding along the highway like a dream. Lane changes were smooth and flawless with incredible stability thanks to the double wishbone suspension, and I was greeted with a lot of digital angry faces along the highway since I was above 80kmph (oops). But my favorite part was when a group of motorcycle riders who seemed to be around the same age as me were riding close to me and one of them came up to the side and pointed at my car and gave the “mast hai” hand sign(&#128076. I greeted him with a smile and a thumbs up and off he went. Still one of the most endearing things I've encountered. It genuinely makes me so happy knowing my car is a head-turner and receives reactions like this. My friends say “I love this car” when they get in and i don't show it but it makes me extremely happy to hear and extremely grateful to my parents for providing a life like this to me.

Anyway with all the mushy stuff dealt with, I was bored one day like any 19-year-old is and I decided I'd try my hand at doing something with the leftover Arduino kit I had from 3 years ago. My first thought was under glow since I thought it was the coolest thing since pizza after watching 2 Fast 2 Furious and Paul Walker's famous Nissan R34 Skyline with the blue under glow. I started doing some research and I realized that using the Arduino for this project would only make sense if I actually had LED strips that had individually addressable RGB bulbs, and those were really expensive. If I used something that was just a solid color it would be completely pointless as I'd be using the Arduino as a basic LED controller which most RGB strips come with anyway. So back to the drawing board, I went. I couldn't think of anything remarkable so I asked Chat GPT for some ideas. Most of them were kind of pointless but one of them led to the inception of what I actually ended up doing. I don't remember what it specifically was but I turned it into a Tesla keycard unlock system. If you are unaware, Tesla implemented a system where you can unlock your car by tapping a card on the outside of the door and it'll unlock it for you, similar to a hotel room keycard.

I thought it would be kind of hilarious if I could put this technology on an 18-year-old Honda, and so the research began. My initial thought was to have a motor lift up the physical door locker thing that you can push and pull on the door of the car, however, this wouldn't work because if the car is locked using the key and then unlocked from the inside, it sets off the security system and the alarms start going off (Not very convenient when you're trying to get some tomatoes from the store). I was stumped with what to do and then it hit me. I remembered that the key my car has has a separate housing for the unlock and lock functions and the metal key part is actually separate from it and includes the immobilizer. This means I could remove the small module from the key and use a servo motor to rotate and press the buttons on the key when triggered, while also preventing the car from being stolen since the actual key and immobilizer will be at home. I searched online for an RFID scanner and a servo motor. I ordered both of them and it came out to around 250 rupees. The RFID scanner included a card and a keychain with it so that was a nice bonus. Once they arrived a few days later I started building the circuit. After some trial and error, I got it correct. But I had the slight issue of the pins not being soldered to the RFID scanner so I had a sub-par connection. I decided I could deal with that later and I should work on the code first. Being a computer science major this wasn't too difficult, however, I did have to do some research on assigning the right power management pins to the right function (Thank you StackOverflow). After some debugging and some tips from ChatGPT, I finally got the code running right. My biggest problem with the code was the RFID card not being interpreted properly. Even after multiple iterations of changing the input of the scanned RFID tag it still said the card was wrong. This is where ChatGPT was a savior. I'm not too fluent in C++, the language the Arduino IDE uses but ChatGPT was able to rectify the mistake I had made. When the code reads the scanned tag it was grouping all the numbers together instead of adding spaces between each hexadecimal character which is what was causing the mismatch. It added a line of code to change this and voila everything was working perfectly again.

After mocking up a rough design I was able to fine-tune the motor settings to the right degree of rotation and add a counter rotate so that it wouldn't keep pressing the button and would rotate back to its default setting after a small delay. Unfortunately, since I've never soldered before I ruined the RFID module when attaching the pins and it stopped working. So I had to order another one and be extremely careful this time. Thankfully on my second attempt, everything went smoothly and I successfully soldered all the pins to the module. Intel, let me know if you have any jobs available. With the mocked-up design finished I began finalizing the components and screwing them into the MDF board I bought. I used zip ties to secure the motor since it needed a good amount of force holding it down otherwise it would just lift itself up instead of pushing the button. With everything set up, I took it down to the car to install it. Nothing fancy just some double-sided tape on the rear windshield for the RFID scanner module and the Arduino could rest on the speaker shelf. Power was supplied through a power bank since all of the components are low voltage and don't require that much to operate, however, this setup does suck a lot of battery, and the power bank I was using(20000mAh) would only last a couple of hours, so tapping into the vehicles fusebox would guarantee a dead battery. Regardless of this, I wanted to see if it would work as a gimmick and I set it up. Lo and behold it worked perfectly and was one of the coolest things I had managed to do on my own. My family and friends were pretty impressed with the odd but functional setup I had created and it allowed easier access to my vehicle. But the power draw is still a concern and I will have to work on a better method to ensure that this can be used on a day-to-day basis.

Link to the video of the unlocking system in action: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dlF-IA089d8

For anyone who has seen my last post about the exhaust system dilemma, I have a friend coming from the USA in May and he will be able to bring the part I require so I'm super excited about that.

Apart from this, I had the car serviced recently despite only having run 2500 kilometers but it had been past the 6-month mark so I decided to get it done anyway. Here is where I feel like a lot of us are scammed by the system. I was charged 3500 rupees for labor on an oil change, but it wasn't just for the oil change it was checking all the fluids and testing the battery and other stuff similar to that. The problem I have with this is that I check all of the fluids regularly; Power steering, brake fluid, engine oil, ATF fluid, and windshield wiper fluid for free. It seems completely useless and unnecessary for me to have to pay to have that done and it can't be altered because it comes in the service package when you give the car for service. Along with a useless charge of 600 rupees to plug into the OBD2 port and run diagnostics on a car that doesn't throw any errors and is running perfectly fine. Next time I will strictly ensure that I am only charged for an oil change and if that doesn't happen I'll do the oil change myself. I had the air filter replaced since it probably hasn't been for a long time. I received the car a day later perfectly shiny and clean for free, which is a plus point for the ASC. Overall I don't think an oil change is worth 7000 rupees considering it's a Honda, not a BMW. The car does run noticeably smoother from the oil and air filter change and the “battery testing and Honda diagnostic service” added an additional 15 horsepower to my car. Jokes aside I will be looking to crack down on these service costs in the future.

That seems to be about it for now. Like always I absolutely adore this car and I look back at it every time I park. I always ensure to use clean microfiber towels and a pressure foam canister thing when washing it to minimize any risk of scratches since I've had it ceramic coated and detailed. I keep making great memories with my friends and family in the car and I hope to take it to many more places. An absolute gem of an engine that never leaves me unsatisfied when I floor it and runs extremely quiet and smooth when I'm just cruising. Thanks for reading, Happy Motoring!

Extra pictures:

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