Timing Belt Service and Maintenance Minder?
 

Hello everyone!

I just purchased a 2007 Honda Pilot EX-L with 102,900 miles on the clock. I'm happy to report that this vehicle is in fairly pristine condition, especially for it's age. It appears to have been a 1-owner vehicle. While I don't believe the classic sales guy line of "old lady only drove it to church and back" (haha!) I can certainly tell the previous owner cared for the vehicle and got all the work done on time. One of the reasons I can tell this is because they seem to have gotten all/most of the work done at the dealer -- as indicated by the Carfax report.

On to why we're here: I do *not* see timing belt service on the list of services in the Carfax report. From the reading I've done on this vehicle so far, seems like Maintenance Minder will tell you to perform this service somewhere before or up to 105,000 miles (from what I can gather that's the max mileage before the service is due). I've read how to put Maintenance Minder into "forced activation" mode (ie, to tell you what upcoming services you can expect). When I do this, I only see a service B (oil and filter) - and no sub services listed.

My guess is the 3rd party dealer I bought this vehicle from may have cleared/reset Maintenance Minder to sell it with no maintenance indicators showing (oil life also shows as 100%). It's also certainly possible the previous owner did this at some point, but... The drive belt seems somewhat old - it has some wear, but isn't in terrible shape either. So my *guess* is we're probably still working with the original timing belt.

SO: should I just replace the timing belt for peace of mind? Should I wait until Maintenance Minder tells me to do so? Waiting seems somewhat risky. Is there an easy way to inspect the timing belt without removing a ton of stuff in the engine bay?

Thanks for your help, appreciate any insight you've got! :)

welcome to the forum. if you know where the pilot's maintenance was done at, you might go to the service dept and see if they might dig up the information to see if the timing belt has been changed, if not the belt is recommended and the maintenance minder will alert you at 105k miles. ( or 7 years) when you change your timing belt, change the water pump, belt tensioner, cam seals, crank seal. then you have peace of mind. make sure when you get the work done you get to see the old parts for your pilot.