2005 Acura mdx Touring

The scenario of this MDX was quite different from all the other vehicles.  It  belonged to one of my colleagues and had been sitting in their driveway for about a year.  The battery was dead and previously had not been running well.  It had also leaked some sort of fluid down their driveway.  I offered to come pick it up, fix it at my house, and then split the proceeds of the sale. Agreed.

My oldest son and I snagged a uhaul trailer and headed over on a Saturday morning and loaded it up and brought it home.  The sweet part of the deal is that my colleague and her husband just gave me the car!  They were glad to have it out of their driveway and that someone they knew would be the one to profit from it.  Thank you!  

Once the battery was charged the MDX fired right up, it was noisy though, a metallic clacking?  The fluid leak turned out to be a cracked power steering line.  I initially thought maybe the metallic noise was the power steering pump, from being run empty. Nope.  The metallic noise was actually the hydraulic timing belt tensioner flopping back and forth.  Figured that out after it died on my wife while she was driving it to church.  Oops, sorry hun.

I’d never redone the timing system on a Honda/Acura before so it was a good experience to tear the front of the engine off and see how the system works.  I also changed out the transmission fluid because I had no idea when/if it had ever been done before.  There was a small tear in the driver seat so I patched that as well.  The hood supports had lost their charge and would no longer hold the hood up.  Swapped those out and the hood would once again stand open on it own.

I drove the MDX around for a couple months running errands, back and forth to work, to the airport, etc.  I always want to use the vehicles enough to be sure they are in good running order before I sell them.

I posted the MDX up on Craigslist, Letgo and Offerup.  A guy and his son came and bought it based on the Craigslist posting.  It was one of the easiest vehicle sales I’ve ever had.  They came and looked at it for a couple minutes, test drove it for another 5 minutes came back and agreed to buy it. 

I had put a decent amount of time into the repairs but I was able to sell the MDX for a little less than the KBB private party value, in good condition, and I had only invested $752.22 into getting it back on the road.

Deal done, onto the next one.