8 year service - water pump dilemma

[Chris W]

I am about to book in for an 8 year service - which realistically means the timing belt replacing.

I am advised (by the dealer) to also replace the water pump at this time. Makes sense - but also sound expensive. As with any NSX parts!

My instinct is to get it all done in one go. Actual mileage is c. 55k

Any advice / experience of others appreciated.

CW.

[Senninha]

Hello Chris and welcome to NSXCB ... where have you been hiding?

There are many articles on this and several have acheived good deals by purchasing service kits from America ....

Give it a short while and other will chip in and help you with which dealers to buy from. One recent example was the full parts list including w/pump I beleive for around £600 .... about half UK pricing

Good luck and please share more about your NSX ...

regards, Paul

[nobby]

Hello and welcome,

have a read through kaz's blog re timing belt services and the sensible approach to do the wp replacement when there. You also need to think about the crankshaft pulley etc as well as I don't think Honda dealers see this as a serviceable item.

IMO get the whole thing done in one go ... The wp is behind the belts so realistically when in there do it!

in terms of Honda UK they will rip you off re these parts, my advice is look elsewhere I.e the US for these parts. You should be able to still save a good amount even after shipping and customs compared to UK prices. Known US suppliers include Findlay, Science of Speed, Dali etc. Again do a search for US suppliers on here to find out who is happy with who. Also contact vtec direct here in the UK and see what Andy can do for u (check traders section).

im sure others will add additional info but hopefully that's a start for you in ensuring you get all the bits needing done as part of the service you asked for.

[Sudesh]

I am about to book in for an 8 year service - which realistically means the timing belt replacing.

I am advised (by the dealer) to also replace the water pump at this time. Makes sense - but also sound expensive. As with any NSX parts!

My instinct is to get it all done in one go. Actual mileage is c. 55k

Any advice / experience of others appreciated.

CW.

Hi Chris

Welcome to the club!

What year, model of NSX have you? Auto or manual? Etc.

[Chris W]

Thanks all - not hiding - just shy.

Paul - when I was first looking at buying an NSX back in 2004 - I think your advice back then was much appreciated. It's been my TLC ever since. Never owned a "car" this long before.

Service ideas: Seems you all agree about "do it all in 1 go". I know the dealer service price is expensive but I dont have the option to DIY, but will look into the options mentioned *. Thanks.

* I had to replace the inside driver door handle few years ago and got the part from Acura in Buffalo New York State (as advised by one of you guys). Cost was 1/4 UK list price.

Will await further input, but realistically it's going to a Honda service team in a few weeks (parts time from Belgium I guess) unless anyone screams otherwise.

Thanks again. And more posts to follow.
CW

[nobby]

As an NSX owner it would be great if you could share your experiences on here ... another one to the fold and all that.

[Hagasan]

Hello Chris,

just as a quick addition to what others have said.... I buy most parts from Findlay Acura in Henderson Nevada. Nic Terrey is the guy I deal with. I think it's better to call them first time around as I think their initial email response can be flakey...

The parts prices are about a third of the Honda UK ones. Labour wise...firstly where are you located? Norton Way Honda will do all that work for circa £6-700. I paid about that. They are happy to fit supplied by the customer OEM parts. I'd imagine you've been quoted a good few grand by your dealer? You can probably get it all done for £12-1300 by NW. If your not so local to them you can get a loan car FOC. Depends if you want to save a grand or more really? Contact at NW is Bryan Smith....

Good Luck,

Gary

[britlude]

some places will fit parts you've supplied, thus you'll only paying for UK labour, not UK parts prices too....

no doubt those that have been this route will chip in!



.....must type faster

[richmills]

When I had my belts service 2 years ago I also bought the water pump and crank pulley from Vtec Direct at about 50% of the Honda quoted price. Honda were happy to fit the OEM parts I'd provided.

[Kaz-kzukNA1]

Hi, Chris.
Welcome to NSXCB.

It seems that you are on the service interval with every 9K miles or 12 months whichever comes first so your NSX would be post Jul/98 registration.
It would be nice to know bit more detail of your NSX, at least MT or AT as there are several different parts depending on the model.

It is a very good decision to replace the WP because if you don’t replace it this time, you are going to rely on the same WP until the next TB service that makes your WP 16 yrs old....

You never know what is going to happen....


Also, if you take your NSX to Honda garage and if they follow the labour charge based on the Honda system, then replacing the WP at the time of TB will only increase it by 0.5Hr so the biggest factor in total cost is mainly the parts.

Standard TB service is calculated at 4.0Hr and TB+WP is 4.5Hr in the system.


There are several things that you want to or must replace at the same time.
For example, the crank pulley (MT/AT version), AUX belts (ACG belt has MT/AT version), valve cover gasket kits, IG coil cover seals, etc and it all depends on what kind of service you are after.


When ordering any parts from US, I just ask Tim at Acura of Peoria.
Tim Poliniak
hondacuraworld[at]aol.com ( Please replace [at] with @ This is for the prevention for spam email. )


Tim is very quick to respond and quite famous on NSX Prime.
I’ve been dealing with him for many years without any issues at all.

They have live support and also you can call them free of charge using their toll free number over Skype.
Obviously, if you use landline or mobile, you will be charged even for calling the US toll free number but not with Skype.


For placing any orders outside of EU, it is important to remind the seller on how to fill in the custom form.
In fact, some of the courier companies use the online system and they don’t even bother looking at the form attached to the package for calculating the custom charge on arrival to UK so you must ask the seller to type in the correct info when they reserve the package for collection online.

I found so many mistakes on this when placing order from US probably because they have enough business within US and not so familiar with the different form based on each courier companies.

They tend to just put the total figure charged on your credit card as the ‘Goods Value’ which is wrong because it includes the delivery charge as well.

In this case, you are going to pay the double amount of duty/VAT on the delivery charge to the UK Customs and if you are not familiar on how it is calculated, you won’t notice the mistake and simply paying too much tax.

You can claim it back but you need to contact the courier company for a specific reference no. and then fill in the somewhat complicated form and takes ages to process the claim so you really don’t want to go through this and best to make it right at the beginning.


Tim knows this so just ask him to fill in the form to show the correct amount just for the parts and delivery charge separately in the different column on the form.


For the parts no., you can use my parts list for my Engine Refresh Service below;
http://www.nsxcb.co.uk/showthread.php?6286-NSX-Health-Check-Service/page35&p=74593#post74593

For standard service, you only need about 1/5 of the parts in the list so don’t order all of them.

Kaz

[Nick Graves]

Just had mine done; HUK had a backlog anyway, so I got mine (and always use a fresh crank pulley*!) from Dali.

I know many here believe Mark Johnson to be Satan Incarnate, but so long as the parts are in stock, they arrive within a week. Parcelfarce don't tell you they've landed, so they fester there for more weeks.

Due to a pricing balls-up at Acura, it is cheaper to buy a water pump upgrade kit including a new timing belt cover.


*Bryan @ Norton way explained that the shock of removing a crank pulley seems to upset the harmonic damper and it frequently comes adrift soon afterwards. So best get a new one of you are gonna lose the TB cover at any time.

[goldnsx]

I've always hidden the supplier in the US in any of my posts here and there just to prevent him getting into troubles with the Honda headquarter for selling parts outside of the US.

[nobby]

The parts mgr I used in SF recently for Acura was more than happy to facilitate business again in the future and no issues shipping either ... At the end of the day these guys are happy to get the sales