IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE, PLEASE READ THIS. Maybe you can save your car before what happened to me happens to you. I bought my 2011 Pilot after my family of 8's van was totaled last winter. Shortly after, while performing routine maintenance, I discovered the car was low on oil and the intake tube between the filter box and engine had split almost all the way through, sadly sometime before my purchase. This lets dust into the engine and will toast your rings and valve seals. Check yours today before you end up burning oil like mine. These are good cars and there is no reason for something this stupid to take down the legendary 3.5. If you are reading this, you have probably already heard about the rings and seals, now you potentially know the reason why, and you can get ahead of it. If it's too late, I'm sorry. These are family cars often owned by people who can't afford expensive repairs, and this warning is the only reason for my post. Checking anything with a 3.5 may not be a bad idea as I have heard some of the same from Odyssey owners.

I bought this vehicle for my son to use while at college. I live in Texas and he was going to school in Detroit. He drove it for a while in Texas and I performed simple maintenance and changed a vent direction controller on the AC and Heat system. I showed him how to change the oil, bought a small tool kit for him, and moved him up to Detroit. He called me when vehicle was running poorly with a misfire and engine light.

I did some research and determined he needed spark plugs, no worries I can walk him thru this. Had him buy the tools and spark plugs and tried to fix it that night. I forgot about temps and he had to start over in the morning because it was too cold for him. He later got it done with another guys help and feels very confident about it for the future.

In May it started running rough again. So we thought it might be a coil, because we already changed the spark plugs. we checked the coils and they worked fine. He had a friend that checked it with his computer and they changed one plug and one coil. I later found out that the spark plug had oil on the tip. Then in the same month he has the P3400 and P3497 fault code. I do some reach and find out the lawsuit on excessive oil use and spark plugs failing and so on. I have him check the oil and in only has 1500 miles on oil change and it is 1.25 quarts low on oil. We will call Honda tomorrow and find out the results.

It's a P3497 code and replace the oil pressure/switch. Erase the code from OBD, take the pilot for a test drive from 55mph to 85mph and let VCM kick in every 5 mph as I increase the speed. The car seem to do fine and no code. Next morning, the wife takes car to work; 10 minutes after she left the house. She calls and confirms the code is back. I recently have oil change with after market oil filter. I am sure the oil filter will not likely to cause the problem, which I always use Honda oem oil filter. Plus I have only use Mobil1 5W20 on the pilot since purchase back in 2011.

Our 2011 Honda Pilot (touring model), came up with a check emissions & vcm failure. The engine went into a low power mode, and began to shake. My wife brought it to an auto zone & got two codes p334 & p301, and the auto zone guy noticed that the oil was low & had to add a quart to bring it up to level. We had the car towed to Weymouth Ma. Honda, and got a bill for $380.00 . We were told that the truck had two bad sensors & a bad #1 spark plug. We were also told that it's normal for this truck to burn through a quart of oil every one thousand miles (LOL). When I call the Honda 800#, I was told that my truck didn't qualify for the TSB 11-033. I was also told that for my truck to be covered, a dealership would have to make the assumption that the piston rings were bad (the same techs who tell the customers that it's normal to burn one quart of oil every one thousand miles.

Can you see how this scam works now?, Roy

This is my daughter's vehicle that I do the maintenance, primarily oil changes. She purchased it as a certified vehicle and paid top dollar. It uses 3 quarts of oil in between oil changes. By June, 2015 I was fed up with the oil use and complained to the local dealer from whom it was purchased. The dealer said that the normal oil usage for her Honda was 1 quart per 1,000 miles and so Honda won't do anything. The dealer requested that we bring the vehicle in every 1,000 miles to check the actual oil use. This was not done because the vehicle does not use their high use standard.

I called Honda USA and they assigned a case number to this problem. I then had one more conversation and was called by a Honda manager 7/9/15 when I was not home. I returned that call twice with the case number and my call has not been returned. It;s obvious that Honda does not want to address this problem. This car should never have been sold as certified because as of the time of purchase a Honda bulletin had been issued about this problem and there was a class action suit.