Acura/Honda MDX 3.7

[ak diesel driver]

So last fall I picked up an 07 MDX for $500 for a replacement for my wife's 04 MDX which has 315k on it. They said it had a rod knock. We started it up and drove it on the trailer, it clattered really loudly. Even back then my thought was it just didn't quite sound like a rod bearing.
During the winter I did some research and discovered that it could also be a bad camshaft. I watched a YOUTUBE video where a dealer had replaced an engine because of a rod knock. The video was of a complete teardown of a 3.7, which turned out to have a bad camshaft. Even losing metal into the oil the bearings looked really good.
So fast forward to a couple of weeks ago I pulled it in to at least see what was wrong. First thing I did was pull the valve covers and everything looked OK. So I turned the engine over with a ratchet, and every so often I would hear this distinct tap.
So I decided to pull the oil filter and cut it open. It was clean, drained the oil and the magnet on the plug was clean.
So I pulled off the timing cover and found this
Replaced those parts and it runs good, nice and quiet, hard to believe that the tensioner could make that much noise.

 

[ak diesel driver]

Another thing I found wrong was the power rear hatch didn't work right. Did some more YT research and discovered the harness from the drivers door to the fuse panel, about a foot long, was a common issue with wires breaking off the pins. Sure enough I found one broken. Took it out and resodered it and it worked fine. Popped a code for the front cat so I'll be dealing with that.

 

[MrMarty51]

Seems that You fell into a pretty sweet deal on that one.
If I hear of any Honda wehicles that sounds like a rod knock, with the 3.7 I’ll snap that right up.
Thank You for the heads up.