Hello everybody, Good day to you and welcome back! Glad you guys are here! This is a 2013 I think blue in color Honda Ridgeline It's a northern mobile I think it came from uh, the far away regions of the New York area. The things covered in rust from what I understand even got rust on the aluminum. That's a that's a new one uh Customer: States Suspension noise and there's a couple other items. uh on this vehicle we're going to take a look at.

So uh, let's hop into this unit. We'll get it out on the road, we'll take it for a quick test drive up and over the bridge right there and uh, we can evaluate it on the lift later on and then we can make some recommendations and see, uh, see what this thing's gonna need. So let us starting the engine I'm curious to find out just exactly how rusted off this car is at 77 199 miles on the odometer. So let us, uh, let's see if the climate control works first.

we're in Florida we're not in New York We need, uh, we need AC and we need it now because it's probably about 120 degrees in this cabin. Let's get the windows down. we'll ventilate a little bit. There we go.

All right. let's back this unit out. take it on a real quick like test drive and then we'll go from there. So stay tuned because this is going to be a very good video opening Z hoods.

Oh look who that guy is. All right. we're ready to rock and roll on this test drive. Customer stated it to me that uh, the right rear strut seems to have a broken or rusted through and cracked and there might be some broken bolts is what they said something going on down there and I think we're gonna.

we're gonna check the AC yeah it's it's blowing up. It's blowing a little warm even for Florida standards. So I'm not certain how much of a test drive. I plan on going on.

Move over there bro. How much of a test drive? I Plan on going on because they did say there's broken parts and a uh and a broken strut or whatever. uh I'm not too concerned about the safety of the vehicle because the thing drove down here from New York so I figure I can take it one more block they had mentioned. uh, something about clunky noises I haven't heard any of that stuff yet, but we are going to go over the railroad tracks and if there's a clunk I'm pretty sure we're going to find it right there.

Engine feels good Power Band and transmission feel good. We've got no traffic behind us. Let's give it some breaks and it pulls a little bit to the right when braking. Okay, hello shop, goodbye shop.

Oh yeah, the AC in this thing feels pretty horrible I don't even know if the compressor is coming on I'm just gonna go ahead and power that off because all it's doing is blowing. uh, hot air towards me. There we go. So I gotta tell you.

I'm missing that. While I'm negotiating turns, the steering feels a little jittery. It's it's almost like it kind of got stuck and then went the other way. So I'm not really certain what that's about, but it kind of does feel like loose or binding.

Anyway, here's our tracks. We're doing about 37 miles per hour. Let's see if we can't hear any noises here. Yeah, not really.

Perhaps a visual inspection? uh. will give us some more to go on. So we're at the shop. Let's swing it in, get it up in the air, and then we'll take a look and see uh, what's broken and what's not broken? Okay, we're in nosing her up.

Very good lift arms or centered or lift posts. Rather loud. All right, we're good here. Let's park the auto and power this unit down All right.

So I am going to check out this AC later on, so let us pop. see Hood right about now. We'll get back to that soon. Let's get the rack set, get this thing up in the air and take a peek down below.

Oh real quick. what do you like here and see what we have in store? Looks like 3.5 liter Honda V6 Good little engine. Some people love it, some people don't love it that much. Regardless of how people feel about these, there's millions of them out there.

and I think they're good engines. We have one in our miniature van and this one doesn't have the uh, the horrible valve cover gasket leak that they like to get. Okay, Looks fairly decent under here. You can tell it's from up.

North Lots and lots of rust. Like how do you get rust on your bolts in your engine compartment? That's that's something else. rust over here, some rest over there I Know I Know it's not that much for us, but the point being is, it happens to be up in there. It's just weird to me we do not have oxidation in Florida Okay, we got our lift arms set up.

Let's go ahead. we'll hit our black subscribe button. look at this thing up in the air and we can see what's going on with these. uh, broken bolts and something about Broken Springs or struts or whatever moving on up all the way up.

All right, we've reached maximum altitude. Let's go ahead and set her down on our locks here for safety, Grab a Flash and light Illuminator and begin the inspection. Dang yeah. this thing's a little cross-tomatic rusty down here.

Okay here. Illuminator Surface of the Sun Mode engaged. So we're looking for a broken spring or a broken strut. This thing's been undercoated, but it didn't seem to help too much.

Uh-oh There we go. Okay, yep, we got it right here. That is a broken coil spring. see the snap in it right there.

So we've got the bottom piece of the spring here. We don't need this that's torn up plastic. Yeah, we can compare it to the other side. The spring is not down here.

And how's this work that sits in that position that sits in that position? So that's proper. So yeah, it looks like the spring just simply broke. So I'm thinking that the insulator is okay. this plastic smashed up Pretty bad though.

That's nasty. Let's check out the other side here. Where's the other end of the brake on this unit? There, it is right there. See that right there.

So we got a broken spring piece down here at the bottom that runs around. Uh, reaching around here. how's this gonna go? Oh, here it is now. I See how we're doing this? Okay, that's the bottom run of the coil spring.

So this thing used to be part of that piece. right right down there. See a piece right there? there? she is. So there's the brake.

So the coil spring rusted out and broke in half. So we're gonna need a coil spring. I'm going to have to remove. Oh a lot of stuff.

This is gonna be fun. Okay, probably need to pull. probably need to pull that bolt out. remove this lower control arm.

Probably have to remove the sway bar links to allow it to come down. I'm thinking I'm going to end up replacing the links on it. Definitely going to replace the links. Look at that rust on that.

There's no way that, uh, those bolts are going to come off. It's not going to happen. So I need to find a spring and something about the front. Heard there was like a strip bolt or something like that on on the front here.

Not that side. Okay, there's our caliper. Got some leaking brake fluid right there. See that that's dripping down.

Where is this stripped out bolt? Maybe it's one of these caliper bolts. Let me. uh, let's grab a wrench real quick and see. All right.

So I've got a little bit more Illumination in here. Let's uh, see if one of these bolts is stripped. Not that one. that one.

Okay, let's check the 21s here. Oh that one. That one's stripped out. We need another caliper bracket and that one's just kind of kind of loose.

Yeah, yeah, this one right here is. or no, that's just kind of loose. Okay, it's tight now. maybe that one.

Let's try that one next. checking next. Bolt Yeah, just a little loose. not stripped.

Okay, foreign. Yeah, that's good. Crush Washes are crushing. That will probably stop this little leak that's going on right here.

Alrighty, yeah, that's I think that's good. Oh, look at here. this is not good. Watch this.

See that this thing has a blown out tie rod. It's that, uh, watch that tie rod right there as I shake this wheel. That might have been that bumpy feeling that I felt while driving needs an outer tie rod. Let us check the driver's side, see how this side doing here and that one's okay.

So we need the right front outer tie rod. probably a wheel alignment afterwards. Okay, that brake caliper issues a non-issue when we need to replace the right rear swing swing. I said swing right rear spring.

we need to change the spring. Okay, so now we know what that needs. I'm gonna go ahead, let this unit down. We'll grab the AC machine.

We're going to check the refrigerant system on it, see if it works, see if it has a charge, and in the meantime I can quote that replacement spring in the rear I'm I'm leaning towards replacing both of them. Logic being if one of them broke then the other one uh, potentially could break at any point. Plus, you like to do things in pairs I'd Hate to have an uneven ride height in the back of the car. Yes, it already does have an uneven ride height, but I don't need to make it uneven the other way.

Let us go and fetch the AC machine. It's over count. We'll power that unit on, suction that thing down, see what kind of a charge it has, and then, uh, while that's happening I'll go build my estimate and we'll see what's going on with the availability on those Springs and then we'll go from there. Probably got a leaker right here.

Let's see if there's any pressure in this and if there is no pressure. Yeah, we got some. Okay. I Was gonna say if we have no pressure in there and the system's discharged I'm going to go ahead and throw some caps on it straight away, but that's not the case.

Why is that cap down there blue that's supposed to be a red cap. blue is for the low side. get on there connect door these slack in my cable here. There we go.

Come on there. Okay, got it. So I gotta screw in the uh the valves on the top and that's going to open up the Schrader ports in the lines that one's open. that one's open very good and we have pressure here I Must not have that fitting on.

Look, no pressure on the high side. Let's start to recover while I fix my line. There we go. Let's try to get this thing correct again.

Oh yeah, I didn't even have it I Thought I had it but I was wrong. Okay, we unscrew this and that little pencil in the middle will retract into the fitting. That little pencil is what presses down on the service port opening the valve. Try this one more time.

Love my job! One of my least favorite things is to connect stubborn AC system fittings. They're often in confined spaces. There we go now. We got refrigerant flow I Heard it go.

Move that out of the way. Good to go. Recovering in progress again. Sucks in this thing down to see what we've got inside of the system.

Okay, well, we missed the beep. But looky here, we are low on our charge. Uh, we've got .271 pounds of refrigerant, so that is on the low side for sure. Let me find my placard here that tells us what we need I Believe that is it.

And our maximum charge is 21.2 ounces. So that's going to be one pound, four, or five points. One pound, 5.2 ounces. So we are low on the charge.

We're low enough. Uh, where that thing would not have come on? So let me throw some valves in this unit real quick. That one's leaking. look.

Yep, it had a vacuum and suction on it as soon as I Took the hose off. So we got one leaking valve. That's already confirmed right here right now. So let's get these guys swapped out.

We'll fire up the vacuum, pull the system down to Uh to a vacuum, and then we'll install the proper charge on it, recheck it. uh. In the meantime Lauren Uh, my darling wife unit. She is inside seeking some parts we're going to attempt to, uh, grab this thing right here.

We're going to, uh, replace both of the rear struts on this. Yeah, that's gonna be my recommendation. Uh, it's not just a serviceable spring, they do come as a complete strut assembly. So we're going to try to change out the struts and the sway bars.

A reason for the sway bars is those things again, like you saw, those are Rusty crust-o-matic and uh, I'm not entirely confident that I can get those sway bar links apart without damaging them. So we're gonna. We're gonna replace those, unclick that ah, turn torque they need to switch hands I'm running out of torque and I think while I'm waiting around, we're gonna pull off this, uh, right front wheel and I'm gonna remove that caliper real quick to check the threads because my guy said that the threads were stripped. so I'm not.

Uh, I'm not entirely confident that there's not another problem. so I need to visually inspect that. Let's get this guy out of here. Come out, see what this valve looking like here.

They look pretty decent. Both of them did. no matter, they were leaking, they're getting tossed. Jordan Okay, let's grab my Replacements real quick and then we can get back to doing the good stuff.

Let's see. No Yes, Uh Actually I don't even need to walk away with this I know which ones I need I know what I need and what I don't need and what I need Are these ones right there? Beautiful. You go back in your home. Very good.

All right. Dropping these units down into their service ports. That one goes there. This one down here, low side and high side.

Let's get these guys tight and we can start to pull that vacuum pickage and another down there on our bottom unit. Go! that was tight. Good service ports back on, open the valves and where's my my little one blue one? There we go. Okay, let's go ahead and start the vacuum on this and then we can install the new charge.

What we got here. Continuing on evening and vacuuming now. Do not save. Moving on.

Alrighty so now let's pull this right front wheel off and give that brake system up a little bit of a better inspection. Something's making me nervous about that. There we go we manageable, high ride height achieved. Let's get this wheel off and see what the story is.

Um, one thing I have noticed here with this caliper situation. Whatever that is is this wheel seems to be a little stuck. It doesn't seem to want to turn as freely and I hear some scraping stuff happening in here. All right on impacts.

Let's get this wheel off. Four inspection That one. that's last you know. See what we've got going on in here.

Got a nice shiny new caliper. Rotor's been changed. You see the nice paint on there that rust prevention paint. Something's been changed but not so certain of what's making this noise.

I Hear like a squeaky noise and if we were to look a little closer, we've got some rub marks right here on the top of this rotor. I'm wondering if there's a fitment issue Let's uh, I'm gonna go ahead and disassemble this some and see what's touching what. Oh okay, look at here. that's from the caliper somehow coming off.

So maybe maybe that bolt up there is stripped? Like they said, because that caliper has come forward and contacted the inside of the wheel. Yeah, for damage? Yeah, see the scrape. See those scrape marks right here? All right, let me disassemble this a little further. So here let's turn.

Let's turn this guy here all the way over. and rather than just pulling the bracket, we're going to pull the caliper then the bracket. I Want to see how this is layered and what's touching what inside of here? because I do hear some scraping noise a little bit and I'm also feeling some resistance uh on this rotor and I kind of fear that this may not be the right, uh, right component. So I'm seeing some play in this.

Let me tighten down the bolt that way the rotor sits flush on the Hub See if I've got enough beer to? Nope. Need a spacer? sorry I think I'm thinking out loud more than I am. uh, properly narrating when the wheel was on I was having a hard time turning it, but now this rotor seems loose. so I think the rotor is being pulled and turned kind of Sideways from contact with the caliper or the pad suggesting that that might not be the correct pad.

I think if I tighten this down flush by putting some nuts in here to space these threads out, it'll start to bind up again. I Think see that rotor move. So now. yep, look at that now it's binding up and sticking.

Pretty bad actually. I can't turn that at all. So if something's going on over here now, we can disassemble the caliper and see why we're hanging out. 17 coming in, not stripped and we're still stuck.

Second: Bolt See the caliper move and we're still stuck. Put that aside, hang you up here. There we go here. Let's see how this is binding or how much.

Yeah, took the pry bar to turn it. Let's put that back and see what happens. Something is the wrong part here. I Don't know if it's the caliper or the rotor or what the deal is.

So and I feel it rubbing. It's got to be on. I Don't even know if these are the right pads in this thing. I Don't think they are.

Look how much they move. these are not even. It's not right. Okay I'm gonna take off this bracket next.

we're gonna see what's hitting on what. All right? Well I already see it. There it is. Look right in here.

Check this out. Caliper is sitting sideways somehow some way and it's rubbing on the rotor. See that right there. So something is the wrong part.

It's it. might be the rotor. It could have the uh, the incorrect offset to it. Interesting.

Okay, I'm gonna pull those bolts out and make sure they're not stripped All right. Coming back in with the 19. see the caliper. Flex Yeah, What's Happening Here Something is the wrong part.

Are these threads? okay? They look like it? Yeah. Okay So oh yeah, yeah. there's no threads in here. That's fine.

I Hope that flange Is Not Bent That would be horrible if it were or was. You can't really see it either. Okay here. I Know how to figure out if this thing's bent or not? We'll put a straight edge on it and that looks pretty good.

It's flat both sides and it's parallel with the rotor, so this does not, uh, not, appear to have any damage to it. That's good. So we either have the wrong rotor up here or we have the wrong caliper and I'm thinking we've got the wrong rotor. Let me go ahead and order one real quick like and slap it on and then we can see if this rotor is wrong or something else is going on.

but that's the path of least resistance. Let me just toss this. uh, toss a new one on and be done with it. Okay, since I think that bracket's good, the new rotor has been ordered I Think this rotor is incorrect.

It might not be all right. it's coming off for right now. I'm going to slap a new one on and put this back together. Once the new one arrives, we'll see what the what the deal is.

It might not need a rotor. it may be like a bent caliper bracket or something I Don't know since I don't have the original rotors I Can't tell. So right now we're just going to slap a rotor on and see what happens I mean worst case scenario: this rotor is good and it's correct and my caliper that I have over here is incorrect I Don't know. Let's get rid of this guy.

Goodbye road tour. Set that down for later. The AC machine is done vacuuming so let us let the ridge line down and then we can begin the charge on the AC Solve that problem. However I forgot how much refrigerant goes in.

What do we have? 21.2 ounces 21.2 21.2 So here injuring next phase 21.2 Uh, we'll switch over to ounces 21-2 That's like the inverse of 1.21 like a gigawatt one 2.12 refrigerant. Watts I Don't know what I'm talking about. Not even a DeLorean the Honda what he's he's giving me the side eye because I'm over here making dad jokes I can make dad jokes for your dad. So there.

Okay, uh. jigawatts 1.21 gigawatts of refrigerant. There's nothing set around here. it makes any sense at all.

if you get in charging. now there we go. See it. did what I said charging charging charging low sides coming up.

Dude, this will be finished shortly. x amount of time has passed and we have acquired a new replacement brake rotor for this side. Now at first glance with the uh, the old rotor, if I compare the two, they appear to be okay. But I'm looking down at the edge of this lip comparing the two sides and one of them is sticking out about two or three millimeters farther than the other.

So I think we're on to something with the wrong part. Uh, maybe the thing was, uh, like re-boxed or packaged incorrectly. So I'm assuming that that was the wrong part. Let's uh, let's fit this one on and then, uh, we'll get that bracket on there and we will see if there's a discrepancy regarding that fitment or not.

So I don't know if this is going to solve the problem. Perhaps the brackets bent or the spindles bent? or maybe I'm bent? I don't know, but I'm just trying to figure this out. so let's go ahead and turn this wheel over a little bit. We'll get our bracket on next so we'll check that fitment.

Okay, rotor is turned I went over to the other side to uh to make the turn. So let's get our bracket in position here and we'll start to start the bolts and we can see if this thing's gonna fit or not. I really don't know I hope it does So Anyway, that's one bolt, that's the second one right there. Come in here and tighten these guys down.

see what happens? Okay, bracket tell me and we seem to have decent clearance down here at the bottom. remember how it was touching or almost touching right here so that's an improvement already and we have clearance up here at the top. Also a little bit thin right there, but that's really nothing out of the ordinary. So I think I think we're good here at this point.

I'm gonna go ahead and reassemble it with the Uh, the caliper and the pads and we will see if this uh rotor is going to bind or not and I don't think it is. it seems to be turning quite freely. Okay, so next I'm gonna get my shims back in place here. Once those are on, we'll turn the rotor again and make sure that nothing is touching and rubbing and I don't think it is still free.

This is good pads coming in. Next there's a rim board. Slip that guy in our outboard and let us hang the caliper. Slide that guy on stay upper bolt but y'all can't see here we go upper Bolt and lower bolts still can't see I am terrible camera man.

There you go! Oh and by the way, while we were waiting for this rotor to show Nick the AC machine finished what it was doing I I Still do not have my strut parts for the rear just yet so we're just gonna go with what we've got going on here. and I guess we'll start those uh, those struts when they show up. but look at that that is free and not binding. So I don't know what the deal is with that other rotor but other rotor was the problem.

This rotor is not a problem so this section here is good to go. Uh with the exception of my fingerprints and nasty. So uh, let's get that stuff washed off real quick. Goodbye Non-shiny let's give it a turn.

You better turn. Oh I can't do it one-handed it's turning the axle. Is this a four-wheel drive? There we go. a little bit more non-shiny right down here.

Actually, we are removing the non-shiny and making it shiny. yet again. Interior shiny. Get the back side again, no fingerprints, wipe it down, spray it down, hose it down.

it's D Get rid of that right there. Oh no. I'm running out of no no, no, okay, enough screwing around. We are returning to our black subscribe button off the locks.

Let's go ahead and let this unit down. Uh, we'll check on that AC real quick. We're still waiting on those uh struts for the rear, but let's go ahead and check out the AC and see if this is about to be bad. Look at that and see if this thing's gonna come on and make hole there.

Maybe it will. Maybe it won't I Think it will probably best to not puncture a tire. That business right there There we go. All right coming all the way down again.

There you go. Good enough. Uh AC machines there. So I got to go around this way, right? Yeah.

Say hi, hi, Everybody says hi. This is great. Close coupler. Valves And uh, yep.

so that's complete. Uh, let me go inside, hit the key, restock the engine. We'll fire up our climate control to maximum cooling capacity AC On. Fire it up Full cold Full Speed Ahead Okay, system should be commanded on what is.

this Compressor is not coming on. So looking down at our compressor, you can see the clutch right down there. just past that uh, that red AC line That clutch is not engaged. See it right right there.

The clutch is not engaged. It should be commanded to. come on. Let's uh.

we'll reach down in there, try to get a hold. It's hot in there. Need to get a hold of that connector, disconnect the connector and we'll probe it with a multimeter. I Got you right there.

Caution: This is Hot and there's a fan I Need to get a hold of that guy. Pop it out. Ah, that was Hot. I Burnt my finger.

round two going in, reaching down I'd rather burn myself and chop my finger off in the fan. So we're good here. I Got the clip and give it a tug. It's we got the connector.

It's on my it's right down here I think I got it There we go. Yep, it's loose. Let's give it some. Wiggles Here things should come come out of there.

Come here Connector: What's this problem? Oh sorry. Ah, got it. okay. I Got the connector connectors out.

Let me go fetch a meter. We'll plug this meter in and see if we've got power. We should have 12 volt power right here at this connector. Luke meter coming in set to voltage I've got a lead.

On the negative side, that's the ground lead so we'll just connect you to our ground on the battery set the bolts. We'll take our hot side probe. We'll do a meter check here. Okay So we've got voltage and the meter is working that is tested in functioning.

Take our connector here, plug that guy into the PIN like so and look at there 14 volts to the compressor. so that that suggests to me that we have a faulty compressor. Um, let me shut it down real quick and plug that thing back in. Uh, we'll try it one more time see if that compressor is going to kick on I Hope it does.

but I don't know. Let's see Ridgeline Power down. Yeah, I'm not sticking my hand back down in there again. not with moving parts.

We can't do that. Okay, let me maneuver myself down inside of here. Look at that guy plugged back in. that's going to be kind of harder than I Thought it's easier to unplug them than it is to plug them in.

Yeah, maybe from the bottom. I'm trying to reach that from the bottom. See what? I can see through the hole that I can't see through rolling around in the dirt? That's what I'm looking for. There's my.

there's the connector right up there. I'll tell you what. I'm just gonna pause this. You guys are not gonna be able to see this.

uh, this operation anyway because whatever we can see I got to put my hand in the way so I'll be right back. Hang on a minute here. You guys stay right here. Boy, all right, got the Uh I've got that connector reconnected.

That was fun that's attached. Let me restart the system once more. see if we can't encourage that magnetic clutch on the compressor to, uh, start compressing here a little bag in. I'm sure the compressor can actually function, but the clutch is not engaging.

Restart: AC On low, low low. Okay, yeah, a lot of cardio and climbing up and down and stuff. Yeah, it's not on. okay.

Say what I'm gonna do with disconnect these service hoses. I'm gonna raise this thing up one more time and let me give some tap and tap action and try to bang on that uh compressor clutch to get it to fire up. It probably hasn't been used in a very long time there. That's good.

Let's go ahead and Purge the machine good. Jump rotor not good. Moving back up. red subscribe button also good and still waiting on struts.

Not good. Okay, we are back under the car again. Uh, right. here is the front of our crankshaft pulley.

That right there is the AC compressor and this right here is a pry bar. So what I am choosing to do is we're gonna come in here with this pry bar. kind of bang on this clutch some and see if we can't get it to uh to come alive, it's either gonna start working. and if not, yeah, yeah, this compressor is smoked, too much corrosion or rust, or the coil and the clutch has failed.

It's being energized and it's grounded through its body like through the the case of the compressor. So we know we have power and we know we have a ground. Uh, this compressor is junk. Okay, so we had a discharge system and and we have a faulty compressing unit.

All right folks. So here's where we sit. We're waiting on parts. At the end of the day we have one major problem solved and completed.

The the other problem is halfway solved. We, uh, we found a discharge system and a leaking valve. uh but we also have a compressor that's faulty. So I need to go back to the drawing board on that compressor and see if my guy wants to put one in.

Uh, regarding these uh, what struts and shocks or strut assemblies in the rear? Still wait on those and those are not going to be here today. So having said all that, what I'm going to do is make this a Part One video. Since we've thoroughly diagnosed all the complaints on the Part Two video, I think I can go ahead. Uh, well, that'll be here tomorrow morning.

the parts will. So I'll do my part two tomorrow with uh, all of my strut components for the rear including sway bar links and then depending on time and parts availability and or approval from the owner, we can do that AC compressor job as well. So having said all that again, I'm going to go ahead and close this video out right now. I Will do such things as always by thanking each and every one of you guys for watching this video.

Certainly hope you enjoyed this video if you did enjoy this Honda Ridgeline back there. Please feel free to let me know about that in the comments section down below. Uh, do not forget to tap that like button while you're down there and most importantly, have yourselves a fantastic day! See you guys later in the video in the bridge on Ridgeline Words: end of day in the transmission.