Honda Passport Oil Change: The 3.5 V6, the Minder and the AWD Unit

Honda brought the Passport name back for 2019 as a two-row SUV built on the Pilot's hardware, with a 3,471 cc V6, a nine-speed automatic and Honda's i-VTM4 torque-vectoring AWD on most of them. Honda's 2024 specifications rate it to tow 5,000 pounds. A Passport here usually pulls double duty: weekday commutes up McCarran and weekend trips over Donner Summit or out to Boca Reservoir with a small trailer behind. Honda's maintenance system is built to tell those two lives apart, as long as someone reads the code.

At a glance

• 3.5-liter V6 (3,471 cc), nine-speed automatic and i-VTM4 AWD on the 2024 Passport (Honda Information Center)
• Oil grade: 0W-20 as printed on the filler cap; capacity per your year's Specifications page
• Interval: Maintenance Minder, at least once a year
• AWD rear differential fluid is a Minder sub item (code 6)

Reading the Minder code on a Passport

Honda's Maintenance Minder shows remaining oil life as a percentage and posts a service message when it gets low, around 15 percent in Honda's manuals. The message carries a letter and numbers. A is an oil change, B is an oil and filter change with a set of inspections. The numbers are add-ons: 1 is a tire rotation, 2 the air filters and drive belt, 3 transmission fluid, 4 spark plugs and valve clearance, 5 coolant, 6 the rear differential fluid on AWD models and 7 brake fluid.

So a Passport that shows B16 is asking for oil, the filter, a rotation and rear differential fluid in one visit. We read the code with you, do the oil and filter, and tell you which of the numbered items we can handle in the same stop.

What Honda prints for oil, and what we check before filling

Honda's owner's manuals recommend a premium-grade 0W-20 detergent oil carrying the API Certification Seal, Genuine Honda oil or an equivalent, and say synthetic is fine as long as it has that seal and grade. The Passport's filler cap shows the grade for that engine, and the Specifications page of the owner's manual lists the oil change capacity including the filter.

We did not find a Honda-published capacity figure we could cite for every Passport year, so we will not quote one here. We fill to the figure in your own manual, run the engine, and finish on the dipstick.

Towing, mountain passes and the i-VTM4 unit

Honda's manuals note that the Minder adjusts the oil life for towing, high engine temperature and mountain driving, and Honda lists a CVT fluid interval for mountain driving on its CVT models. The Passport's nine-speed is a conventional automatic, so its fluid comes up through Minder code 3 rather than a mountain footnote, but the same logic holds: a Passport that tows over Donner Summit uses its fluids faster than one that idles through Midtown.

The i-VTM4 rear unit is what sends torque to the outside rear wheel on a snowy turn. Reno averages about 21 inches of snow a year at the airport on the NOAA 1991 to 2020 normals, so it gets work every winter. When the Minder shows 6, a differential service with Honda's specified fluid is the answer.

The rest of a Passport visit

• Oil to the grade on the cap, new filter, Minder reset
• Engine air filter and the dust and pollen filter pulled and shown; Honda moves the air cleaner to every 15,000 miles in dusty conditions
• Transmission, brake, coolant and washer fluid levels
• Battery test, belts, wipers, lights and tire pressure
• Hitch wiring and trailer lights on request if you tow